It’s Massage Therapy Thursday!

For the amount of time some of us spend at our desks, it’s worth considering how our positioning is slowly cementing in a posture that can produce tension and pain and patterns of restriction that could be difficult to undo. 

Too many of us are stretching out our rhomboids in our back and shortening our pectoralis minor in our front, while keeping our heads ahead of our rounded shoulders.  This will lead to tension headaches, nerve entrapment for the arms and hands and a load on the spine that is much greater than it was designed to handle.  Why age yourself?  Don’t you do enough at work?

- First, imagine there is a string attached to the top of your head stretching upwards to the sky.  Let an imaginary force be constanly keeping that string taut, as though your head is lifting your body. 

- Next, your new mantra is “back and down”, referring to your shoulders.  You may need to repeat this to yourself dozens of times/day at first, but eventually it will feel like the most comfortable position.  You may even find your pesky trapezius and pec minor pulling your shoulders forward and up just seconds after you’ve intentionally moved them “back and down”.  Stay at it.  Its a habit worth breaking and you will.

- Finally, tuck your chin in.  Feel the stretch in the muscles at the back and base of your skull.  This will keep those suboccipital muscles long and relaxed and prevent nasty ‘tension’ headaches.

These are three simple steps you can take immediately to hold your body in a healthier position and keep your muscles at their intended, healthy length. This will  support the skeleton and all surrounding systems and structures and keep you working and playing at your best.

(NB - all of this applies to the similar position of driving a car)

back and down

back and down

back and down :)

-hmh-