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cliche alert but I’ve reached an age where if I sleep too well, my neck kills for days after. Going to the chiropractor, body work, morning stretching, exercising 3 days a week. All in the name of core strength and an aligned spine. This is who I am now. I’ve even started wearing my seatbelt properly.
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First you need to engage your core at all times—this doesn’t mean sucking it in and keeping it tight; it’s more like gently, ever so slightly drawing your belly button up and back towards your spine and breathing through your diagram just enough to keep those muscles activated. Strengthen your core—it protects the spine and gives you the power to keep all of your other muscles engaged!
When standing, your head, heart (shoulders and upper chest), hips, and feet should ideally be in alignment. Obviously the same goes for sitting as far as the torso is concerned.
People tend to:
* have forward neck posture from mouth breathing and being on their phones—pull your head back and keep your chin lifted! (Try yoga for text neck)
* slouch and slump in their shoulders—pull the heads of your shoulders back and rotate them outwards; retract your shoulder blades by drawing them back and towards the spine.
* tilt and lean their pelvis and hips—your tailbone should be scooping forward and down and your hips should ideally be perpendicular to the floor.
Check yourself throughout the day and see if you’re in alignment.
It takes active work to have good posture. Your posture-supporting muscles are most likely weak. I would recommend light body weight strength training like Pilates, barre, or yoga and I would also encourage you to do chakra yoga—starting at the root chakra and working your way up. This will help you systematically get into alignment at every chakra which are essentially the posture points I identified above (I love Jen Hilman’s 7-day chakra series).
You might want to look into somatic yoga and Pilates and body scan meditations too because you’re probably not very aware of your body.
I sit on the front edge of seats whenever I’m not lounging on the couch (deeply engrained habit from playing viola for years). I think this helps because it’s very easy to slouch when you’re leaning on the back of a chair for support rather than using your own muscles to stay upright.
There have been times where I’ve regressed and I bought an adjustable posture corrector to help—they’re like tight backpack straps for both shoulders that connect in the back and pull your shoulders back.
That’s about all I can say… posture is very important to me because it’s essential for your health and we’ll-being and it makes you appear confident and elegant. hope this helps! 💋
Dec 7, 2024
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Having back pain before I’m even 20 is genuinely so embarrassing I have to wear a back brace at work….going to the chiropractor every couple weeks and having these 70 year olds side eye me like 😔
Jan 24, 2025
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Massage most of all FR... and YOGA/stretching everyday
(you can even do yoga on youtube and search for back related stretches)
- physical therapy
(when I was in like 8th grade I had weird like extremely painful sharp shooting pains in my tailbone, maybe because of my slight scoliosis? Or extra vertebrae? I can’t remember- the exercises they gave me and things they did helped cure it eventually)
- heating pad
- foam roller
- getting knots out with lacrosse ball
- tiger balm
- baths with epsom salt
- I don’t do this but a massage therapist recommended sleeping with a pillow between your legs if you sleep on your side
- trying to maintain good posture/alignment, I used to be a dancer so ballet/modern dance helps with alignment
- chiropractor (not one that just cracks tf out of you so this requires research, but also just helps if you have some alignment issues but idk chiropracty is also not real science? - but it also has helped.)
Feb 21, 2024
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