Try this test.
Stand up and slouch, hang your head down, droop your shoulders, drop your arms by your side, let you back and tummy sag. Now is this posture say: ‘I am fantastic, I am happy, I am great. I love life, I love my work and all that I do’.
Now stand tall, head held high with shoulders back, back upright and tummy held in. In this posture say: ‘I am so depressed, I can’t do anything right, I find my work really hard. I don’t enjoy my life’.
This simple test shows how our posture is affected by our mood.
Now stand slouched and say ‘I am so depressed, I can’t do anything right, I find my work really hard. I don’t enjoy my life’. Suddenly this becomes much easier to say. Same as if you stand tall and say ‘I am fantastic, I am happy, I am great. I love life, work and all that I do’ – this can now be said with conviction.
Hours spent on the computer also cause us to stiffen up and creates bad posture. How many of us now work on a laptop? The small keyboard creates constrictions and tension in our shoulders, arms and neck and into our back. Put the laptop on our lap or the closet table to work from and we don’t sit correctly and we then put strain throughout our body from head right down to our hips and into our legs and knees. How many of us work from home and just have our computer sitting on the available table with the dining room chair to sit on. By not ensuring we have the correct posture when using a computer we’re putting our health at risk. You only have to Google ‘computer posture’ to see that there is a whole industry has developed to ensure that we don’t harm ourselves. Many companies’ Health and Safety departments ensure that all employees’ workstations are set up correctly.
According to Occupational Health and Safety Administrators the correct positions to be working in are as follows:
- Hands, wrists, and forearms are straight, in-line and roughly parallel to the floor.
- Head is level or bent slightly forward, forward facing, and balanced. Generally it is in-line with the torso.
- Shoulders are relaxed and upper arms hang normally at the side of the body.
- Elbows stay in close to the body and are bent between 90 and 120 degrees.
- Feet are fully supported by the floor or a footrest may be used if the desk height is not adjustable.
- Back is fully supported with appropriate lumbar support when sitting vertical or leaning back slightly.
- Thighs and hips are supported by a well-padded seat and generally parallel to the floor.
- Knees are about the same height as the hips with the feet slightly forward.
Regardless of how good your working posture is, working in the same posture or sitting still for prolonged periods is not healthy. You should change your working position frequently throughout the day in the following ways:
As well as office workers, other industry workers are also putting themselves at high risk of strain and injury such as; merchandisers, factory workers, builders, gardeners etc. before entering a trade you must make sure that you or your employer provides the correct health and safety training to avoid such injuries.
It is important that we do all we can to help ourselves to prevent injuries and strains that can affect our work. When we do have aches and pains it’s important to get them seen to as quickly as possible to prevent them developing into something more serious.
When we have a sore shoulder or back for instance we can automatically think that the problem is from that area, but it can well be that the cause of the pain is from imbalance and strain elsewhere in the body and the shoulder or back is the victim of the cause. By working to rid the body of the cause, the symptoms will go away.
The Bowen Technique works in this way. The other advantage of working like this is that other imbalances of the body can also be addressed with Bowen including stress, migraines, asthma, IBS, hormonal imbalances etc.
The Bowen Technique is a gentle hands-on treatment that works to alleviate aches and pains. It also helps to reduce stress and migraines and tension throughout the body. It differs from other treatments in that it works on releasing the connective tissue of the body. Within this is much of our nervous system. When the connective tissue gets tight or under stress pressure is placed on the nerves and this in itself can cause pain and discomfort. Also these nerves are sending messages to the brain as to what state the body is in. If the nerves are tight then the brain doesn’t get a true picture of what is going on in the body and so doesn’t know how to correct it. The Bowen Technique releases pressure within the connective tissue thus enabling the nerves to get their message to the brain correctly, the brain can then work out the appropriate response and send these messages back down to the body so the body can then correct itself.
We can establish bad habits of posture that our body and brain take on as normal. Consequently over time this bad posture puts more and more strain on us until we end up with an injury e.g. our back ‘goes’, we develop RSI, migraines, frozen shoulder, stiff neck etc. The Bowen Technique can help with all these conditions by helping the body re-educate itself and re pattern itself to obtain good posture.
A build up of tension in the body is felt as pressure is placed on nerves due to inflammation and connective tissue becomes less mobile causing stiffening of the body. This also causes other problems and reduces blood flow, lymph nutrients to circulate around the body. By ensuring we’re tension free we’re helping our bodies to work at their optimum. We encourage good blood flow and through this we enabling nutrients to flow around the body. Just think if your neck and shoulders are tense you could be restricting blood to your brain!
The other important factor to help you be more productive at work is to keep drinking water and to move. Our body is about 70% water and when we become dehydrated we reduce how well we can function. Think of water as the oil in a car. If there’s no oil in a car the engine seizes up. Also our nervous system is a series (amongst other things) of electrical impulses. Electricity is more conductive in water than on dry land so the more hydrated we are the more our brains are going to be firing on all cylinders. So ditch the coffee and head for the water fountain!
It’s very easy to become engrossed in our work and forget to move for hours on end. When we do this our body sets in the posture we give it. If we’re not sitting correctly we put additional strain on muscles, tendons and ligaments. By getting up and having a short move about twice an hour we prevent bad posture setting in and we help our body to pump more blood around our system.
Eliminating aches and pains from the body helps us to stand tall. This makes us feel positive and confident. We’re ensuring our blood is flowing to our brain and we’re ready to take on the world.
About the author:
Jo Lunn is a Bowen Technique Teacher and Practitioner. She teaches the Technique across the UK, and works from her clinic in Malvern Worcestershire and the Hale Clinic, London. The diversity of the Bowen Technique is immense from treating new-borns, the elderly and those in palliative care; from neck, frozen shoulder, knee and back trouble to infantile colic, IBS, RSI, hay fever, migraines, ME and strokes. For more information please visit: http://www.bowentechniquetraining.co.uk/.