Why is posture important?

Physical therapy

﻿Hello everybody, thank you for joining me today. My name is Sophie Brazier, and I'm a children's physiotherapist. Today, we will be continuing on the topic of posture, but we will be looking at why is posture important. So before we begin to look at that, I just need you to get something that we will need today. You will need, for an activity we'll be doing later, a piece of card. So I've got a piece of card about that thickness and about that size. What we will be doing with it is thinking about our posture, so posture awareness. So a piece of paper probably is going to be too thin. It might fall off. And a book is probably going to be too heavy or thick. So something in between would be great. And then we can make a start. Just before we begin, I'd like to give you a little message from our team. We as therapists have tried to think of the best way to continue to support children, young people and their families. So you might be watching this video as a child by yourself, or you might be watching it as a parent and a child together. We will be exploring topic areas that we regularly provide advice and support on across all ages and abilities. Each lesson will have ideas and activities that can be carried out either at home or at school. And this information is really to be used alongside any specific strategies or resources which may have been given to you by your child's school or their therapist. And if you do have any questions or would like help tailoring this to your child's needs, then please do contact your local therapy service. So let's start by looking at why is posture important. And I think it might be helpful if perhaps we look at poor posture first, and then we can look at things that it can affect if you do have a poor posture. So poor posture or slouching, as it can also be called, over time can affect your spine and how it moves. It can decrease your flexibility, it can affect how well your joints move and it can make it harder for other body processes such as digestion and breathing to happen well. So the first point, it can affect your spine and how it moves. So if we think back to lesson one where we had a look at the model of the spine, and I've got it again here so you can have a look at how intricate and detailed our spine is, if we are adopting those poor postures, over time it can affect your spine and how well it's moving. So all the important roles and all the important structures in our spine, if they're not nice and healthy, then it's going to affect how the spine can move. And that's where it can affect the second point there where it says decrease your flexibility. If we're not moving our spine and keeping those structures healthy, then our spine can stiffen up and our body can stiffen up. And that again can have an effect on how well our joints can move because if you think about our spine affects how the rest of our body moves, our arms, our legs, our head, our neck. So it's not just our spine that we're affecting, it can affect other joints in our body as well if our spine isn't working and our posture isn't a good, strong posture. And the last point there, make it harder for other body processes such as digestion and breathing. So if we think about breathing, our spine covers a large part of our body, and in front of our spine, we've got lots of organs. And if you think about our lungs, where our lungs sit, if we sat in postures where we're rounding like this, we're going to be closing down that space and making it really difficult for our lungs to do their job well. And if we're sitting up in a nice posture, we're keeping that nice alignment, we're keeping those natural spinal curves, we're really maximising, so we're really making sure that our lungs can work to the best of their ability. And here are a few points to how can posture be improved in general. So I just want to give you a few ideas, really. The first one is being mindful in everyday activities. So mindful, that's just thinking, really taking the time to make sure that you're thinking about your posture at every opportunity. So as you think about it more, it probably will become a bit more of a habit. So you could make, maybe over the next week, you could make a real effort in every posture you get in just to think, "Am I keeping my natural curves? Am I keeping a good posture? Is this a good posture? Am I comfortable and am I in alignment? Could I stay here? Can I concentrate in this position?" So it's just making sure that you're bringing in and you're really thinking about all those tips that I've given you. And the second point there, try to stay active. I'm not going to give you strict instructions of how often you should be exercising and how much you should be doing and what exact exercises you should be doing, but really the idea of staying active is important to everything to do with your posture and your spine. So if you're keeping moving, you're making sure that your posture is a good or an ideal posture, then that activity is all contributing to your overall body health. And the third point there, think about other factors. So I thought I'd just put in footwear and school bags. So just two things to think about there. So footwear, if you think about your feet, when you're standing, your feet are your base of support. So it's a really good idea to think about what footwear you're wearing. Is it sensible? Is it appropriate for the activity you're doing? And the second point, school bags. You may have a backpack at school. You may have a bag that you carry on one shoulder. If you have a bag that you carry on one shoulder, if you're carrying around lots of books in that bag, you might find that you end up with a posture like this for some of the day. And when you get home, you think, "Oh, that's a little bit uncomfortable." So if you've got a backpack on, you're making sure the weight is going through both shoulders and both parts of your spine and your back at equal points. So it's just a few little tips to think about. And you might find just by changing the school bag you've got or changing the way you carry your school bag can help your posture overall. And the last point there, think about your working environment at home and school. So that's just getting you to think about not only your desk at home, but maybe how you sit at school or what chair you're sitting on. So just bring a little bit of awareness in that can help. So if we've got a good or ideal posture, that means that our muscles are working more efficiently. So they're not having to put in lots of extra effort and make us extra tired to keep those positions, which means that we'll have more energy to concentrate for longer, which also then means that it'll be better access to learning, which is ultimately what we want. And here are just a few points for you to remember for posture. So really by thinking about all these things, we want to aim to minimise or reduce or stop any pain that you might have in your back or associated with posture. So then that is ultimately preventing pain and injury. And we want to allow the muscles to work together in a balanced way. So if we've got all those muscles in our spine and around our spine in alignment, we're keeping those natural curves, all our muscles around our spine and the rest of our body can work in a balanced way together. And the third point there, keeping active. So this is about making those small changes, trying to change position regularly, trying to not stay in a position for too long. And if you have been in a position for a long period of time, maybe break it up with a small walk, or if you do enjoy exercise and you have some exercise you do regularly, building that regularly into your day or your week can help. And the last point there for posture is that making all these changes can ultimately help focus your learning. Now we are going to try a little activity for postural awareness. So at the beginning of the lesson, I asked if you could just get a piece of card. So if you have got that, that's great, and you don't have to have a mirror, but if you could do this sitting in front of a mirror, that would be even better. And the first thing I want you to do is you're going to be sitting on a chair and you're going to be looking in front of you, so looking towards yourself in the mirror. And I would like you to place the card on top of your head. And the first idea that you're going to do is you're going to place the card on top of your head and you're going to look towards the floor. And I'm going to play a little video now that you will be able to watch me demonstrating the activity. I'm just going to show you an activity idea that will get us looking at posture. So this is a bit about postural awareness. So at the beginning of the lesson I asked you to just get a piece of card. I've just got a piece that I've folded in half, just to make it a bit thicker. Ideally, if you've got a mirror that you can sit in front of, it's quite a good idea because you will have some feedback. So you'll be able to see yourself and you can make some changes, and it's just quite a nice thing to do. But if you haven't got a mirror, it doesn't matter. You can still do this activity. So what I'd like you to do first is get in a nice seated position, try and have your feet on the floor, your bottom back in the chair so you're feeling nice, supported position, and place the piece of paper on top of your head. Before I do that, I'm going to explain, otherwise it's going to fall off. And you want to really try and maybe put the card on first and just see how you feel in that position. Does the card stay? Does it move? Are you moving? And then the next thing I want you to do is sit still with your body, but with your eyes, I'd like you to look to the floor. So with this part of your body try and stay still, but you're just going to be looking down and I want you to just see what happens to the card. Okay, so get yourself in a nice position, get the card in a good position. So the card should really stay on your head when you're in a natural position. And then when you look to the floor, you'll see what happens to the card. Okay. Then a way to make this a little bit harder or to extend the activity, get you thinking about it a little bit more, is to put the card on your head and instead of looking to the floor, this time have a look to the ceiling and see what happens to the card. It might stay on your head, you might need to go a bit further and you could, for another way to make it a little bit more challenging or to extend it further, is to put the card on your head and imagine that you're reaching forward for something on the tables. You're going to be coming forward like that. So just have a little play and see what happens to your body. See what happens to the card. If you'd like to make this activity a little bit easier and you don't want to be doing all those extensions, you can just put the card on your head and just sit and think about your posture. You can even take the card off your head and just sit in front of a mirror or just sit like this and just make some changes to your posture. If you do it with a card on your head, you'll just have a bit of an idea about how much your body is moving. So go and give those a try. Okay, so what I'd like you to do now is just pause the video so that you can complete the task. And if you need to go back and watch me demonstrate the activity again, then you can. In the video of the exercise I've showed you, there was a demonstration of how to make the idea slightly harder or slightly easier. So it's just written down here as extend or simplify. And there's just some written detail of how you can do each activity. That brings us to the end of our lesson today. Thank you everybody for joining me. I hope you found that useful. Over the next few lessons, we will be looking at how posture can affect learning, and then we'll be moving on to posture in lying. So I look forward to seeing you all again soon. Take care, bye.

Why is posture important?

Why is posture important?

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