How Bad Sitting Posture at Work Leads to Bad Standing Posture All the Time

You’d be surprised how much your posture affects your mood. There’s an old saying, “You think like you speak.” That makes a lot of sense. We have a way of saying what’s on our mind. We also know that there’s spoken language and verbal language. If you walk around, or sit all day with terrible posture, your body is telling itself that its not happy. Your body language, which is really just poor posture, is giving off the impression that something is wrong, and all the wrong muscles are being strengthened, reinforcing bad, unhappy, posture.

Now, nobody outside of a teenager would choose bad posture. It’s one of those things that’s mostly a result of our environment. Our work and home environment aren’t designed for proper posture.

Standing and looking at a mobile phone presents its own problems… it’s still bad posture. Still hunching.

Add up the years hunched at a desk, hunched over a phone, or curled up on the couch and it’s easy to understand why many of us have back issues. The occasions for proper posture are slim!

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a piece on the topic of bad posture. The article notes two very interesting findings:

It’s been known that depression causes slouching (cuz, body language). Now researchers are discovering that slouching can aid in causing depression (cuz feedback loop discussed above).
In another study, researches found that walking while slouching made people feel more tired while skipping made people feel more energetic afterward.
The entire piece is worth reading.

But back to the issue of slouching at work…

The rule of thumb is to keep your ears over your shoulders, shoulders over your hips, and hips over your knees and ankles.

To fight against the tech hunch, stretch your back and chest periodically throughout the day and focus on strengthening your trapezius muscles and your core.