Do you have Good Posture?

michele jangBy Michele S Jang, PT

How do you know if you have good posture? At Spirit Winds Physical Therapy we have an exercise that we call the “3 – S” posture drill.  Stand against the wall and feel what parts of your body touch the wall.  When you have good spinal alignment, three parts of your body will touch the wall.  These three body parts are what the “S’s” stand for.  They are your Sacrum, Shoulder blade(also known as your scapula) and lastly, your Skull.
In order to have your sacrum flush with the wall, it is important to engage your abdominal muscles and perform a slight posterior pelvic tilt as if tucking your coccyx or tailbone between your legs.
For most people, keeping our shoulder blades against the wall means rolling our shoulders backwards, gently squeezing the shoulder blades together and down.
Lastly, for our skull to touch the wall, we need to retract our chin straight backwards.  Make sure not to tilt the chin up, which is very common. Your eyes should keep a steady gaze forwards.    If your head does not touch the back of the wall, place a folded up towel to account for the space. Make sure the towel is thick enough so that you feel your head pushing backwards against it to keep it from falling on the floor.
postureBSMTry maintaining this posture for at least a minute.  When you’ve mastered that, you can challenge yourself to keep that “3 -S” posture while moving your arms.  Perform “Angel” motions by starting with your arms at your side, palms facing forward, slowly lift your arms out to the sides maintaining contact with the wall. Only raise your arms to the point you can maintain your “3 –S” posture.  Lower arms and repeat 10 times.   Shoulder flys are another similar exercise to strengthen your posture.  Start with bringing both arms up in front of you, then slowly spreading your arms out to the sides reaching to touch the wall, and then return back to the starting position. Repeat 10 times.  Again only go as far as you can while maintaining your posture.
Proper posture is important for all aspects of health including balance, decreasing   pain, accessing muscles to increase your strength and range of motion.  Posture improves athletic performance and even aides in proper digestion.  Contact Spirit Winds if you would like further guidance on how you can improve your posture and ultimately, your health.

Michele S Jang, PT is a physical therapist who likes to look outside the box. She has been a physical therapist for over 20 years and has extensive training in manual therapy or the use of hands to help rehabilitate the body. Michele has been an instructor both in the United States and abroad. She offers Free Consults on Tuesday afternoons. Michele also has a team of therapists at Spirit Winds who offer an array of expertise on exercise, fall prevention, foot and shoe assessments, body mechanics and proper breathing technique to increase awareness and healing. Michele can be reached at 805 543-5100 or .