The following was a client Question… “I get how my poor spinal position created a herniated disc in my back. My spine flattened out its curve, and my disc herniated. That seems pretty straightforward. (I feel great great great now by the way - thank you!) But, how does posture impact the other areas of the body that I don’t feel.”
The body can actually hold many “faulty postures” and yet feel no pain. In most cases, poor posture acts like the precursor to an event that produces pain. Similar to a car being out of alignment, and then having a tire wear out unevenly. The cars alignment by itself does not make the tire blow, but it does create the conditions for negatives if you drive that way. The alignment is off, the wheel becomes imbalanced, the tire wears unevenly, and the uneven wear and tear causes a shortened life of the tire…etc. In this example, the worst thing you can do, to a car out of alignment, is drive it. The driving will cause parts of the car to wear out sooner than they should, and put other stresses on the rest of the vehicle. And similarly, when we move, and our posture isn’t in a good place to handle the movement, our bodies experience many wide ranging negatives, like pain, as well.
For you, the symptom just happened to be related to the big postural imbalance you could see easily. What’s harder to see is that your “flattened back” also, limited the ability for your pelvis to move through its normal range of motion, which impacted the hips and their ability to move normally. Also, the increased rounding of the upper back and limited movement at the hips caused your weight distribution to be uneven. The uneven weight distribution caused one leg to have more tightness when you moved. This increased tightness caused one of your shoes to wear in the heel more unevenly than the other. And if you remember, this tightness you couldn’t even feel, but it did show up when we looked at your shoes and how you walked. Which only means that a problem was potentially on the way. If not in your back, then certainly in one of your legs…etc. Like dominos falling, the body creates a chain reaction for every situation. It does this to get the job done.
A posture issue is really only part of the problem when we are talking about producing pain or encouraging health. The entire body, all of its systems, work together as a unit. When one of the systems isn’t behaving like it should, or is under an increased amount of stress, the rest of the body can feel it. It makes adjustments, and compensations, for how to handle even the smallest of situations. This is one of the reasons exercise, or lack of it, impacts health in so many ways. Good posture helps us move efficiently without producing pain from the movement. Faulty posture produces compensated movements and imbalances that cause pain. Pain is one of the best ways our body can send us a message. Unfortunately, we don’t always understand the message.
Along with all the other things we can do to improve our health, correcting our posture, and using good healthy mechanics when we move, may be the two easiest things we can do to feel great everyday. They can be powerful remedies, and thankfully, they are easy to implement. And because the body works as unit, the entire body benefits from posture and healthy mechanics.