Stand tall: Good posture is good for you
By Cindy Sutter
Published in Boulder Daily Camera, November 9, 2007.
http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_13091432?IADID
Susan Roth frequently experiences a surprising role reversal with her children. They tell her to sit up straight, especially at mealtime.
"They police us," Roth says of two of her children, Marin and Kellan. "They'll let us know when we're not doing something right. They'll say 'Mama, you can't digest very well when you're sitting like that.'"
The two got their posture awareness at the Running River School in Lafayette, a school that devotes special attention to body awareness, experiential learning and connection to nature. Teaching children good posture is an important part of the school's emphasis, says Founder and Director Nancy Monson.
"When you have an aligned posture, everything is open, free and loose. You feel better. You think better. You can do more things," she says.
In service of that idea, the school is holding a public lecture on children's posture and body awareness on Thursday.
How does posture affect health?
Deborah Saint-Phard, a physiatrist at CU Sports Medicine, says the most common complaints among the people she sees are back, neck and shoulder pain, all of which can relate to posture.
"Posture is all I talk about," she says. "It's very important."
Saint-Phard says good posture is crucial for optimal performance in sports.
"Oftentimes, I'll walk into a room and see teenage kids slumped over, with rounded shoulders and head slumped over. They'll have shoulder pains (when they) play tennis," she says.
Saint-Phard says poor posture is exacerbated by weak back muscles that are elongated and stretched out. Sometimes workouts can tighten the front of body muscles such as pectorals while stretching the back muscles between the shoulder blades. To correct that posture a person should stretch the front muscles and strengthen the back, she says.
And then there's the social aspect.
"Posture's a huge deal from a first impression standpoint. I interview residents, med students trying to present themselves professionally. Posture tells you more about someone than they may want to be telling," Saint-Phard says.
She says children can learn good posture in a positive way.
"I counsel my (5-year-old daughter): 'Sit up proud. Be proud of who you are.'" she says.
Douglas Wisoff, a Boulder physical therapist who will be one of the lecturers at the Running River event, says posture also can affect breathing.
"If your shoulders are rounded and chest back, the result is that the chest cavity is smaller. ... You're talking about ventilation being quite a bit less. Then you have ... lower energy levels. Because your ventilation is so compromised, you get used to those lower energy levels. It has (an effect on) clarity, ability to focus, ability to concentrate, ability to excel in sports."
Wisoff says stress can be a big contributor to poor posture.
"That's a nice expression, you fold under stress. Folding is a physical thing, not just a mental thing," he says.
Reducing stress and ramping up physical activity can both help improve posture, he says. For those with very poor posture, he suggests seeing a professional for advice.
"The mistake that people make is that they force themselves into a new position, rather than relax into a new position," he says. "(Improving posture) might require some good instruction. Forcing it creates that very tight military posture that you see. Basically you lay a whole new set of tensions on top of your old tensions. In the future, that causes problems."
Monson says the idea of relaxing into good posture is one the school promotes. Every day after outdoor play, children sit quietly in a circle with a candle.
"We do this for five minutes," she says. "It's a kind of meditation. We call it stillness. It's a transition point between recess and afternoon learning. We teach the kids how to sit up straight so that it feels good. Then the kids who have been doing it for a long time start to teach the younger kids to do it. They say, 'When I first started doing it, I was tired. It wasn't easy.'"
That encourages the younger ones to stick with it, she says. A key is teaching children what good posture feels like, Monson says.
"How does it feel when you're writing to sit up straight? How does it feel when you're reading to sit up straight? ... You gently teach them body sense."
Roth believes that having good body awareness and posture can have spillover benefits in other areas of life. Her daughter Marin, now in sixth grade, has developed from a somewhat shy child to a confident one.
"She has built this amazing self-strength and self-awareness," Roth says. "They work on body awareness as a building block for emotional awareness."
In the meantime, Marin and her younger brother Kellan, will be keeping Roth, her husband and the family's three younger children in line.
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