What is Healthy Posture?

Healthy posture is when your skull, rib cage and pelvis are in alignment with each other in all three planes of motion. Healthy posture restores healthy loading through the vertebral bodies and unloads the facet joints.  This allows for equal transfer of load, maximum balance and movement control.

Movement from healthy posture restores healthy loading through the spine as well as symmetrical loading through the shoulders, hips and knees. For this reason, we refer to healthy posture as “neutral spine alignment.”

Technology has us spending a majority of each day in collapsed posture. When the musculoskeletal system starts showing signs of mechanical overload, its likely been subjected to decades of collapsed posture. It takes 6 weeks to condition yourself to perform basic home and work tasks from healthy posture. Another 6 weeks to condition yourself to perform fitness, sport and recreational activities.

You cannot restore healthy posture with a few exercises or stretches. It takes a comprehensive program that retrains the nervous system. There is a functional mobility phase that must be completed, then a neutral spine conditioning phase before functional strengthening should be initiated. We created a language to help clients perform every exercise prescribed from neutral spine alignment.

4 Principles of Neutral Spine Alignment:

1. Chest Lift_®

You cannot unload the neck from a collapsed posture.  You must “Stack the Upper Back_™“.  This extends the upper thoracic spine and provides a strong support for the lower cervical spine.  We refer to this as a Chest Lift_®.  

2. Head Nod_®

Chest Lift_® posture restores vertebral body loading in the the lower cervical spine which allows you to unload the upper cervical spine through a Head Nod_®.  Notice I did not use the term “chin tuck”.  That is an hyperbolic way of describing what is happening.  If you are in Chest Lift posture, then all that is needed to position the skull on its neutral position on C1 is a subtle head nod. 

3. Pelvic Curl_®

Now that you rib cage and skull are in alignment, we must rotate the pelvis underneath the rib cage to get the lumbar spine in neutral alignment. A Pelvic Curl_® consists of contracting the lower abdominals to suspend the pelvis in its neutral position. Similar to how a Head Nod_® unloads the cervical spine, a Pelvic Curl_® restore vertebral body loading through the lumbar spine. This restores symmetrical load transfer through the low back.

4. Inward Spiral_®

A Pelvic Curl_® liberates the hip socket off the femoral head. The femurs are now able to internally rotate into the center of the hip socket via an Inward Spiral_®. This restores symmetrical loading through the ankles, knees and hips. An Inward Spiral_® also helps the lower abdominals keep the pelvis suspended in its neutral position.

Summary:

The application of these 4 movement principles allows you to achieve healthy posture (aka neutral spine alignment). Exercises performed from healthy posture is referred to as neutral spine conditioning. PT on Demand uses this and a few more physical wellness tricks to help you treat the foundation of your musculoskeletal pain.