Maintaining a good posture is vital to your overall health. Unknown to many, a good posture is just as essential as a healthy diet, sleeping comfortably and exercising. It ensures that your body is well poised to undertake daily tasks with more vigour and energy, all the while keeping away fatigue. It’s a core pillar to your overall physical health.
So then, what is posture, and how can one maintain it? Posture is basically the position we hold our bodies in while standing, seating and even when lying down. A good posture ensures that our entire body is symmetrically aligned and the muscle tension is just about right. And maintaining a good posture ought to be fairly easy.
Why Maintain A Good Posture?
Sustaining a good posture is a big part of your health. It ensures that your bones are well aligned with the rest of the body, while the tension in your muscles and ligaments is properly distributed. More so, it keeps the body parts in their rightful positions with minimal stress. A rightful posture thence;
- Enables muscles to coordinate in a more-efficient manner, ensuring the body utilises less energy, thus eliminating muscle fatigue. This allows one to undertake tasks for longer periods with minimal exhaustion.
- Holds the spinal joints in place, which is essential in maintaining a good posture. With less stress on the ligaments, coupled with aligned spinal joints, the possibility of injury is greatly minimised.
- Aids in preventing back and muscular pain, all which are signs of a poorly relaxed body. Thus eliminating a myriad of other ailments that may accompany such issues.
- Decreases the abnormal wearing of joints by keeping them and the bones properly aligned. By ensuring our muscles are used correctly and that no wear or tear occurs, chronic risks like arthritis are duly eliminated.
What Constitutes a Good Posture?
Sustaining a good posture should not be taken to be a massive mental task or a constant bother. In fact, the body is designed to maintain normal posture unconsciously via certain muscles. Although one ought to be aware of their posture to a given degree, outlined below are some tips to help you out.
- Sitting Properly: ensure that your feet are on the floor, or on a footrest rather than hanging mid-air, keep your knees at or below your hip level, maintain relaxed shoulders with your forearms at a parallel position to the ground, and have your backrest support your entire back.
- Standing Properly: ensure that your weight is borne by the soles of your feet, with your feet placed 4-5 inches apart, tuck your stomach in, and have your hands hanging naturally from the body sides. All the while maintaining a straight and tall structure.
- Preferable Lying Position: A major secret to sleeping right is having a good and comfortable mattress. If you prefer a hard one, that’s fairly okay, and if you feel comfy on a softer one, then that’s fine. Always support your head with a pillow such that is at an elevated position to the rest of your body to aid in blood circulation. And avoid lying on your stomach.
