I am going briefly revisit a topic that I wrote about a few months ago. On Friday afternoon, I got in the elevator to leave my clinic and head home for a relaxing weekend. On the way down from my 10th floor office, a few other people joined me. All three had their heads down and shoulders rounded forward so that they could attend to the task on their small screens and type aways on the tiny buttons with their thumbs. "It's no wonder I see so many people come into my clinic with non-traumatic neck and shoulder pain," I thought.
Odds are that at least two of those three people just finished working at a desk for 8-9 hours, where they likely held that same forward head, forward shoulder carriage posture. So I have a suggestion for all of you that hopefully you'll find helpful, on a couple of levels. Rather than continue to stay "plugged in" for that brief ride on an elevator or escalator or anywhere else for that matter, why not give yourself a mental and physical break? Instead of craning to take in the latest piece of digital information that's continually bombarding us (and which I readily acknowledge is here to stay), take a moment to lift your head up, pull your shoulders back, and just breath. I know this seems like such a small and insignificant gesture, but as I always tell my patients, good posture starts with awareness.
Emails, texts, videos, facebook posts, and blogs will always beckon. But don't allow your mind and body to be consumed by them. We can still be up-to-the-minute informed without having to endure physical pain if we just take a minute for ourselves.
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