The posture assessment I do to aid with pain and injury relief and health cultivation, can easily take more than an hour if we talk about everything that goes into it. And it can be difficult to remember all we will or did talk about. So to help save us time during your appointment and remind you about the details, here’s an overview of basic structurally aligned posture that you can reference when you need to.
I normally say that it’s easiest to remember and realign ourselves into structurally aligned posture, by remembering; feet, hips, shoulders and head. The same way that we build a building is how we properly build our posture. With a proper foundation from the feet, stacking our joints over each other and being tall like we’re being pulled from the top of our head, we can literally pull ourselves together.
I like to point out that we wont always be able to be in good posture all the time. And that being able to slightly improve our posture when we can’t can reap huge dividends in pain and injury prevention. And being able to align ourselves back into good posture (instead of overcompensating with more bad posture) after we’ve been in bad posture, can reap even bigger benefits over time.
Said in perhaps the simplest way possible, structurally aligned posture is;
Feet; even and parallel to each other, about one foot width apart from each other, aligned straight front to back from the back of the heel to the front of the second toe.
Hips; even side to side and front to back, measuring from the bony points on the front of the hips and the body knobs on the back of the hips (anterior superior iliac spine ASIS and posterior superior iliac spine PSIS).
Shoulders; even left to right at the tips of the shoulders (acromion processes) and even from to back from the top of the sternum (jugular notch of the manubrium) and the bony point that sticks out at the bottom back of our neck (spinous process of C7).
Head; jaw slightly down like a boxer with the head aligned with the rest of the body by aligning the auricle of the ear over the side of the shoulder (head of the humerus), over the side of the hip (greater trochanter of the femur), over the side of the ankle (lateral malleoulus).
There is clearly much more that I can continue to talk about though this here is much of what is covered in the assessment. So having this available before and after your visit we can save time during your appointment and make greater use of the massage therapy and keep you improving over time.
Again this is ‘just’ an overview of basic structurally aligned posture and much more will be covered during the assessment. Thank you for choosing me and Body Zen and I look forward to meeting you or working on you again soon!