Have you noticed the way mothers always tell their kids not to slouch?  

This is right because not only does excellent posture make you look better, it is also excellent for your bones and overall health. Look at the following reasons necessary to maintain the proper positions when standing, sitting or walking.

‘Why should you have excellent posture?’

Standing, sitting and walking tall does not only benefit your overall look, but it also contributes to your health.  

Try to picture what happens to your bones when you slouch. If you are accustomed to sitting with a curved back, more weight is applied to your spinal cord and this may attribute to problems with your bones when you grow older.  

Poor posture will make you appear shorter than your actual height; so use some effort and time to right your posture and improve your appearance.  

‘Correcting your Stance’

Spending some time to right your posture should not be torture.  

First, you should feel comfortable and relaxed when are in a proper position while sitting, standing or walking. Second, this will make you more alert and have a better disposition.  

Here are some ways you can determine whether your posture is right or not:

When sitting or standing, your spine should be in an nearly straight line – from your head to the bottom part of your back.  

To determine if you have a straight back, you can relax until your back finds its normal upright position. Your chin should be parallel to the floor, and your head aligned with the sky.  

When sitting, your shoulders must be parallel to the floor and not leaning toward either to the left or right.  

When walking, the knees should be in a central position. Keep them relaxed and not locked forward or backwards.  

The most common posture problem is having a slouched chest or back.  

You may have noticed that people with heart problems often have a slouched back. This is because their heart and lungs cannot properly support the chest, resulting in improper posture. To right a slouched or hunched chest, make certain that your chest is slightly uplifted and centered.

The spinal column does not form a perfectly straight line; instead there is a slight curve in the middle. If your back is extremely curved, then you have imperfect posture.  

Try to find a balance; relax and let your back form an nearly straight line.  

Having excellent posture does not only improve your appearance: it also lightens your movements, improves your health, and adds to your total well-being.

Rocking Chair Resources

• Sitting at a Computer All Day – Distress With Your Posture. Choose the Right Office Chair | Office Desk Furniture Store – OfficeDeskFurnitureStore.Com
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• Back lumbar support to use excellent posture | No SubHealth | How to get better health.

Better Posture Better Appearance is a post from: Childrens Rocking Chairs

As a kid, I heard it all the time. “Straighten up!”…I was told when they caught me slouching. Well, “straightening up” is not quite the tight thing in your golf but I’m sure you’re not surprised to learn that your posture is crucial in ensuring consistency and power in your strokes. What’s more when you embody, my “3 Tenets of Fantastic Golf Posture” you’ll delight in a more relaxed, simple comfort through 18 holes of play…

P for Posture – Your swing is a whole body phenomenon involving your feet, your legs, your hips, your trunk, your arms, your shoulders etc. You need excellent flexion, stability, strength, rotation in the hip, knees and torso in order to effectively result in perfect contact between the club and the ball. Proper posture is the framework that brings it all together and it’s crucial to executing a killer swing. Here are some pointers that will help you guarantee that posture is not the weak link in your game.

Start from a relaxed upright posture, with your ears over your shoulders and knees slightly bent. It is very vital during your golf posture to maintain the space between your head and your chest so that you allow simple rotation of your shoulders. Now let’s talk a small “spine angle”.

Spine Angle is the angle that your torso makes with the ground. Bend at the waist while keeping your torso and spine straight. You’ll need an angle of about 30-45 degrees depending on your height and the length of your club. The taller you are and the shorter your club, the more spine angle you’ll need. To complete your posture, simply flex your knees so that your head comes over your feet. You will engage the most powerful muscles of your body – your leg muscles. You are now perfectly set to take a power shot with optimal comfort. And what’s more, because this posture is congruent with the natural bio-mechanics of your body, you can do it over and over through the course of 18 holes without the fatigue, the aches and the pains that come from improper use of your body.

Maintain a Consistent Spine Angle through the full range of your stroke and you will be delighted to produce a fantastic shot. Keep your eye on the ball as you swing and notice how your posture changes. Be sure to keep your head up and maintain your viewing position by appropriate flexion of the hip and knee joints. Keep your spine straight at all costs. Bending the spine causes the chest to collapse and the neck and shoulders to rotate forwards and inwards. This not only distorts the natural arc of your swing but it makes it hard to turn your head through the range of motion required to keep your eye on the ball. The accuracy of your shot goes to hell in a hand basket. So keep your back straight and you’ll maintain a solid base from which you can accurately aim those long drives.

Core Stability and Flexibility is the key, and a small practice on the core stability ball with some simple yoga or Pilates exercises can help you develop these much needed attributes for a fantastic golf swing. Abdominal crunches are an brilliant exercise for developing core strength and endurance. But that’s a subject for another article.

The 3 Tenets – So the next time you’re enjoying a gorgeous, sunny round on the fairway, be sure to practice the “3 Tenets of Fantastic Golf Posture”, keep your back straight, adjust your spine angle by hinging at the hip and most vital, keep it constant through the execution of your swing. You can look forward to hitting, longer, further and with more accuracy. What’s more you’ll feel fantastic at the end of the day with far fewer aches and pains from improper posture.

Rocking Chair Resources

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Golf Posture – Your Foundation for A Fantastic Swing is a post from: Childrens Rocking Chairs

People who regularly ‘surf the net’ probably know all about the minor aches and pains that can arise when using computers for long hours. These back, shoulder and neck pains often seem insignificant to the user. Others subconsciously link the cause to other areas of their life such as an overindulgent exercise session, their workload or even their age, using a ‘quick fix’ pain relief as a solution! Age does not stimulate back pain, repetitively positioning your body in an incorrect position will. Poor posture is the cause, shoulder, neck and lower and upper back pain are the symptons. I’ve noticed that most people set about easing the sympton whilst ignoring the deep rooted cause.

Most of us know that those minor chronic aches and pains can, if ignored, sometimes develop into much more serious issues that can cause a lot of pain and potentially threaten our ability to work. OK, so this isn’t a dramatic risk like working on a fishing boat, down a coal-mine or in the army, but it can still be career-threatening and life-changing.

These problems are only likely to get more common. Computer use is has grown dramatically over the past decade and continues to grow, both in and out of the workplace.

I like to point out the following – when I was growing up, extensive computer use (including gaming) was only for computer geeks, like myself. But with the advent of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and CompetitiveUrge, even cool kids are using computers for very long periods at a time, and from much earlier ages than ever before. In fact, I visited a number nurseries the other day on a mission to find the most suitable for my baby son. I was amazed to find the amount of computers present, and the age of the children using them. I’m not talking about kids preparing for school life, boys and girls as young as 3 navigating PC’s with considerable aplomb!

As impressive as such feats appear,  this also has worrying implications – studies of schoolchildren in Scotland and Scandinavian countries in recent years have shown that they start suffering musculoskeletal pain from an early age. Much of this is correctly concluded as down to carrying heavy schoolbags and poor school furniture, but they’ve also shown clear correlation between the amount of time spent using computers and experiencing pain symptoms.

The 2007 ViewSonic survey of 1500 computer workers reported 71% of respondents suffered back pain at their computer. But when they looked at the figures for 16-24 year olds, that jumped to 80%.

Either these young peoples’ problems will settle down in time – or the fact they’ve been using computers from a young age, together with other social trends such as obesity, mean that posture-related problems are going to significantly increase over time.

I know which my money’s on…

Rocking Chair Resources

• Add some pink bling to your computer with KaBLING Cables – New Tech Gadgets & Electronic Devices | Geek.com
• Golf, Geishas, and Computer Geeks With Guitars – Mission Loc@l — San Francisco Mission District’s News, Food, Art and Events
• Reputation Armor » Top Social Networking Sites 2010

Back Pain Alert – the Increasing Problem of Poor Workplace Posture is a post from: Childrens Rocking Chairs

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Fountain of Youth Summit, which can be found at http://fountainofyouthworldsummit.com. In this excerpt, Danny Dreyer shares on Chi in motion.

The Fountain of Youth World Summit with Danny Dreyer, author of ChiWalking and ChiRunning.

Kevin: Let talk a small about how Chi works in motion. I reckon that’s a pretty cool concept and how if you are being supported on your spine, how everything else kind of rotates around that.

Danny: Yeah, now what we do, in walking and running, we have your whole weight supported by your spine, and your alignment basically; we call it your column.

Kevin: OK.

Danny: Once you can practice that every time you foot comes down, your weight is supported by your column, then we have runners and walkers both choke their entire body forward just slightly. This engages the pull of gravity. It’s like if you watch small kids run or small kid walk, they always lead with their upper body.

Kevin: Oh Yeah.

Danny: Yeah. Because they are falling, controlled fall and half the time the fall isn’t controlled [laughter] That is why we all got stitches in our chins.

Kevin: [laughs]

Danny: Abrasions in our elbows, is that as kids, we learnt how to use the pull of gravity to propel ourselves, you know, kids don’t have strong legs, so they have to use this balance, this forward balance to do it, to go around, and so once your body is aligned and you allow it to just slightly fall forward, gravity takes over to pull you forward, then your job is just to allow your body, your arms, your legs to rotate around the central axis and really relax your arms and legs so that they are not pouncing anywhere. And so if gravity is your proportion, then your legs aren’t.

Kevin: That is an fascinating point.

Danny: Your legs are just your support system, they are not your propelsion system which is a huge mistake a lot of runners make and that is why people, you know, hit the wall and get hammered quads in races and even hikers and walkers, you know, their legs feel it because their legs are working too hard.

Kevin: OK, that’s an fascinating point.

Danny: So then when you can go forward, let gravity do the work of propelling you, then your job is just to relax everything else so that gravity can do its job. If you are blocking, if you holding tension in your shoulders, or tension in your hips and a lot of people have tension in their ankles even, anywhere you hold tension it’s going to restrict the flow of your mobility, period. There is now way around that.

Kevin: OK.

Danny: You hold tension, you are not going to swing your arms or go your body as easily. So this is a really – it’s kind of like a walking or running relaxation exercise.

Kevin: OK.

Danny: And there are so many people that are running and walking come back with sore muscles and sore muscles means that you are holding it tight. Anytime you feel pain that means that Chi is not flowing through that and that’s why Mai Tai-chi master will tell you.

Kevin: Over and over again.

Danny: While you are standing there. If you feel pain it’s because you are not relaxed at some point.

Kevin: That’s a whole new paradigm of running. So you are not using your legs as propelsion, but you are really, what, just lifting them?

Danny: Yeah. You are just picking up your feet to keep up with your forward fall.

Kevin: Wow.

Danny: Yeah. Just so you don’t trip. [laughs] That’s about all you are doing. But your legs, it’s picking up your feet. You know, you can imagine, if I weigh 140 pounds and I am running a marathon or walking a marathon, if I’m propelling myself, my legs, my quads, my curves, everything is pushing me around all day.

Kevin: Right.

Danny: If I run three and a half hour marathon or walk six hour marathon, my legs are doing a lot of work, propelling 140 pounds forward. If I am falling forward, then my core muscles, because I am leveling my pelvis, I’m using all these huge strong muscles to do what; to pick up my feet, that’s a huge difference is muscle usage.

Kevin: Right, then those muscles are toned much more efficiently for that type of exercise.

Danny: Yeah, you know, I tell people the body is set up in a very Marxist way, in that each body part contributes to its ability. So if you have; how huge are the muscles in your lower leg as opposed to how huge are your larger core muscles.

Kevin: Right.

Danny: So your lower leg shouldn’t be doing much work at all and your toes certainly shouldn’t be doing much either and if you push yourself forward walking or running and the last part of your body to leave the ground is your toes, at some point that means that your entire body weight is resting on you’re a very tiny appendage.

Kevin: Sure.

Danny: And that’s why people get bunions, that’s why they get stress breaks.It’s over use of those small tiny places in your legs that really shouldn’t be working that hard.

Kevin: Right. I reckon you’ve just touched on some of the injuries that people have. Let’s talk about how people normally walk without this information, walk and run and what are some of the things that are happening as they are moving forward.

Danny: OK, well, when people normally walk it starts when people normally stand, which I mentioned earlier, when people normally stand their hips are always forward. So when they walk, there hips are a small forward. That means that they are leading with their legs. Now I would say that if you walked out on the street right now and looked at people walking by, I would say 95 percent of them you would see lock their legs in front. They throw it, they kick their foot in front of them; they lock their leg, and come down on their heel.

Kevin: Got you.

Danny: And you would see that their heel lands in front of their shoulders and in front of their hips. So if you are moving down the road, now this is Tai-chi in action and this is how injuries happen at the same time. If you are walking down the road, but, quick you are walking, that’s the same as having a force coming at you because you are moving across the road, but you have to consider there is a road coming at you. And how do you want to deal with that force coming at you, right? In Tai-chi it’s a martial art and the whole training is about this, how do you co-operate with the force. Someone is throwing a punch at me the last thing I want to do is throwing a punch at them at the same time. I want to absorb there punch or re-direct it, OK. So if there is a force called the road coming at you, the last thing you want to do is stick your leg out into it.

Kevin: Sure.

Danny: Because that force is going to travel either into your heel give you a plantar fasciaitis or heel bruises, or it’s going to go up into your knee and get you knee problems, it’s going to go into your IT bands or your hip joint or your lower back, wherever your weak spot is you walk far enough you will feel it. OK. That’s if you place your foot out in front of you. So it’s like every step you take you are putting the brakes on.

Kevin: Wow.

Danny: That is a repetitive motion injury, you know, there’s an impact, every time you come down moving a long the road with you leg out in front of you. OK. So there is a lot of injuries that can happen from leading with your leg as I call it. That is striking on the back of your heel. So what I have people do is take this posture stand and have them tilt their upper body just slightly forward bending at the hips not at the waist.

Kevin: OK.

Danny: Slightly forward so that as they are walking along, their hips are always directly over that lead leg when it comes down on the ground.

Kevin: OK. And how do you make that not feel awkward?

Danny: I’ll tell you the truth, it doesn’t feel awkward, it just feels really different.

Kevin: OK. [laughs]

Danny: You’ve watched a race walker walk.

Kevin: Yeah!

Danny: And a regular walker walk, the race walker will have a shorter stride.

Kevin: Yeah!

Danny: Now that’s amusing because those guys are cruising along at a seven and a half minute pace.

Kevin: Yeah! Quicker that a lot of you can run.

Danny: Quicker than a lot of people can run. But their stride is very small. They just increase their turnover.

Kevin: OK.

Danny: To go quicker. Because if you over stretch your legs, especially if you are a race walker, you’re going to, you know, you’re going to stress out your ligaments and tendons and pull muscles and everything like that. So, as a race walker goes quicker they don’t increase their stride length. And it’s a huge mistake that a lot of walkers make as they walk and power walking and that means they’ve got to have a lot of practice years and years ago and so people are taking these huge longer strides, thinking that they are, you know, really burning a lot of calories. Well they were but they all finished up in the therapy office. [laughs]

Kevin: Right.

Danny: There knees are gone, the hips are gone and everything else. So I would suggest for people that in order to reduce injury to your legs and impact to your legs, um, to shorten your stride and that also allows you to stay more over your feet, over your legs. Because then as your foot comes down on the ground it gets swept behind you, rather than stopping your forward momentum in front of you. See what I mean?

Kevin: Um!

Danny: I’m not having people reach out in front with their legs. They are reaching with their upper body, not their lower body.

Kevin: And that’s with the lean.

Danny: That’s the lean, that’s the lean for running and walking. With walkers you don’t have to lean quite as much.

Kevin: OK. But we are turning into running. And that’s the clean thing about this. Is it right that once you get the form of the walking you can turn this into running very easily?

Danny: It’s a fantastic step up for walkers. Fantastic step up, because a lot of people are either coming back from injury or just now getting started on the fitness program and want to get out moving and they look at runners and they go, “Oh, there’s no way! You know, forget it!” But if they can learn to be a real efficient walker and fluid and smooth along the ground they start loving their walking so much, that they just start going, “Well you know, I reckon I really could run! Because the quicker I walk the simpler it is to really jog”. [laughs]

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Chi in Motion, Techniques For Walking, Posture and Health is a post from: Childrens Rocking Chairs

It sounds simple to say but your posture determines other people’s perceptions of you. ‘Don’t slouch’. I must have heard it a thousand times as a kid but it wasn’t until later in life that I realised just how vital those words were. And what is vital is not just standing up straight, but how each part of the body relates to others.

I’m sure that most people know the kid’s song where the shoulder bone is connected to your back bone, but how many of us really take the message to heart? Of course we know that as far as the skeleton goes it’s accurate; but that really isn’t the point. A human body is a set of interrelated components and a change in one part of the body will affect others. So it makes sense that your posture will affect the way that your stomach appears, and the underlying strength in your muscles will naturally affect the way that you stand.

Stand up and sit up straight!
So the initial step to improving the way your stomach looks is to stand and sit straight. This stretches your back muscles and lengthens your stomach lines but it also has other effects. A decent posture will strengthen your back, strengthen your ‘girdle’ – the circle of muscles around your midriff – and improve your health. Just sitting and standing up straighter strengthen’s your abdominal muscles giving a firmer, more toned appearance. And lastly, a decent posture makes it more likely that the blood flow, to all parts of your body including your legs and back – each of which are integral to many abdominal and stomach exercises – and can add years to your life.

Back Extension
Done properly even a moderate amount of exercise can improve your posture, and completing back extensions is an ideal way to achieve this. To start this you need to lie on the floor face down, ideally on a mat or a towel. With arms by your side palms up use your back muscles to lift your upper body from teh floor until your back is arched. Hold the contraction briefly then release and slowly lower your upper body back to the floor. Repeat this as a full set.

Then, still lying on the floor but face up this time straighten your arms above your head until they are fully extended. Then using your stomach and back muscles lift both legs off the floor at the same time. Hold your legs a few inches from the floor for a few seconds then lower them slowly.

Carrying out these two exercises will help you to strengthen your back muscles, enhance your abdominal muscles and straighten your posture. They are brilliant simple steps to help rid yourself of an unwanted belly.

As with all exercise routines make sure that you consult a medical professional before you start and always stretch and warm up fully to avoid injury.

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Simple Way To Reduce Your Belly – Improve Your Posture is a post from: Childrens Rocking Chairs