I recommend Ageless Spine, Lasting Health-- it's got a very sensible feedback system for improving posture and movement. The part I remember is moving your pelvis forward and backward and noticing what position makes your breathing easiest. This is an excellent feedback system for improvement. Possibly TMI, but I found it helped a lot to prevent constipation, something I never would have thought was a postural issue.
However, the author notes that this doesn't work for everyone, and at that point she recommends getting a teacher. I give a lot of credit to people who admit that their advice doesn't work for everyone.
She's got an updated version, but I don't know how different it is.
Uncommon Sensing](http://www.uncommonsensing.com/ offering one free Feldenkrais exercise (about forty minutes) per month. Not only are they good exercises (for the nervous system-- they aren't for challenging strength or endurance), but the one-a-month schedule eliminates the impediment of having to choose an exercise from the many available. One of them increased my hip mobility enough so that getting up on a bar stool became easy-- I'm very short, and this is the first that bar stools haven't been an annoyance.
Thanks for asking.
Thanks for the update! :)
This is just a quick example of why it's always good to check the source material.
Cracked ran an article today about several things people are doing wrong, and the number one thing they listed was sitting. According to a an experiment they cite, one researcher tested disk movement for people slouching, sitting up straight, and leaning back at a 135˚ angle. They found that leaning back does the least damage to the spine.
Interested, I clicked on their link which sent me to this article from MSNBC, which among other things, says:
With this, I was considered making a lifestyle change to slouching when using the computer, as leaning back isn't usually an option for serious work. But, I still wanted to read more about the experiment.
Unfortunately, they didn't have the link to the actual paper. A bit of googling led me to an article that actually had the experiment's methodology, which says that slouching was actually the worst position!
It maintained that leaning back is best, but according to the results the 90˚ angle isn't that bad, especially since most of the other articles I found were implying that the advice to sit up straight is wrong. Considering that people are usually slouching when the advice is given, sitting up is still an improvement. This is especially true at places like dinner tables, where leaning back as suggested isn't really an option.
Moral of the story: Do research before changing personal habits, regardless of where the information comes from.
Note: Afterwards, I did a bit more googling to see which other news sources carried this story incorrectly. The most prominent misinformation came from a Fox News article, who carried the following headline: