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NancyLebovitz comments on Open thread, February 15-28, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: David_Gerard 15 February 2013 11:17PM

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Comment author: D_Malik 19 February 2013 08:12:22AM *  1 point [-]

I've been trying to correct my posture lately. Anyone have thoughts or advice on this?

Some things:

  • Advice from reddit; if you spend lots of time hunched over books or computers, this looks useful and here are pictures of stretches.

  • You can buy posture braces for like $15-$50. I couldn't find anything useful about their efficacy in my 5 minutes of searching, other than someone credible-sounding saying that they'd weaken your posture muscles (sounds reasonable) and one should thus do stretches instead.

  • Searching a certain blog, I found this which says that sitting at a 135-degree angle is better than sitting straight, and both are better than slouching. Elsewhere on the internet, some qualified person said that standing is better than all three.

  • At the moment I'm not sure that good-looking posture is healthier, but I'd guess it's worth it anyway because of signalling benefits. My current best guess for how to improve things is to use a standing desk and to give some form of reinforcement when I notice and correct my posture. And to sit as little as possible, and not in chairs. I may incorporate stretching, but only a little and in parallel with another activity because 15 minutes a day for like 3 months is a lot of time.

I could spend more time trying to figure this out, but I suspect others here might have already done that. If so, I'd be super happy if you'd post your conclusions, even if you don't take the time to say how you came to them.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 19 February 2013 06:14:20PM *  3 points [-]

Do not try to consciously correct your posture. You don't know enough. Some evidence-- I tried it, and just gave myself backaches. I know other people who tried to correct their posture, and the results didn't seem to be a long run improvement.

Edited to add: I didn't mean that you personally don't know enough to correct your posture consciously, I meant that no one does. Bodies' ability to organize themselves well for movement is an ancient ability which involves fast, subtle changes to a complex system. It's not the kind of thing that your conscious mind is good at-- it's an ability that your body (including your brain) shares with small children and a lot of not-particularly-bright animals.

From A Tai Chi Imagery Workbook by Mellish:

Conscious muscular effort to straighten the spine, or alter its shape in some obvious way, generally recruits the long muscles on either side of the spine (the erector spinalis group). These muscles are strong, but because they run almost the whole length of the spine, they exercise only a very coarse control over its carriage.

He goes on to explain that the muscles which are appropriate for supporting and moving the spine are the multifidi, small muscles which only span one to three vertebrae, and aren't very available for direct conscious control.

A lot of back problems are the result of weak (too much support from larger muscles) or ignored (too little movement) multifidi.

He recommends working with various images, but says that the technique is to keep images in mind without actively trying to straighten your spine.

Comment author: D_Malik 20 February 2013 01:47:54AM 0 points [-]

Thanks for the info, this looks really useful!

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 20 February 2013 10:44:30PM 1 point [-]

Mellish also said that serious study of tai chi was very good for his posture, and gave him tools for recovery when his posture deteriorates from too much time at the computer.