Relive Low Back Pain…Fix Your Posture Continued!
Since posture plays such an important role in low back pain, I’m going to devote another post to this subject. More specifically, I’ll be giving you the goods on how to fix your posture starting from your pelvis.
Or as one of my professors, Dr. David Magee, used to call it: “The Great House.”
Why is the pelvis so important?
Why should you care about your pelvis when it’s your low back that’s causing you all the problems?
How does fixing your pelvis, fix your bad back?
If we were sitting in a lecture theatre, and I asked who had heard of the term “core”, I can guarantee everyone’s hand would’ve shot up, or at the very least, everyone would have murmured the answer to themselves under their breath.
My friends, your pelvis posture is directly related to how those famous (and not so famous) muscles of the core function to keep you healthy and at your best. Pain free performance. Living life like you want to. Living life like you deserve to.
You see, the pelvis is where the spine attaches. It’s where the legs attach. It’s where all sorts of muscles and connective tissue and fascia all attach. It’s where energy transfer takes place.
It’s kind of a big deal.
He's also kind of a big deal
This is where great athletes get their power, their precision and, well, their athleticism. This is also where those low back pain sufferers, or the soon-to-be low back pain sufferers, start down that slippery slope of aches and pains.
Here’s the quick lesson.
If you’re sitting down right now while reading this, have a look and see how you’re actually sitting.
Is your low back curved into a slouch? Are you sitting on the “sit bones” in your butt? Or are you in the more common habit of sitting on your sacrum (the bone just above where your butt crack begins)?
If you’re in the latter category, it’s time to change.
ASAP.
This all comes back to those negative adaptive changes. In this position you’ll be tightening and shortening your hip flexors and your spinal erectors. You’ll also be turning off your glutes, those very important bum muscles that are an integral part of your core. Not to mention the weakening of those equally important structures on the front, the abdominals.
Since the body is so interconnected, weakness, tightness, or any other deviation from the ideals in one part of the body will lead to compensation at another. And this is how your pelvis posture is related to your low back pain. Faults in your pelvis become faults through your low back. Something’s got to give at some point.
Now you want to know how to fix your pelvis posture in sitting.
Fair enough.
Here’s the quick and dirty:
- Actually sit on your sit bones, not on your poor sacrum.
- Maintain that natural curve in your low back (avoid the slouch!).
- Elongate upwards through your spine (think tall).
- CHANGE YOUR POSTURE OFTEN!
Remember, if you take anything away from my blurb on posture, it’s this:
The best posture is the one that keeps changing.
Now go out and practice your postures. You’ve been learning bad habits since kindergarten, start unlearning them!
Yours in ever-changing postures,
Dev Chengkalath
