Desk job aches and pains

Another day at the office brings you home to a long night of fighting shoulder, lower back and head aches.  You’ve been sitting in front of your computer all day long and now you feel that your body is paying the price for your hard work.  At first you were okay – you didn’t feel the effects of sitting in front of the computer quite so acutely.

But lately you’ve noticed that it’s a little harder to straighten up after you’ve been focused on your computer screen.  You think  “Sit up!   Remember what I was taught in grade school about getting my shoulders back, spine straight.  No problem!”   Then next thing you know, your head is craned forward, your shoulders are slumped and your back is curled.  The problem is, when you get focused you tend to forget what’s happening with your body.  Take a moment now as you read this to check in to see what is going on with your posture.  If you’re sitting up straight, good job!

Some solutions that you may have tried are a new office chair, a new desk, an ergonomic keyboard, standing up while working, or sitting on an exercise ball.  Inevitably you’ll find that you’re right back in the same position that you started in:  slumped over while straining to see what’s on your computer screen .

While some of these solutions are important to keep your posture, none of these quick fixes tend to get to the real reason that these changes don’t work:  you’ve trained your body over time to repeat patterns of sitting in positions that seem comfortable at the time, but over the long term can become quite painful.

There are a few steps keys to achieving a balanced posture as well as remembering to keep that posture once you become focused on what’s in front of you.

• First, having an understanding of how your muscles work together to keep you in correct posture will help you to remember to be more mindful about how you are sitting.  Taking stock of your postural patterns and how you can correct them will help you to understand what it feels like in your muscles when you sit or stand in a way that is more balanced.
• Second, there are easy tricks, stretches and exercises that can retrain your body to learn to feel comfortable with a more balanced posture.
• Third, receiving regular bodywork will help your muscles become healthier and also help to work out the places that have become chronically shortened or lengthened due to a sustained postural pattern.

Amanda has worked on hundreds of people who suffer from pain from sitting in front of the computer.  She has a detailed understanding of the musculature that is affected by posture that isn’t balanced.  She’s dedicated to the study of anatomy and kinesiology, as well as researching potential problems that often arise in most people who work on computers.  She has a passion for understanding muscles and strives to educate her clients to further their understanding of what is really going on with their body.