Posture Exercises

There are many forms of posture exercises. Fundamentally, posture exercises serve to strengthen and lengthen the necessary muscles and fascia or connective tissues that support your body and form your posture. Posture exercise also serve to accustom these muscles to adopting a particular position, thereby over time ingraining good posture, and making it a natural rather than a consciously adopted position.  

If you suffer from a specific condition, posture exercises serve to correct the misalignments your body has made as a result of that condition, for example hunching forward or slouching. In this case, posture exercises also serve to strengthen muscles that have been weakened by prolonged misuse or lack of use. 

Since exercises are so dependent on your personal situation, they are often only useful after certain assessments of your body and posture have taken place. A certified Rolfer will usually perform this assessment in the first Rolfing session and will tailor these posture exercises specifically to your body, thus maximizing their effectiveness when integrated after the diagnostic Rolfing sessions. 

Due to the inherent uniqueness of the human body there is unfortunately no single posture exercise that can be prescribed to cater across the board. In fact, prescribing a single posture exercise for everyone can do more harm than good as it my exacerbate underlying conditions that have not been taken into account.  

As you might have read under the Good Posture link, different posture, and therefore different postural exercises, are needed for each different postural types and to treat different injuries. If you have certain injuries, for example back pain or lower back issues, you will need to do specific posture exercises that are tailored for your specific case. Pre-existing injuries will affect an individual’s posture and hence will affect the type of posture exercises prescribed.

These posture exercises can involve in different areas of your body such as your upper back, lower back, hamstrings, the gluteals itself. 

Properly prescribed posture exercises that are customized to your specific needs can provide more than mere transitory relief. By removing the stresses on your body and patterning your body after a new, healthy posture, back pain, tension and even headaches can be relieved. 

Like most people, you probably don’t mind putting in some effort to solve these problems that bother you but you want to know that these solutions won’t waste your time, and that they will be something you can realistically do on your own. The posture exercises that your Rolfing practitioner will prescribe for you will fulfill both of the above.

                                                                 Posture Exercises