First, avoid sitting on your tailbone. Your tailbone is the bottom-most bone in your spine and when you sit on it for long periods of time, it can cause soreness, stiffness and even pain. Remember that you should be sitting squarely on your buttocks. The two bones that should bear the most weight are your sit bones, which are part of your hip bone covered by your butt muscle. They are much better equipped to take on the weight of your body than your tailbone is. Make sure that you are sitting squarely and that you don’t lean too far backwards or too far forward.

Look at where your shoulders are right now, as you read these words. Are they hunched forward? Chances are good that if you are working at a computer or work station that your shoulders are curled forward and in. This will cause tension in your shoulders and it will have a regular impact on the way that you look and feel. Widen your shoulders and pull them back. It might be a bit of a strange feeling, but in a little bit of time, this will start to feel quite normal.  Do some exercises to loosen up your rounded shoulders posture.

Do you crane your neck? This is something that happens fairly regularly when you need to hunch over and peer at your screen. This will cause tension and strain in the back of your neck. One quick fix for this is to change the orientation of your computer screen. For instance, if you have a flat screen computer monitor that you need to keep your chin tucked down to read, it might be time for you to put the screen up on a sand.  Figure out where your correct neck posture is.

Is your lower back rounded? When you are sitting in a hard chair, one that has the back at a stiff 90 degree angle from the seat, you might find that your lower back is rounding back; it is because your entire back wants support and your body is bending forward slightly to get it. Get a good ergonomic chair and make sure that your seat is tilted slightly forward.

Take a moment to consider what your options are going to be when you want to get rid of bad sitting posture for good; it really is as simple as making a few straight forward changes.  To really improve your posture, try a posture improvement exercise program.  They’re quick and easy!

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Why? Simply because the constant straining of the back and especially neck muscles can lead to a lot of more serious things. This can lead to a condition called postural stress, which is considered as a silent killer of a person’s spinal health. With this, you can be more susceptible to a number of worse ligament pains that can also lead to arthritis and deformation of the spine that can be a whole lot troublesome as you age. This is why you need to get started developing the proper neck posture, as delaying such will only cause more hassle.

How you can correct your posture to avoid further neck pains

You can start by finding the correct neck posture. As the goal of having a proper posture is to let the muscles supporting the head relax through balancing the head on a sturdy neck to avoid neck pains, you have to first find how to balance and relax the neck muscles. Here are some steps to do this:

• Begin with stretching the neck muscles by slightly tucking your chin. You can know whether you’re doing this correctly if you feel an imaginary pull on the top of your head, which, in turn, relaxes and straightens your back.
• Relax your shoulders; let them drift down more to the back.
• Then, pull your head horizontally backwards, letting your ears get positioned over the shoulders.
• While in this position, relax your neck muscles more.
• You can also try this standing up, but with your knees bent, so you can focus more on your neck.

After this, you are now ready to figure out how you could achieve that proper neck posture as your neck is still feeling relaxed, and any strain could be easily felt by the muscles. When you have found that proper posture, all you need to do now is to maintain it. However, this might not be an easy feat, since you would constantly have to maintain body awareness and prevent it from slouching or hunching. Do not worry though, with practice, you’ll easily get used to being in the right posture.

One way to pull this off is by trying the classic book example. Every once in a while, balancing a book on top of your head, while eating or reading another book, can train you maintain that proper posture that can help you avoid neck and back pains.  You can also do some neck posture exercises to relieve any tension you have.

These mentioned are just some examples how you can improve your posture. If you want to know more about this topic, you can always contact a professional or research more on the web or on this blog, just remember to not hunch or slouch while at it!

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• Body Awareness Exercises for Well-being

The ability to maintain good posture is not always easy. When you work all day at a desk, the ability to maintain good office chair posture is made even more difficult. Simply put, our bodies were not intended to spend 8 to 12 hours in a seated position. This wreaks a great deal of havoc on the body and slowly weakens and disrupts proper posture. If your posture is poor then it may be an indication of future back issues. A good, relaxed, upright posture is vitally important to good health.

Body awareness refers to a sense of your own feelings, especially of muscle tension, positioning of the bones, breathing, pains, and emotions. You call it into play anytime you need to make a complex movement.  What we would like to cultivate is a heightened sense of what your body is telling you.  By using body awareness, you can improve posture exercises by doing them more consciously.

Here are some of the benefits of body awareness:

• Reduced injury, since you can stop before it hurts
• Better balance
• More good feelings, since you are trained to pay attention to them
• Relaxation
• More effective exercises

Let’s go into that last one in more detail.  Learning is increased when you focus deeply on what you are doing.  That means that you will learn the exercise faster, your muscles will learn better what they will need to do, and they will respond accordingly.  This works for strengthening and stretching muscles, especially with back exercises.

You will learn when to relax muscles.  You can identify what muscles are tense, how your movements can cause chronic tension, and focusing on a tense muscle tends to relax it.  In other words, you are learning how to consciously relax your muscles.  Try this when you are doing the cat pose yoga exercise.

In short, I would estimate that focusing on what you are feeling in your body while you do any exercises can double their effectiveness.  This especially counts when trying to improve posture exercises.  Good posture requires so much coordination of so many different muscles.  Having more brain power devoted to it can only be a good thing.  While you are exercising, listen to your body.  It is giving you messages that you tend to ignore.  Don’t ignore them.  Listen to them like you listen to wonderful music, or like you would listen to someone trying to give you an important message.  Quiet your mind, listen, and let their meaning stir up in your mind.

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Most of Tai Chi is actually just training your mind to pay attention to every detail of your anatomy.  In fact, the simplest form of Chi Kung (Chinese energy exercises) asks the practitioner simply to stand there and focus his or her mind on any uncomfortable points in the body.  The mere act of focusing consciousness on the afflicted area can free up tension and alleviate a whole host of problems.

It also has the great benefit of enhancing all other forms of physical exercise.  Mindlessly performing exercises can lead to doing them without proper form.  Any personal trainer, weight lifter, or bodybuilder will tell you how important proper form is to every exercise.  Without good form, you increase the risk of injury and may not target the appropriate muscles.  Body awareness will be your guide to the correct movements of your body and can improve posture exercises.

In addition, body awareness can let you know about minor pains before they become chronic.  It’s a preventative step that over time can reduce your pain dramatically.  When you are sitting or standing, just notice any pain that you might be feeling, and develop the habit of experimenting with different postures.  A simple way to find a good office chair posture is to rock slowly forward and back.  You are looking for the position that is as vertical as possible.  Keep rocking, each time narrowing the range until you finally stop at the perfect vertical posture. Taking advantage of these will allow you to have better posture throughout the day, less back and tailbone pain, and alleviate a lot of that stress you carry.

The other secret is this: most pain, tension, tingling, or discomfort you feel in your body is actually a message your body is trying to send you.  I can’t decode the message for you, but as you listen your ability to understand will increase. A sore tailbone may be screaming “please, stop sitting on me”.  Tense shoulders may be saying “hey, man, take a break!”.  It’s up to you to figure out what it means.  It can be a joy to you and your body when you finally start listening.

While it’s useful to be mindful in every position you find yourself in (such as sitting at the computer), there are times when you want to practice mindfulness itself, without the distraction of any other tasks.  That kind of body awareness exercise can be done from any position, as long as you can mostly relax.  That means lying on your back, standing in a relaxed way, or sitting upright.  Just focus your attention and listen to your body.  Do it for as long as you would like.  The longer the better, though listen to your body to know that as well.

Performing these exercises daily is best.  One simple way to get started is to lie on your back in bed when you are ready to go to sleep.  Close your eyes and send your awareness to the areas of your body that tingle or seem tense.  Leave the awareness there and just listen to it.  Determine the size and shape of the area, and appreciate the complexity of the signal it is emitting.  It is best to stay with a single area until the feeling disappears.  Then move on to another area.  Do this until you fall asleep.  It might help you get to sleep faster, since it is very relaxing.

I hope you enjoy the benefits of body awareness exercises as much as I do!  Please take these exercises and let their gift into your life.

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