Blog

Taro Iwamoto draws on his background in athletic training, orthopedic.neurological rehabilitation, and martial arts, his extensive study to become licensed as a PTA, ATC, CSCS and COMS, as well as his experience in practice as an exercise specialist at Olympic Physical Therapy and discusses such issues related to movement, rehabilitation pain, mindfulness, and wellness.

I often get asked this question by my clients: Is slouching bad? What do you think? Somehow straight posture is considered ideal, and slouching posture is perceived as bad in out culture. If you also think straight posture is good and slouching posture is bad, let me ask you why? If we never be allowed to slouch when we sit, we all would be healthier and pain free?? If you think bad posture is related to more pain, literature doesn't seem to agree with you. We talk about posture a lot, but interestingly enough there's no literature that shows posture is related to pain.

Let's say straight posture is ideal, so you decide to sit with perfectly straight posture. How long do you think you can sit still perfectly? Probably not very long. After sitting for a long time, what do we do instinctively? We get up and move, right? This happens regardless of what position we are in because we're putting pressure on the same places all the time and compromising blood flow to those areas. Straight posture may provide some advantages from a mechanical standpoint, but if you stay in the same position, you're compromising movement. The same thing for slouching posture. If you're in the same slouching position, then there's no movement and stress is constantly placed on the same areas, even more in some areas than in straight posture. Then you have exactly the same problem. What would be healthier for our body is to create a habit of changing our positions frequently or moving frequently so we're distributing stress more evenly. For this reason, I really emphasize creating more movement options so we don't get stuck in only one movement pattern.