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Use gravity to HELP your posture
It’s the weight of our head, under gravity, that pulls our head forward and creates our terrible forward head posture. But if we move things around we can actually get gravity working for us… making lying in bed on a Sunday morning suddenly quite proactive.
One great exercises for improving rounded shoulders and forward head posture involves lying over a rolled-up towel. And lying face up in bed, if done correctly is actually very similar.
It can help improving poor posture by
- Stretching tight pecs, and the Sternocleidomastoid muscle—as long as you keep your chin tucked in.
- Stimulating position sense. (Aligning us in straighter spinal position)
- Mobilising stiff neck and thoracic joints by stretching them back the other way.
Now obviously there are more potent exercises to help improve posture, (here’s a link to the best postural excercises), but this technique can be part of the answer. Just don’t fall asleep face up without a pillow because if you then turn onto your side while you’re asleep you’ll put your neck out.
Key points with this “Posture Exercise”:
You need to be mindful of your head position. Make sure you are looking in the vertical direction, not back.
Externally rotating your arms will help bring rounded shoulders back.
Bend your legs if your lower back hurts.
If you want to do more you can push your shoulders and head back into the bed ten times for 5 seconds or if you want to be more proative and include strengthening of the postural muscles.
