Look 10 years younger this Christmas! 3 must know hacks!
Have you ever seen a candid photo of yourself where someone caught you standing or sitting from the side…
You looked at those photos and thought? DO I REALLY LOOK THAT BAD??? MY POSTURE AGES ME SO MUCH?
You're very next thought is, oh my goodness I don’t know where to start?
Lucky for you I can share a few hacks on how to best improve your posture (and not just for the photos) but for your overall well being.
<--- Lucky our posture isn't too bad in this photo!
I can go into all the reasons why posture is important:
Emotionally feeling better and more confident
Better breathing and oxygenation due to better lung posture
Shoulder in correct alignment, therefore, preventing the onset of shoulder injuries like rotator cuff injuries
Improvement in tension headaches
BUT none of this sells posture (unless you are in pain).
Do you know what sells posture? It is how you look! You look on average 10 years younger… so let me show you what that really looks like!
When your posture is not optimal- it results in the shoulders rolling forward, the neck sagging and the cheeks having less tone, the lump on your back increases and then your tummy caves in and your hips slide forwards. Now the opposite is true when I stand with correct posture.
Common sense would be to stop doing the very things that make your posture bad.
Active and conscious actions throughout the day until it becomes a habit! (exercises do and can help, but really what you do the other 23 hours in the day matters more)
Here is a quick hack to do whilst standing or walking
Standing:
When standing or walking- hold your palms open, and soften the knee when you are standing to engage your hip as well as your core.
This can take months to relearn and can be done every time you find yourself standing in supermarket queues.
Sitting:
Knees to be lower than your hips
Demonstrate- and then you only do it for a couple of hours a day to start until your muscles learn to activate and don't tire out. Start doing this today and increase the time as the week’s progress
Lastly, my favourite active muscle engagements are to draw your shoulder blades down to your butt- to engage the lower shoulder blade muscles. This one is a little more challenging and often you may feel like you are not doing it correctly- this is where we can help if you need more guidance, but give it a go! You can engage your blades every time to have a sip of water or when you pick up the phone, or maybe if you drive a lot- every time you get a red light could be a really easy way to relearn some of the postural habits. In fact, why don’t you start now! After all, Christmas is around the corner!
Feels better huh?
I’m sharing this with you,
Because at, Balanced for Life moving better matters!
