Stand Up Straight! and relax – Massage Improves Posture

massageBad posture, in both children and adults, is a modern day health epidemic that is much worse than most people realize.

Heavier book bags, sports involvement, and poor posture habits all contribute to posture dysfunction in children. Allowing poor posture to develop early, will pave the road for it to stick around into adulthood.

If your child consistently sits with his back slumped over when he’s reading books or playing video games, you might be concerned that his bad posture will have long-term harmful effects. Truth be told, your concerns aren’t unfounded. Poor posture is one factor that can contribute to body pain and other medical conditions in children.

As the child approaches adulthood, the posture that was adopted as a juvenile will become “accepted” by the body in older years. The body learns to accept poor posture because it begins to feel comfortable in the improper position. As proof, ask any child with rounded shoulders to “sit up” and watch what happens. It is often uncomfortable for the child to hold the shoulders back with the chest out. When the parent turns her head the child has resumed the poor posture.

Poor posture commonly leads to problems such as lower back pain and neck strain, but even more serious is that it might also result in abnormal bone growth in the long run. Other possible effects of poor posture include headaches and low energy levels.

When you hunch forward, your body isn’t properly aligned. Poor posture can put you in other slumps, too. When you slouch, you’re pressing down on your internal organs negatively affecting digestion, circulation and breathing capacity can be impacted negatively also.

Unlike other bad habits, poor posture can be relaxing to correct. What? How? Because massage can help get realign the body and get it back on track. Allowing the body to reinforce healthy and natural movements can be one of the most beneficial aspects of massage therapy.

How does massage improve posture? It’s simple, massage relaxes the overworked and sore muscles that result from poor posture and allows the body to properly position itself back into its natural alignment. Massage therapy can help free you from the pain associated with poor posture and can have you standing straight and walking tall, as your body was designed to do.

With ongoing massage the muscles are loosened and relaxed-joints have greater freedom and pressure points are relieved. This allows the body to position itself in a healthy and natural posture, therefore avoiding the movements and positions developed over time as a reaction to the pain.

Benefits of improved posture include: loosened and relaxed muscles, greater mobility in joints, relief of pain from pressure points.

It is important to recognize poor posture in children and correct it early, and it is never too late to help that poor posture. While you can treat an adult with dysfunctional posture, the ideal goal is to catch it early and prevent adult on-set problems such as wedged thoracic vertebra and scoliosis.

For more information on how massage can help improve posture in children and adults, please call 239-597-2141.

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