Awareness, Knowledge and Patience; for a Healthy Life.

In my earlier posts I briefly talked about what posture is, why is it important and what is a bad posture without boring you too much. I talked about good, bad and ugly faces of posture.
So is this bad posture our destiny? Of course at most cases it isn't. The bad posture we have because of our habits can be changed by alter our habits.

But how?

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How can we get rid of these bad posture habits that settled inside us quietly without us noticing? To be honest this change won't happen in a day. And there is a hard way ahead. But we should know to key words; Awareness, knowledge and patience.

• Awareness

At first, we need to know how our posture is. Because our brains will always normalize this habit we had for years. This is why we feel uncomfortable when we see ourselves in the mirror or in a casual photo. We aren't as attractive as we think at all;-)
So, we need to face our own reality.

• Knowledge

Okay, if you've learned what is bad now is the time to learn what is good and how to accomplish it.
Roads without goals won't lead us anywhere. We need to have achievable goals for our ideal posture.

• Patience

I know that in the first days even weeks you'll be very willing, you'll be paying attention to everything. But then the old habits will slowly start to kick back in if you let this. What can be harder than fighting with yourself!? Moreover, your enemy is your posture which emerged because of carelessness and negligence and has been with you since you were a kid. I know that this is a hard and long fight but you have 3 weapons and the 3rd one is patience. You'll need it a lot at this phase.

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At school or office we spend most of our time in a desk. Mostly infront of a computer.
If we consider that we are spending half of our days sitting, we can presume how big problems can a bad sitting habit can cause. But, how should it be?

• Our knee and hip joints should be at a 90° angle while sitting
• Our feet should fully touch the ground
• We should have a chair that fully supports our back
• The height gap between the chair and the desk should be proper for us
• Our working desk should be L shaped and the monitor should be on the corner

We can get everything on track by making small regulations in our daily lifes, at least for us adults.

How to Approach a children ?

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The postural deformities are most commonly seen on kids. A humpback, bended walking, sitting not straight and not able to sleep except in some positions are the situations that we see on children.

So, what do parents do for it?

They say ''Stand straight, sit straight''

Is that all?

When the kid is warned, he/she suddenly correct the posture and keep straight but after a while takes his/her position and posture back. And there comes another warning but the kid gets stubborn about them eventually. And final result: no awareness on kid. And, things get tougher then.

We shouldn’t talk with our kids such as they are patients, especially in the ages of puberty. This kind of communication makes the situation worse and we can’t even talk them later. At the beginning the kids have just postural deformities but later, because of the wrong approach by parents, they have psychological and behavioral problems. In fact, there are some simple solutions for this problem.

We need to follow the growth of a child carefully and in detail. We should direct him/her to a branch of sports or we should even do it together. If we want our kids not to spends hours in front of a TV or computer, we should present other entertaining alternatives. This will be good for both posture and many way of their lives.

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sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

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