I’ve been making changes with my work from home setup as well as my sleeping position to help alleviate pain I'm feeling in my shoulder/neck. I now think it's a combination of my work setup as well as how I sleep. I've been feeling heaviness/tightness with my traps muscles. I’ve changed pillows twice and bought a new mattress (memory foam) But pain still persistent. Any comments/tips on my sleeping position? Thanks!

It feels like my left side body is tightened from neck to tempel, my left eye feels like sleepy and heavy always, I have left jaw pain(& headaches), left neck pain and rightness (especially on SCM), planter facilities, Mri shows flat thoracic spine . I consulted and got treatment from ortho to neuro to rheumatologist, from physio to chiro, and from dentist to orthodontics, Nothing helped. Do you have any suggestions for me.

Anyone have any idea what the root cause of this issue I'm having might be? I've only really noticed it this past few months. My two hips are uneven in some way. I know this is a long post but if anyone has experienced this I would really love your input!

Problems

• Hinges (RDLs and deadlifts): Feel more of a stretch and muscle activation in my right hamstring/glute unless I move my left foot a few inches ahead of my right foot. Then, the exercise feels even despite the feet not being aligned to each other
• Squats: Front hip pain after many heavy squats in one or both legs
• Internal Hip Rotation: IR of left leg limited compared to right
• Scapular Retraction: Left shoulder feels like it has less scapular retraction than right shoulder (feels a bit weaker on rows and less stable on bench press as a result) and the left shoulder sometimes hikes up a bit higher
• Feel of unevenness while sitting and standing
• Left hip sometimes cracks
• Left foot seems to naturally rotate a bit more outward than right while sitting
• Worse balance on right leg with left leg in the air
• Moving left leg backwards (reverse lunge) feels weird and worse compared to moving right leg back for a reverse lunge

Extra Info

• At some point progressed to left leg groin pain while sprinting frequently (bad form running with posterior pelvic tilt), and left rotator cuff pain only during pulling exercises -- resolved both now I believe
• Ankle mobility is pretty fine
• Hips don't seem laterally uneven looking in a mirror and raising each leg up, I pass the lateral pelvic tilt test

Attempts to Solve

I'm currently doing (past few weeks regularly)

• 90/90 Hip Mobility drills
• Unilateral stretches for hip flexors, hamstrings, glute/abductors (pigeon and leg hug), and bilateral stretches for abductors (pancake, frog)
• Clamshells and reverse clamshells for better hip internal and external rotation
• Unilateral pectoral doorway stretches and lat stretches
• Foam rolling before workouts

Any ideas on what the problem could be? I've looked into femoroacetabular impingement as a possibility, or maybe a functional leg length discrepancy. But, unsure as to what other steps to take.

Thank you!

For the last couple months (last 2 where it was more obvious to me) I have been dealing with neck pain/weakness of the upper back. I seem to easily strain it doing certain things and sleeping on my side causes neck pain after a while. The muscles are often tense and tight, some days I wake up with them being so tight it’s hard to swallow. It comes and goes. My ring and pinky fingers fall asleep very easily when I am on my back or after a while on my side as I sleep. I occasionally get tension headaches. all this prompted me to get an xray and referal for PT. I went to chiro for about a month before realizing that might be a bad idea.

I am an artist so I spend a lot of time looking down or at a screen. I realize my poor posture has probably led to this. I also have mild scoliosis and mild spondylolisthesis which mainly causes sciatica.

here is what my x ray looks like and the notes associated.

FINDINGS: There is slight reversal of the normal lordotic curvature of the cervical spine. The prevertebral soft tissues are within normal limits. The vertebral body heights are well-preserved. No significant loss of intervertebral disc height. No significant osseous neural foraminal encroachment. The odontoid process is intact and the lateral masses are symmetric.

Is this likely the cause of my upper back and neck pain? Can this curvature be restored or at the very least the muscles relaxed and strengthened? PT for me won’t start until next month.

Thanks, any help, advice or experiences appreciated. Surprised it is described as slight as it looks quite obvious to me.

Image of x ray below.

https://imgur.com/a/5mkvAZL

What 3 challenges make you most frustrated when you experience foot pain or lower back pain?

I am developing a device that can help you reduce your pain, I ask this question to make sure I am developing the right feature that is dedicated to you guys

I’m 24 years old and work full time as an accountant, every once in a while I get dull aches in my fingers and I’m wondering if this is related to my posture at my desk. The only other thing I think could be causing it is golf, as I golf all the time. Has anyone else experienced this? These are very light aches that sometimes only happen one or two days a month, and are more just annoying than anything else. Sometimes they are accompanied with very light shoulder aches as well.

I’ve read online that people with anterior pelvic tilt have pronation of the foot and there knees bend inwards when their pelvis tilts forward. But for me, I’ve been dealing with anterior pelvic tilt for the last 10 years now and my lower back is always in so much pain whenever I stand, however my weight shifts onto the outside of my foot rather than inwards and I’m not sure why this is the case, is there other muscles contributing to my tilt other than the hip flexors? I’m not too sure on this matter. Any opinions will be amazing, thank you

Having issues with my full trap muscles. Seems to just be shutting off completely. No matter how many exercises. Can’t get it to activate or grow.

Any ideas? Is there another muscle that causes reciprocal inhibition?

It feels impossible for me to stand up straight. And if I do it feels like I’m compensating with my obliques and lower back.

I am currently trying to find a good stretch and strengthening routine to correct posture. I am doing this because I have back aches in my lower back and neck pain. I am also seeing online though that it can add around an inch of height.

I’m wanting to understand when stretching and strengthening the spine and muscles is it helping my body be able to maintain standing tall and not slouching or is the muscles able to be more flexible and my spine is straightening out which in turn add about .5-1 inch of height

Basically when I stand up at my tallest right now am I at my best posture/ standing the tallest I can or no

So i need help. Im going to write a short try out post bc i m not sure yet whats the best way to describe an experience. Also - english isn’t my first language. In the short - my whole posture and how my body moves gots totally messed up by physical therapy. To be exact by few physical therapies. It got messed up after first full course. Then i tried to fix the issue and it got messed up worse by another full treatment course and from there it just became a nightmare -chain of attempts to fix issue and then making it worse and saying they don’t know how to fix. Right before that pt that i say messed me up my normal monthly routine was : walking my active dog daily for long time, biking ~ 2 hrs weekly , easily hiking for few hours, taking adult balet and contemporary dance classes weekly (intermediate level at pro school), climbing 2-3 times a month, latin dancing 2-3 nights each week, yoga 2-3 times each week, capoiera for fun occasionally, pilates ocassionally. And that was my regular routine for about previous six months. Before it was different routine because i went through various sport interests. Nothing new from what i already mentions. I just usually rotated priorities based on what i wanted to focus. Active like that ive been all my life.

After first course of pt - walking for long became a problem, i started tripping over my feet, my body became feeling very stiff, huge pain but also body just stopped being my regular body. After second course of pt walking because problem, only for short, most of old physical activities cause strong spasm in low back, my pelvic floor became botherng me strong (never never before!), strong pressure and tension in the body, and from there problems just kept increasing. Through out most if the treatment and later i was told “ you are overthinking, you don’t need this function of the body, etc” the stuff like that. On my own i sit down and i started thinking each exexrcise i did and then researched what the exercise is for, what is the correct way to do it, and what muscles are suppose to work in them. And i found out that most of the exercises i did - i did them totally incorrect. I have pretty decent memory of how my body felt so once i started realizing the certain exercise was for certain group muscles i could say right away that i felt it elsewhere. Not all exercises, but quite a lot i can say for sure. The problem for me was that these small exercises i was doing mainly when i wasn’t standing on my feet and i didn’t know them. Apparently when i don’t stand on my feet, i cannot tell if it feels right or wrong in the body. When i started doing something standing , i could clearly sense that something isn’t right, not like usual. Once small exercises accumulated and i was given more standing exercises I could feel right away that something is seriously wrong in the body. And the problem with pt in my opinion is that it slowly accumulates in the body and its effect usually significantly feels with about 1-2 months delay. So each time when i felt that there was something significantly wrong with the body , it was already to late to simply back out of pt, and each time i was given shoulder shrug - “your body suppose to work, idk why its not working”.

Okay i risk to make post too long and complicated. Can please help me with questions to me , to understand what details and what information is more important to give in order to make more effective post.

Ps. Oh yea, i think its also important to mention. After each time in pt there was a last period where pt’s were switching to more advanced exercises. When they did it, i could say my body felt very wrong and i pushed back, described what didn’t feel right. Twice i was told that lets try to do the rounds of these advanced exercises and if they don’t work then we will fix it. But after the rounds , it of course felt wrong with a delay, but suddenly would accumulate and body would change, and it would felt very wrong. The pts just would say “well we finished the course, we don’t know why it feels so wrong, there is nothing else i can do to help”. It happened twice and by sensation these two rounds of advanced exercises were making situation with the body significantly worse.

I sit down in my office chair, but every time I do my knees rotate in outward directions. I have knee pain after sitting for a while and I think this might be the cause. Has anyone had experience with this issue, and if so how did you fix it?

Sitting for extended periods can lead to various health issues, such as shoulder and neck pain, and spinal problems. To reduce the dangers of prolonged sitting, you can stand up and move around every hour, doing some simple stretching exercises. Additionally, using apps to set reminders can help you avoid sitting for too long. For instance, I use several apps to remind myself to stand up and move around every hour. This not only relieves my shoulder and neck discomfort but also boosts my work efficiency.

it’s like 3 days i have chest pain and like a 2/3 weeks back pain and pain a little under neck . for reassurance last month i did heart tests and was all good. i love play games and when i play i sit in a way which leads to back pain and pain under the neck .

I'm pretty sure I have an anterior pelvic tilt and I'd like to do some exercises during my work day in the office. However, most exercises seem to be on the ground, which means I can't do them in the office.

Are there some more standing exercises that I could do, apart from some squats and a warrior two pose?

Title. But this is why it’s confusing for me … I’m in decent shape. I work a physical labor job every day and do my 8 hours with no issues. I was in the Marine Corps for 4 years and did all the hiking and physical fitness stuff just fine. I’m also a hiker/backpacker and Can go miles through the wilderness.

But just … standing. It kills me. I always either sit down, lean on something, or squat. I cannot just stand comfortably. The hardest part of the USMC for me was standing still in formations for ceremonies and such.

Any ideas??? I know that my chest/shoulders/neck are out of whack due to my job and I am working on correcting that. But I fail to see how this relates to standing.

I have lots of trouble sitting comfortably in any chair. No matter what I do, my pelvis seems to get pulled forward causing my low back to arch and the back of my butt almost comes off the chair entirely. If I try to “slouch” to stop from arching, my mid back slouches but doesn’t fix the arch in my low back. This seems to translate into my standing posture too, as my hips are pulled forward, my belly protrudes, my psoas gets tight, and it feels like my butt muscles are always contracted. When I try to let my butt muscles relax I end up with a big lower back arch.

I just tried sitting with my feet propped up and focused on letting my hips sink into the chair and it seemed to relieve a lot of the tension. I’m starting to think I have weak hip flexors which causes my pelvis/stomach to dump forward and pull my back along with it, and my body tries to counteract this by tightening my glutes. I read somewhere that sitting can actually cause your hips to be stuck in extension. Should I I just focus on strengthening my hip flexors? I feel a pretty big burn in my hip flexors when I sit with my feet propped up.

I have poor posture after stressful like I was shallow breathing which made my posture by bad my neck is mess I feel like it's heavy sometimes when I look down I feel blurred vision and brain fog my platysma, trapzus allarw tight too sometimes I get like holding feel from neck When breathing from belly it feels like slowly releasing

When I was in crippling pain, every treatment I tried failed. The pain persisted, but I refused to settle for merely managing it. Treating symptoms didn't feel like a solution. I was determined to identify and fix the root causes of my pain. It turns out that I’m not alone. So many of us have:

• Injuries that have not been addressed with rehabilitation or are getting worse.
• Sedentary lifestyles or workplaces
• Recurring wear and tear from repetitive day-to-day motions

The best posture strategy for me was Alexander Technique explained in part by my favourite David Foster Wallace story.

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

The essence of the fish story is that the most glaring and significant truths are often the hardest to notice.

You're probably aware of how tough it is to focus on the things that really matter, rather than getting too caught up in your internal chatter (which might be happening right now). In the trenches of dealing with poor posture, managing your attention is often a challenge.

Real improvement in posture happens once you can effortlessly switch your attention from habitual tension to your posture improvement strategies. You can learn this and move towards vitality and health in a body with good posture.

Alexander Technique has been teaching how to do this for over a century. It is mindfulness applied to movement. Although frequently used by elite performers in acting, music and sport, most use it to improve their posture. It’s a clinically proven way of undoing harmful muscle patterning. It works fast, with many experiencing immediate improvement.

More than just another movement system or treatment, it's another way of thinking. It is often the missing piece in restoring a healthy, functional body. Alexander Technique teachers have refined the precise instructions that best improve muscle tone, postural support and coordination so that you have the freedom to move without tension and bracing.

Before you get there, there is an essential stage of getting to know yourself well in all your discomfort. What's your water like?

As putting your hands together in Prayer always had religions connotations, I subconsciously avoided it.

I was traveling home on a plane a few days ago and felt awful, ill and nauseous. I have done Yoga on and off for a while so I am quite "body aware". Being cramped in between two people my arms naturally fell towards each other. I steppled them, and alternated this with actual prayer pose.

I felt my shoulders automatically, go back and down, my breathing slowed, holding for slightly longer I felt myself sitting up straighter and my back releasing.

I have been experimenting with this while sedentary over the past few days and I really feel there is something to this posture wise. Alternating between my natural resting post (nerd neck) and Prayer it forces me into correct sitting posture and even regulates my breathing.

I can see why perhaps a lot of religions adopt this pose, it seems automatically beneficial to the human form. Try it, and relax and see what happens. Then stop, then retry and see how your body rearranges itself. I think like me you might be pleasantly surprised.

So, for the past year now I have been dealing with a left pec and lat imbalance and its been driving me nuts and making me self conscious. I have done everything from stretches (which I still do everyday), only training one side, and also adding extra reps and sets to the bad side. But more recently I thought that this can all stem from bad posture, I think that my right shoulder is more internally rotated then my left and this is causing the muscle to contract more in a relaxed state. I also noticed that my left shoulder/ arm is much more flexible then the right side, for example if I were to bring both my arms back behind my back the left side can go much further back then the right side. So, I think I have bad internal rotation in the right arm, I also think I may have scapula winging in both of my scapulas but am not certain. I just hope someone will be able to help me out and give me some advice, because do you know how embarrassed I feel when I put a shirt on and my right pec and lat are so much more noticeable then the left side not only that but much tighter. I will post a video and photo of my situation.

Video of my back and photo of pecs ( you have to scroll down for the pecs): https://imgur.com/a/icEkPi7

Hello, maybe anyone has any ideas what could be wrong with my shoulders?

I have a manual labor job and i also go to gym. But I dont face any pain or discomfort in my back or shoulder area while working or in the gym. I only noticed a while back that when I deadlift my shoulders are uneven but thats all. I also try to avoid that exercise for that. Sorry if my English is bad, its not my native language.

https://imgur.com/a/1WlrEtY

Hi there,

I am a 26 year old male. I was diagnosed with Scheuermann‘s Disease when I was ~13. I then started to workout and soon ended up in professional sports. I would assume my posture has gotten a lot better because of that. I recently stumbled across „PostureDirect“ again - his blog provides an awesome amount of material on how to fix postural issues. I have an anterior pelvic tilt, a lateral pelvic tilt, a bit of a kyphosis, forward head posture and my left shoulder is higher than the right. The routines provided by Posture Direct can easily add up to 30mins+ per day, per postural issue. My question is, which issue should I address first. And secondly, would fixing the anterior pelvic tilt directly correct for other postural problems, ie. kyphosis. I am so distressed because of my Bachelors Degree and other obligations that I even have a hard time implementing only one of the routines but if the investment is reasonable and the outcome good, then I would like to work on these issues. Thank you so much for taking your time to help me!

I’m 15 and I have pretty bad posture imo. My body is very asymmetrical, forward head and shoulders (can’t really see some in the pic) and frequent neck and shoulder pain. I workout at home around 5 times a week and walk daily for an hour and I also try to maintain good posture at all times. I have also started stretching. But school and my hobby of editing videos makes it tough.

How can I improve and how bad is it really? I’m gonna start going to the gym and I’m gonna get a pt for the beginning (once a month checkups for like 2-3 months), I hope they could help with posture

https://imgur.com/a/gvnZFK7

Any tips to improve my posture as a student like any specific exercises or anything.

Hello, it might sound silly, but I think my left collarbone sits much higher than my right collarbone. I didn't think it was that big of a difference until I made a photo of myself to check it out. I decided to check it out, because I have noticed that subclavian artery pulse is more visible on the right side than on the left side (because on the left, the collarbone hides it pretty much, I can't palpate it as much as I can on the right side). Can anyone relate or explain if this is normal ? I'm 21 M

• Sit up straight: Keep your back against the chair and avoid slouching forward or leaning to one side.
• Take regular breaks: Stand up, stretch, and walk around every 30 minutes to an hour. This helps prevent stiffness and promotes circulation.
• Stay mindful of your posture: Check in with yourself throughout the day to ensure you're maintaining good posture. Adjust as needed to stay comfortable.

Your body will thank you for it!

Help. Terrible slouch all the time. Work in an office setting but don’t even know if that is the cause. Rather stressed and anxious all the time due to a high stress work environment, but I also like my job so no “just leave your job”.

Have something that feels like a terrible knot on the inside of both shoulder blades. Not necessarily painful, just wildly tight and uncomfortable. Started in my left and now is in my right.

Not hulk strong but lift and exercise a fair amount. Cardio is good, can run a while. Confused as to how my posture could have gotten so bad but I need help.

https://imgur.com/a/bdODR1u

Have someone ever tried to workout with scoliosis for mass gain? I am 16M, skinny and trying to gain mass, build muscles and gain strength. I already have asked a trainer to build me a routine, but I'm pretty suspicious of it, because it includes exercises like bench press and etc. Can someone share their workout routine if they have one for building mass and muscles?

My neck always looks super hunched after I wake up and I always need to do my morning exercises before I can get it back to its more aligned state. Is this normal?