Being a Massage Therapist in a very busy city like Calgary for the past 11 years, I have spent many hours deep into the tissues of thousands of clients. Over 15 000 sessions have led to many realizations and understandings about how the body carries tension, how it becomes posturally distorted, and what tends to keep the musculoskeletal system from finding a state of balance that allows for movement free of pain and restriction.
There are a multitude of factors that lead to pain and discomfort. One of the biggest and most managed causes is stress. It affects all of us. We deal with it, adapt to it, and try to avoid it! Stress in all its forms finds its way into our lives from countless sources. I start with stress, because of its compounding affect on everything else. All things contributing to postural stain are only made worse by stress.
Our predominate postures greatly affect how we feel, move, and cope with life. The greatest determinate of our posture, is our most habitual postures. This may sound vague, so let me zero in on the three habitual patterns which have the most impact on our postural reality.
Nothing in life is done more than standing, sitting, and sleeping!
Your unique way of doing each of these things, has the greatest impact on what your postural reality is. The accidents, sports injuries, broken limbs, nor your genetics are nearly as impactful as the three things you spend the most time doing. Is there an hour in the day that you are not doing one of those three things? How do you sit throughout the day? How do you stand? What body position is held most throughout the sleeping hours each night?
Many of my massage therapy clients have office jobs that require them to maintain a seated position anywhere from 4-8 hours every day! This may not appear to be significant, but lets look a little closer. Lets take the lesser of the two and do some basic math: 4 hours a day, 20 hours a week, and 80 hours a month, equals over 900 hours a year holding a seated position. Of course, that’s only at work! There is the time spent seated in the car, on the couch, at the kitchen table, or at the coffee shop. Obviously we could double that 900 hours a year and still not account for all the time spent in this posturally challenging position!
Two major muscle groups are held in a shortened position while you sit. The major hip flexors, the Psoas, and Rectus Femoris, are greatly shortened while seated. The former of the two attaches to the anterior (front) side of your lumbar vertebrae. After spending long periods of time in a shortened position, the Psoas becomes shorter and tighter. The problem with the hip flexors being tight is that they pull the lumbar vertebrae forward. This is a classic reason why many people experience low back pain.
Having your knees bent at 90 degrees, for countless yearly hours of sitting, also tends to lead to incredibly tight hamstrings! No wonder as we age it gets to harder to touch our toes! Sitting is also hardly kind to our neck and shoulders.
Massage Therapists’ work on a host of issues their clients present with, which arise from spending hours on a mouse and keyboard. Hours spent with their heads drifting forward towards their monitors, shift the weight of the head to neck and shoulder muscles that are made to perform movements rather than support a near 10lbs bowling ball! Other habitual patterns such as leaning on one butt cheek more than the other, pinning a phone to the ear with the shoulder, and being far from ambidextrous with the mouse, highlight the many reasons why sitting contributes to many of the postural imbalances which massage therapy address nearly everyday.
Another posture we do more than any other is standing. Each of us have a very unique standing posture. We rarely bring our conscious awareness to how we do this simple thing, but we can clearly identify some habitual aspects to how we maintain this dominantly held posture.
Simply glancing down at your feet periodically, without adjusting yourself to some ideal pose, reveals what is likely a reoccurring theme. Are your feet consistently in a similar position every time you look down? Is one always out in front? Is one always rotated in the same direction? These consistencies reveal muscular holding patterns that are having their way with your skeletal structure. You may notice the bodies desire to shift weight more to one side. This too relates to certain muscle being held in more contracted states, than their opposites. Massage therapy looks to reveal the imbalances within our muscle groups and restore it.
Our musculature is a perfect design. Every muscle works in concert with it’s opposite, to grant us fluid, painless, dynamic movement and function. While one muscle is extending, its opposite is flexing. Our bodies are functioning optimally when our muscles are balanced in strength, length, and flexibility.
Massage therapy practitioners help reveal postural distortions and the habitual patterns contributing to these distortions and introduce opposition to the habitual posture. Once you discover the habitual postures and their opposites, it becomes easier to find the balance. It is here where freedom from postural strain can be discovered. Contrary to assumptions, sleep is not always an escape to postural strain.
Have you aver tried switching sides of the bed? Your partner not too interested? Likely you haven’t been too interested either! Why? We are habitual creatures. We move in habitual ways and do habitual things. We also sleep in very habitual patterns. Some people sleep on their stomachs. Their head tends to be rotated and laterally flexed for many hours a night.
So you may think side sleeping is better. Maybe. If you tend to be predominately on one side, the shoulder against the mattress is definitely being held differently than the other. What position are your legs in? Is one relatively straight, while the other is bent at the hip and knee? Did I mention 6-8 hours is a typical sleep? How will your long held, habitual sleeping position, affect your proper anatomical standing position? Our body adopts its own sense, of normal standing posture, under great influence of what the body wants to do. Invariably, the body wants to move into the position it spends the most time in. Your every instinct, understanding, and programmed sense of what normal standing is, is challenged by the postures that we hold for longer periods than any other. The result is postural strain.
Massage therapy focuses intently on those muscles holding you in out-of-balance postures. Once these muscles are released of tension, your body enjoys the experience of a more fluid and pain-free range of motion. If you can move daily into positions and ranges which oppose your habitual patterns, you are encouraging a state of balance. With a little help from your massage therapist, you will discover more about your body and how your habitual postures become your unconscious postures. Through the massage therapy process you will encounter new postures thereby helping to bring conscious awareness and balance to your body.
