Headaches and Posture – Part 4.

Headaches and How to Fix Them – Part 4

Posture and Your Headaches

Helping Prairie Village eliminate their headaches

Finally, here we are. The final part to our four part headache series. A culmination of it all.

This week we are looking at posture and how it affect your headaches. Poor posture leads to everything we talked about in the last three weeks. So we are going to look at what poor posture does and how to fix it.

When I mention poor posture, it is head in front of your shoulders, the upper neck muscles shortened and mad, jaw clenched holding on for dear life, your traps giving it all to hold your head out in “No Man’s Land,” back rounded and Breathing terribly.   Phew! It’s no wonder we all have headaches.

(If you want a break down on each of those individual parts, please see our previous blogs. Headaches and: Part 1 – Suboccipitals, Part 2 – Traps and Breathing, Part 3 – Jaw Clenching)

So yeah, that’s a lot going on. There are muscles that are chronically shortened to deal with a demand far greater that they care for. There are muscles stretched and drawn out holding on with everything they have. The body is breathing in a stressed breathing pattern. In this situation, where is seems there are multiple parts to the equation we prescribed the posture relief or Brügger’s Posture.

Brügger’s is basically the complete opposite of the poor posture we sit in all day. It is also a combination of all the exercises we did in the previous weeks.

First you’ll need to sit up straight. Then pull your head and neck back to being balanced over your shoulders. Now you will elongate your neck by retracting you chin slightly. From there make sure your teeth are slightly apart and your lips are together.

Moving down, with your hands on your thighs, roll your shoulders back, so that they are in line with your chest, not behind. From here you will want to make sure your shoulders/traps are relaxed.

Now here’s the final part, ensure you are breathing properly. Your stomach should be expanding whenever you take in a breath. Don’t let your shoulders rise to help you breath.

Finally sit in the posture and take several calm relaxing breaths. You should feel tension and stress melt away from your body.

Do this exercises every 30-60 minutes. You’ll love it!

If these exercises haven’t fully resolved your issue, or you know someone that might benefit from our services, be sure to schedule from our website www.activehealthKC.com or call 913-341-1200.