Sheet Music Guy !

Ever since second year university, I’ve developed a chronic knot in my left upper-back and shoulder that comes and goes every few months. When it gets bad I can barely move my neck. I’ve also recently found that I tend to pop and pull my right shoulder pretty often playing sports, which is fairly painful and takes a while to heal.

It should also be noted that I work in the tech industry and that I’m a pretty big nerd overall. The resulting hours spent slouched in front of a computer during my working and leisure time have given me pretty bad posture.

I’ve been to acupuncturists and masseuses, who both say I have some fairly significant problems likely as a result of this. My shoulders tilt to the left and my hips tilt to the right, and my spine looks like this:

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When it should look like this:

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If you get a basic acupunctural assessment anywhere, they’ll do a similar check on your hip/shoulder alignment. Ideally they should be parallel. I’m not sure whether the spine bend is the cause or the effect of this, but either way, it wasn’t looking good.

Anyways, I was at a family Lunar New Year dinner yesterday, and I had a seat facing the mirror. Glancing at myself in a neutral sitting position, it was fairly obvious that my shoulders were tilted. Usually I just move my shoulders around, but this time, I thought I’d try something different. Just for fun, I tightening my back muscles instead, forcing my spine straighten up and re-balance my shoulders as a result. It took a while to get the knack of finding those back muscles to clench, and it’s a little tiring flexing those muscles for a period of time, but I forced myself to hold this up the rest of the evening to see what would happen.

About five minutes later, my tight upper-left back almost melted completely. My shoulders relaxed and dropped. My neck, is usually bent, loosened and straightened. Before I used to feel some of my vertebrates pushing out of the back of my neck, but I quickly checked and it seemed they had straightened themselves out. I quickly looked left and right, and it seemed that I also gained maybe 10% range of motion in my neck area. All within five minutes of straightening my posture.

This was amazing. I didn’t know consciously fixing your posture would get these kinds of results this quickly. Today, my right shoulder which I had injured last week playing volleybal feels about back to normal…which was way better than a few days ago. My back is a little tired from holding my spine up straight, but it’s a small price to pay for magically fixing other parts of your body. Who knows what will happen next? Maybe I’ll run faster, jump higher, get girls, throw fireballs…..the possibilities are endless. I’m excited.

If anybody has chronic back/neck/shoulder problems, you might want to give this a try:

1) Get a chair and sit in front of a mirror. Get into a relaxed, comfortable position….what you think is ’straight’

2) Look in the mirror, and make note of the slant in your shoulders.

3) If your shoulders are not horizontal and tilted one way or the other, try to work your muscles in your back to push your spine in such a way as to straighten your shoulders. Do not straighten your shoulders directly; they should align themselves as a result of you re-aligning your spine.

4) Wait 5 minutes

5) All your chronic physical problems will mysteriously evaporate. Or not.

Happy experimenting!

*I am not a health care professional, follow my ‘advice’ at your own risk, consult a physician before doing anything, ever.