Benefits of yoga posture correction

The core benefit of yoga posture correction is to achieve systematic improvements from bone alignment, muscle tension balance, and elimination of internal compensatory patterns through low-load functional force adjustment and nerve perception reconstruction. It will not cause sports injuries as easily as short-term assault training, and it will also last longer than the maintenance effect of external bone correction. Ultimately, it will achieve the dual benefits of a straight appearance and physical comfort.

Speaking of this, I am reminded of a young girl I once took care of who works in the Internet industry. She is 26 years old. She works overtime in front of the computer all year round. How serious is her rounded shoulders and protruding neck? Even when wearing a loose T-shirt, it looks like my back is two centimeters thicker than that of a person of the same weight. When photographed from the side, my neck is almost a fist's length forward. She had tried bone setting before, and she felt relaxed when she raised her head the same day after the massage. However, within a week, she sat in front of the computer for a day and then sat back down again, and her neck always felt a little stiff. Later, I practiced the Iyengar system of posture adjustment with us for three months. I didn’t use any difficult postures. I just relied on wall ropes, yoga blocks and other assistive devices to sink my shoulders and tighten my core. Now not only is my back flat, but I also suffered from migraines two or three times a month, but they haven’t come to me in the past two months.

What’s interesting is that different yoga schools have really different ideas for body adjustment. Several teachers I know who practice flow yoga feel that Iyengar's method relies too much on assistive devices. It is better to rely on dynamic vinyasa postures to activate the overall core, allowing the muscles to naturally form memory, and adjust it more efficiently. Both ideas actually make sense. For people with weak cores but no sports foundation, or even old injuries, it would be safer to use assistive devices to find their senses. ； For people who usually have exercise habits and have strong body control, dynamic adjustments will indeed take effect faster, and they don't have to worry about which school is "correct".

What many people don’t know is that the impact of a skewed posture is never just unsightly. Two years ago, a boy who regularly works out came to me and said that he always felt tightness in the right side of his waist when doing deadlifts, especially when pushing heavy weights. He went to take a X-ray and found that his spine had a slight S-shaped scoliosis. The doctor could not tell the extent of the surgery, so he sent him home for rehabilitation training. He always thought that posture correction was something only girls did, so he followed it for half a year, practicing the most basic postures such as Mountain Pose, Cat-Cow, and Side Plank, to find the feeling of the neutral spine. Later, he went for a review and found that the curvature of the scoliosis had basically returned to normal, and the deadlift weight had increased by 20 pounds than before. It’s easy to say, just like the legs of your chair are crooked. It’s useless to just straighten the chair surface. You have to adjust the force on each leg evenly, otherwise it will tilt back after sitting for two days. Yoga posture correction is to adjust the problem of "even force". It loosens the muscles you have used wrongly all the time and the tendons that have been stretched for several years, so that each bone stays where it should be, and the force will naturally flow smoothly.

Of course, this does not mean that yoga posture correction is omnipotent. There is actually a lot of controversy in the sports rehabilitation circle. I was chatting with a friend who is a rehabilitation practitioner before, and he said that he had seen many people who practiced yoga blindly and made their postures more crooked - for example, people with forward pelvic tilt slumped when practicing downward dog, and after practicing for two months, the forward tilt became more serious. ； There are also people who have hyperextended knees. When practicing Mountain Pose, they forcefully push their knees back, which makes it so painful that they have to go up and down stairs. This is indeed true. Many online tutorials on "Correcting Round Shoulders in 7 Days" apply the same movements to everyone. They completely fail to take into account that the causes of body posture problems are different for each person: some people have high and low shoulders, and some people wear them with single-shoulder backpacks all year round.

Oh, by the way, I have encountered such an example before. The girl also had rounded shoulders. She adjusted her chest muscles and upper back exercises for half a month, but there was no change at all. Later, after careful questioning, I found out that she had allergic rhinitis. She breathed through her mouth all the year round, and her upper respiratory tract was not smooth for a long time. Her shoulders and neck would naturally tighten to help compensate. Later, during the adjustment, she added breathing training, and first practiced abdominal breathing to remove the strength from her shoulders and neck. In just two weeks, most of the rounded shoulder problem was improved.

There was an interesting misunderstanding before. Many people thought that to have a "good posture", they had to stand in a military posture, with their shoulders stretched back to the extreme, and their stomachs tightened. They would feel exhausted after standing for ten minutes. In fact, it’s not at all. A good posture is elastic, just like what is often said in yoga: “tall and relaxed” – when you stand, you won’t feel that any muscle is tense, and you won’t have shoulder and back pain after sitting at work for three or four hours. Even when you run and jump, you will feel that the strength of your whole body is smooth. An aunt in her 50s came to me before and said that in order to cure her hunchback, she stood against the wall for half an hour every day. Her knees hurt from standing, and her waist still collapsed when she relaxed. Later, after a test, I found out that her core was weak and her abdominal muscles were not strong enough to support her upper body, so she unconsciously collapsed forward. It was not that she could not stand straight at all. Later, I practiced core-activating movements such as Dead Bug Pose and Abdominal Breathing for two months. Now I don’t feel tired even after walking around for an afternoon. I feel straighter naturally when I stand. When I dance in the square, I can turn around more flexibly than before.

After all, the most rare thing about yoga posture correction is that it will not force you to conform to the Internet celebrity standards of "right-angled shoulders" or "one-line back", but will help you find the most comfortable state for your body. If you just like to hold your breasts a little and feel comfortable, it doesn't matter. As long as it doesn't hurt, doesn't get sore all the time, and doesn't have any inexplicable headaches or waist and leg pains, it can be as comfortable as you like. After all, your posture is to serve your life. You can't make your whole body uncomfortable every day just to look "good", right?