Posture isn’t just how you hold your neck or the slump of your shoulders and low back. Everything in the body is connected, and our posture is the coordinated workings of all the mechanical parts. The body’s motion system controls posture. Scientists call this system the neuro-musculo-skeletal system (NMS), and break it down into three sub-systems.
The Sub-Systems of Motion:
1. Contracting System: Muscles contracting to create motion: Also called the Active System, because it requires active control.
2. Connecting System: The framework of the body. Also called the Passive System, because we have no active control of these tissues, which include:
– Bones: to hold the body up.
– Ligaments: to hold the bones together at the joints.
– Joint Capsule: ligamentous sack around every joint containing the synovial fluid for joint lubrication.
– Tendons to hold the muscles to the bone.
– Cartilage and discs: to protect weight-bearing and stressed surfaces where bones meet in joints.
– Fascia: tissue holding all the pieces together.
3. Control System: Telling the muscles what to do, and when to do it.
– Brain: gives the orders, both conscious and unconsciously.
– Spinal Cord: main cable and low-level processing for information between the brain and everything in the body.
– Nerves: the wires controlling the muscles.
– Mechanoreceptors: sensors within muscles and joints telling the brain where the body is in space. For example, you can tell if your hand is open or clenched in a fist even without looking because of these deep sensors.
Our bodies move when, either consciously or unconsciously, brain and nerves of the control system tell the muscles what to do, within the constraints of the physical limitations of the muscles, ligaments, and tendons. The human body is literally designed to move, and that motion follows in a kinetic chain. Posture and body motion depend on the coordinated workings of the Contracting, the Connecting, and the Control systems.
Subsequently, when one link in the chain is not doing its job correctly, there is often a cascading effect leading to a cycle of injury, pain, compensation and adaptation. Whether it’s walking with a bad ankle or holding your face with toothache pain, any imbalance, injury, or malfunction of tissue can affect posture.
Your StrongPosture® program will get each link working correctly, restoring normal motion… creating the foundation for great posture, and an active, pain-free lifestyle.
