I’m hearing more and more that good posture is important for health and wellness. Doing a quick search I found several articles including one from Harvard Health touting the benefits of good posture. This article suggests exercises that are supposed to help with improving posture.

How realistic is the expectation that people can change their posture on their own? I see some people with excellent posture, and lots of others with their head hunched forward. Do some people just naturally have good posture? Are their people who have gone from terrible posture to good posture? How did they do it? What is their stories?

I am a believer that it is possible to improve posture through exercise and stretching. I think about people who do ballet, and they all seem to have extraordinary posture. Their training and exercises must play a role.

I also think about posture in terms of the structure of our bodies. There are ligaments holding the spine together and these ligaments actually support the loads on the back (the spine is a tensegrity structure). If the length of those ligaments changes then the curve of the spine will change. I think that exercises could slowly change the lengths of these ligaments and strengthen them so that the spine has the optimal curvature.

Still even if it is possible theoretically to improve your posture, how difficult will it be? Should we leave good posture to the dancers and figure skaters, or can we take on the task of aligning our bodies?