Postural Analysis
Posture is the relative positioning of the body to itself when sitting or standing. From the back, the spine should be in vertical alignment. Shoulders and hips should be leveled and balanced. From the side, proper spinal curves are essential for turning, bending and supporting the weight of the body. These natural spinal curves serve a purpose to maintain balance in the upright position, as well as, absorbing the shock that travels up the body as we heel-strike in our bipedal gait cycle. Together these functions aid in increasing our potential strength while simultaneously protecting the body from harm, pain, dysfunction, vertebral fracture, paresis or ultimately paralysis.
Abnormal posture or “postural fault" is any positioning of the body when sitting or standing that deviates from its normal or anatomical alignment. Symptoms of sustained abnormal posture or Postural Pain Syndrome include pain resulting from the chronic mechanical stress of the postural impairment, ultimately functional imbalance and structural malalignment. If the abnormal posture remains, the condition progresses into Postural Dysfunction. This is the body’s natural adaptation of its connective structures to serve the positioning you maintain in your daily life, whether or not that positioning is serving you.
Postural and phasic dysfunction is the cause of many symptoms. A few being subluxation and malalignment of bones and joint structures, which in turn may cause compression of nerves and nerve endings that elicit their own symptoms such as sharp, shooting, burning, diffuse pain. As a result of the pain, muscles may guard or contract to avoid perceived painful movements, which in turn may lead to abnormal muscle compensation (overuse, overstretching, spasm, fatigue, hypertonicity, contractures), fascial adhesions, joint hypomobility, muscle atrophy, joint hypermobility and potentially joint effusion.