Essentrics Instructors: Sin Young, Ariane, Susan

You may have heard the rumors or felt it for yourself—sitting is impacting your overall health. But what is it about sitting exactly that’s bad for you? We uncover the facts and give you some quick, easy solutions.

The key player in the sitting epidemic is the detriment it has on your posture. Beyond just how you look, stand, and feel—poor posture brings a wealth of negative health symptoms!

Why does sitting ruin your posture?

 

Sitting at a desk, in a car, or on your couch usually means that your attention is focused somewhere other than your posture. Let’s be honest…how many times have you caught yourself slouching behind your steering wheel, sinking into your computer chair, or craning your neck to look down at your smartphone or other device? And while slouching alone is not the enemy, the extra strain that slouching and sitting puts on your spine, hips and neck is.

As Miranda discusses in the following short video—every inch that your head drops forwards adds an extra 10lbs of pressure onto your spine. Your back will work overtime to compensate for this extra weight. We often offset the extra pressure by sinking into our lower back or shifting into an unnatural position. It’s a cycle of poor posture, pain, and overcompensation…further worsening our posture.

Even if you’re not slouching while you sit, your body is still paying the price just from being seated! While seated, your weight is unevenly distributed around your sit bones, lower back, and hips. Not only does this cause the vertebrae in your spine to become squished and compressed, but the uneven weight distribution and lack of movement in your spine will cause the collagen around your ligaments and tendons to harden. This makes your spine less flexible, your hips and glutes tight, and causes imbalance throughout your body.

Slouched, poor posture compresses the muscles in your ribcage and spine. What does this mean for your internal organs? They pay the price by becoming squished and functioning below their prime. Your lungs will not have as much space to expand, leaving you feeling tired and groggy from the lack of oxygen to your brain. Your digestive organs also become compressed and will not effectively flush out toxins or digest food as efficiently as they are designed to do. All from slouching…can you believe it?

The answer is to gently rebalance the body through flexibility and strengthening exercises that will allow you to support the good posture you desire. In every Essentrics workout, you will dynamically strengthen and stretch all the muscles around every joint, thus ungluing your body and, in turn, reversing the negative effects of sitting. This ensures that:

So get up and get moving!! These 5 short videos are quick and easy to do as a start or end to your day, at your desk, during a pit stop on your next road trip, or on your lunch break. Fighting poor posture, staying energized, and feeling great is as easy as 15 minutes a day!

WE LOVE ESSENTRICS! We call it Strip and Stretch— we walk the dog at 5:30am, come home and strip down to workout-appropriate clothing, set up the video—and off we go to somewhere gorgeous with Miranda. In half an hour, we feel like we’ve been to our masseuse and just returned from vacation!

My husband laughs at the fact that he now does ballet moves. However, his golf partners are not laughing as he burns them right off the course. His flexiblity in every joint has never been bettter. We both have years of hard, pounding exercise on our bodies that we are starting to unwind. He was a pro volleyball player, rode moto cross, and was a downhill skier. I lifted weights 6 days a week, ran and finally did a bootcamp at age 58 for two years. So we have a lot of miles on these joints! We were in pretty good shape before, but are in great shape now. My legs and arms have slimmed and are leaner. Dave’s body is also changing—his bulky muscles are now smooth, lean muscles.

Our latest revelation is our feet and how we had not been standing or walking properly. We did balance this morning and just find our bodies moving more smoothly, more efficiently and we are using ALL of our feet!! Dave had Plantar Fasciitis—GONE. I had neuroma in my left foot from running—GONE. I can wear heels if I wish and I can stand on my tip toes without crumbling!!! I NEVER THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE POSSIBLE.

Miranda, you have delivered us from being sore, achy, and tired all the time. I wanted so much to improve my posture so I joined a gym and never went. It just wasn’t right…and then I saw Aging Backwards. BINGO!! I am taller, my digestion has improved and, best of all, my bum is shaping up!! We both could not function at the level we do without Classical Stretch. Hips, knees—you name it. I don’t understand how come everyone is NOT doing this. It’s a gift to your current and future body. I guess we are just motivated to be the best we can be. If you look good, you feel good…you are good.

We love to spend our early mornings with you and will never stop. We are in this to the end. We laughingly call ourselves Essentric-evangelists…we can’t help but share the good news of a new body and wonderful information.

Much love and many thanks,

Dave and Cynthia Huisman

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