Eli5 Why does bad posture feel so…. good.
In: Biology
Habit.
If you ask somebody with habitually good posture whether or not they are comfortable, they’ll say yes.
What happens with people with “bad” posture try to sit up straight is not necessarily “good.” There’s a lot that goes into “good” posture, and it doesn’t come immediately. We’ve all heard the basic advice “straight spine, pretend there is a string attached to your head pulling you up, keep your feet flat on the floor,” but it’s much more complicated than that.
For example – the tilting of your hips is important to rounding or arching your lower back. You want to be balanced in the middle – not too far forward or backwards. Your shoulders are “supposed” to sit in a neutral position and be held there by a girdle of balanced muscles… but what happens if some of those muscles are tight and strong and pull too hard, or there are some that are loose and weak and don’t pull hard enough? You can try to force your shoulders into place, but eventually the weak muscles will get tired and you’ll revert back to where you started.
Posture (and really, movement) is a long term game. It takes months and years to change, and it changes with many factors. The biggest (in my opinion) is exercise. Regularly strengthening, moving, and using your body in a way designed to target imbalances will cause lasting change. Partly it’s the process of continual reminders – consistently fixing and adjusting when you realize there’s something bad happening.
Another overlooked aspect of posture is culture. It’s a huge deal. Try sitting around with your friends who are all slouched over on the couch while you maintain a perfectly straight spine. You’ll get called out on it, there’s pressure to sit and act the same way as everybody else. This is true for groups with “good” posture as well. Different cultures around the world have different postures, to some degree.
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