Many people feel their poor posture causes pain that starts for no obvious reason, especially if it is in the neck or upper limb and they work at a desk. Research doesn’t necessarily support this hypothesis though. Many people with poor posture do not develop pain and some with good posture do develop pain. It is thought this may be because our bodies can adapt to sustained inefficient body positions that increase load on our joints and muscles by thickening tendons/ligaments or strengthening and improving the endurance of muscles that have an increased load on them, if it is done gradually enough. If you find you are sitting for longer periods than you have been used to when you change jobs, for instance, this may cause you pain as your body doesn’t have time to adapt to the increased time loading your joints ligaments and muscles.
Once you have pain that is aggravated by inefficient sustained postures, those inflammed and painful tissues need reduced load on them. This allows the tissue time to heal, adapt and no longer be painful. Reducing the time spent in aggravating postures and doing exercises which are the opposite of the ones you habitually do each day reduces this load. You don’t need perfect posture all the time, just less time in the postures that aggravate your symptoms. Manual therapy can help to relieve the pain and stiffness in your joints and muscles and allow you to do these exercises with less pain and recover more quickly. A physiotheraspit can assess your posture and positions that aggravate your symptoms to give you exercises to alleviate those symptoms and help prevent their recurrance.
