Ways That Your Posture Affects Pain Along Your Spine

When you were young, your mom might have told you to stand up straight. I know I said that on repeat to my younger son throughout his teens. He did finally listen, but it took a lot of reminding. It’s not just a matter of looking more confident, your posture affects your health.

According to Harvard Health, poor posture can lead to breathing problems, digestive problems (heartburn, constipation, slow digestion), and incontinence. I have also read that slouching can affect heart health as well. The most common side effect of poor posture, however, is neck and back pain.

What you do with your body matters. If you slouch one time for a minute, it’s no big deal, your body will recover. But if you slouch every day for 30+ years, your body will protest. Eventually, you won’t be able to stand up straight, even if you wanted to.

Why slouching hurts

When you stand up straight, there is a plumb line from your head to your feet. Stacking your joints takes less effort to stand up straight since your skeleton holds you up. As gravity pulls on your body, your muscles don’t have to resist as much.

Slouching is different. Your head is heavy and it takes more effort and struggle to resist gravity. Imagine a spring with a weight on the end: the longer the weight stretches the spring, the harder it is for the spring to return to its original shape.

Your head is the weight, and your neck and upper back muscles are the spring. The muscles strain to keep your head from falling to the floor, getting more and more stretched out. They feel tight, but in reality they are strained by overstretching. Many people make the mistake of trying to stretch their neck to feel better. Instead, if you contract the neck and upper back muscles, that will relieve the discomfort.

This principle applies to sitting too. When you work at a computer, there is a “magnetic pull” of your head toward the screen that causes the same strain in the neck and upper back. Plus, if your upper back rounds forward, chances are your lower back is rounded too.

What is good posture?

When standing, think about Mountain pose. Stack your head over your shoulders, over your hips, over your knees, over your feet. When you sit, you want to be upright on your sit bones with a vertical pelvis and spine. Slouching strains both the upper and lower back and is one of the most common causes of lower back and neck pain.

Practicing Mountain pose against a wall can help you find what vertical should feel like. Stand with your heels against the wall, then press your sacrum, rib cage, shoulders, backs of your hands, and head against the wall. If you are used to slouching, your head and shoulders may or may not touch the wall. This will be something for you to work towards.

You can read more about that here:

7 Helpful Yoga Poses to Turn the Tables on Osteoporosis

3 helpful hints to encourage good posture

Remembering to sit and stand up straight throughout the day can be challenging. A lifetime of poor posture will need regular reinforcement. Giving yourself little reminders can help. I find the more you practice, the easier it gets. Once standing up straight is in your muscle memory, you will (hopefully) default there.

Practicing yoga regularly helps by reinforcing good alignment, strengthening the spinal and core muscles, and encouraging deep breathing. While an hour of yoga a day won’t undo a lifetime of slouching, it’s a start. Every little bit helps.

Helpful hint #1

When get into your car, sit upright with your head against the headrest. From that position, adjust your rear-view mirror so that you can see what you need to. Now every time you check your mirror while driving, it’s your little reminder to sit up straight. You know if your view isn’t what it should be that you might be slouching.

We do all sorts of funny things while driving. Leaning on the arm rest, leaning on the console, tucking one foot under the other thigh (just me?). All of these things add up over years of driving, ultimately affecting your posture and how your body feels.

Sit up straight on your sit bones while driving, and have your feet in the same (relative) position on the floor. The more balanced you are, the better your body will feel in the long term.

Helpful hint #2

Every hour or so, contract your neck and upper back muscles by squeezing your shoulder blades together and shrugging at the same time. I like to interlace my fingers at the lower back while trying to touch my shoulder blades together. They don’t actually touch, but I try.

If your hands don’t reach each other behind you, you can “connect” them by holding a strap or towel between them. Walk your hands as close together as possible behind your back. Once you’ve contracted your Rhomboids (between the shoulder blades), then shrug your shoulders up by your ears. This is the one time you are “allowed” to do this. You can also press the back of your head toward your shoulder blades by looking up. The squeeze and shrug will undo the strain of poor posture.

Helpful hint #3

If you spend much of your day sitting, get up and walk around periodically through the day. Every time you hang up the phone, send an email, or finish a task, take a little walk around the room, your office, or your house. Keep the spine as vertical as possible. Maybe practice Helpful hint #2 while walking around.

If your lower back bothers you, do some cat/cow stretches. Make sure to activate the abdominals in Cat pose and the erector muscles along the spine in Cow pose. You can also do Low Lunges to stretch out the hip flexors, and Half Split to stretch out the hamstrings. Doing these stretches for 5 breaths each can help undo the effects of sitting and slouching all day.

Here’s a short stretching sequence for the Lower back muscles:

Here’s a video to guide you through Low Lunge and Half-Split:

Coming soon

If you suffer from a stiff and cranky lower back and want to do something about it, stay tuned! In March 2026 I will be launching Yoga for the Lower Back, an online program to support lower back health when you are over 50. More details to come!

Click the button below to be notified when the course goes live. Anyone who registers for the course before April 1st will get 25% off the course price!