“A straight back may be said to be an element of beauty,” wrote D. F. Lincoln, a physician in Philadelphia, in 1896. “Round shoulders and a twisted spine are an element of the opposite quality, beyond a doubt.”
Lincoln was writing to sound the alarm that the posture of America’s youth was becoming increasingly “deformed” thanks to a trend that had recently swept the nation: universal public school.
If only he could see us now, literally leaning in within our cubicles by day and slumping over our Netflix-streaming laptops by night. Many of today’s workers could use a Knickerbocker shoulder brace more than the Victorian dandies it was designed for.
Your mother’s right, you know. Good posture really does make us feel more confident and powerful. A study of 74 people in New Zealand found that participants who sat up straight felt “more enthusiastic, excited, and strong, while the slumped participants reported feeling more fearful, hostile, nervous, quiet, still, passive, dull, sleepy, and sluggish.”
But the biggest benefit of good posture, Zack Vaughn, an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist at Stanford University, says, is just a life free from pain. Twenty-eight percent of Americans complain of chronic lower back pain, according to a 2012 CDC survey, and 14 percent say their neck and shoulders frequently hurt.
This article was originally published on www.theatlantic.com. Read the complete article here.
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