Posture and Body Mechanics

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 #1#2#3


With their permission, I have taken 3 pictures of my friends in different positions. In the first picture, Brianna is laying in the bed watching Tik Toks. In the second picture, Emily is taking notes on her IPad. In the third picture, Aliyah is taking a break after class. 

In picture #2, Emily's pelvis is in an posterior tilt. Her thoracic kyphosis is increased along with cervical flexion from looking down at her IPad. Her scapulae is protracted from rounding her back, and her femurs are parallel with the ground and help to create a 90 degree angle at the knees and at the hips. 

This position would keep Emily stable since she has a bigger base of support, but her mobility might be decreased since she is sitting. I believe it would be fairly easy to change in and out of this position. Her arms are helping her support her body as she is leaning over the table. This would make the upper extremities not free. If she were to not use her arms as added support, her upper extremities would be free. This posture places additional forces on her joints. It is applying additional force on her neck as she is looking down, and added force on her arms as she is using them to support port her body on the table. I think Emily could maintain this position for quite some time but would eventually need to change positions. She could experience back and neck pain from the spinal curvatures happening in that position. The added force on her forearms may eventually cause some discomfort, making her change positions. 

It is important to teach proper posture and body mechanics to a client to prevent muscle weakness and tightness of muscles. On the convex side, overstretched muscles will produce weakness. On the concave side, structures can shorten producing tightness. It is also important to teach proper posture and body mechanics to prevent forward head posture. In a normal posture, your head weighs about 12 pounds. As you move your head forward, the weight of your head increases up to 3.5 times the original weight. This adds extra stress onto your cervical neck, which could later cause pain. 

One intervention for using proper posture would be for my client to use her IPad at eye level. This would decrease the amount of time she would be looking down, decreasing the weight of her head. Another intervention I would use is the practice of proper posture. Since Emily is a student and spends a lot of time sitting at a desk, I would tell her to distribute equal weight on both sides, have 90 degrees hip, knee, and ankle flexion, have both feet on the floor ready to accept weight, keep shoulders symmetrical, and keep hre head in midline(center). 

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