UNDERSTANDING YOUR POSTURE AND REDUCING PHYSICAL …€¦ · If you know of someone else that may...

Lucky Gidda www.uprightposture.co.uk

Upright © 2016. All rights reserved.

This report has been made to help anyone who is struggling with a condition that no one

else has been able to fix, or for athletes who want to improve physical performance.

If you know of someone else that may benefit, please share by email, social media,

whatever!

Please just give me the credit for my work.

The information contained within this document is given in good faith and is believed to be

accurate, appropriate and reliable at the time it is given.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR POSTURE AND REDUCING PHYSICAL STRESS


What is your posture?

Your posture is the shape of your

body and this is dictated by your

skeleton. The reason for this is

gravity. Gravity is a pretty strong

force. It stops us flying off into space

as the Earth spins. Its effect means

that we are constantly being pulled

towards the centre of the Earth. This

means that in order to be upright, our

skeleton has to be stable.

A stable skeleton will be balanced front to back and side to side. Your weight

will go through the area between your feet and you’ll be able to stand up with

next to no effort from your muscles. When you move, you will use the

minimum amount of effort required. This is totally different from what you

have been told by other people who say that you can improve your posture by

strengthening and stretching your muscles.

Standing should be

effortless.



Why you have poor posture

From what I have said above, you can probably work out the answer to this.

Poor posture is due to changes in the resting shape of your skeleton. Your

skeleton can be thought of like a frame (like on a bicycle). If it is crooked, it

won’t work properly.

Here are some examples of the type of changes that can occur.

In all of the pictures above, the person is standing relaxed. Can you see how

the people on in grey would be unstable and off balance?

The people in grey are in pretty bad shape but, most people will have some

degree of change to their frame which will affect their posture. What they also

have in common is that they are tipping forward.



What happens when your posture is forward?

This picture shows a tall structure

which is helped to stay upright by

guy wires. If the structure became

crooked or started to lean, some guy

wires would go slack and others

would get tighter. Up to a point, the

structure could stay upright, even

though it wasn’t balanced.

Courtesy of: Flameout

You can try this out on yourself right now. Stand up and lean forward. You will

notice that;

The muscles in the back of your neck, your back, hamstrings, calves

and feet (posterior chain) tighten up

The muscles in the front of your neck, abdomen and thighs (anterior

chain) relax

Now lean back, you will notice that the opposite happens. This is called

reciprocal inhibition and prevents your muscles fighting against each other.

So, if your frame is stuck in a forward position, your posterior chain will always

be tight and your anterior chain will be slack. This makes sense, as the most

common injuries occur in the posterior chain and, people struggle to develop

their abdominal muscles (because they are inhibited).

What I’ve just described above, is what

your body does to compensate for a

crooked frame. The areas of your body

that tend to get injured, hurt, become

stiff or get arthritis are areas of

compensation.



So what causes your frame to become crooked?

The cause of a crooked frame is a very common type of injury that your body

finds impossible to fix by itself. But you may never have even heard of it. It is;

A bone that has been pushed out of place in a direction that your body

cannot self-correct

This type of injury is responsible for much of the suffering happening today.

Many of your aches, pains, weaknesses, wear and tear and suchlike (i.e. your

compensations), are the result of your body trying to cope with the above type

of injury.

Believe it or not, your bones are being pushed and pulled about on a daily

basis. I’m not talking about dislocations but much smaller changes. Your body

can self-correct many of these changes, as long as there is a muscle or a

combination of muscles that can pull the bone back to the right position.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the ability to self-correct in every direction

possible so, this leaves us with a major vulnerability.



What sort of injuries am I talking about?

Since you were born, your body has had a lot of physical injuries. You literally

will have had tens of thousands.

Some examples are;

birth trauma

falls whilst learning to walk

banging your head

sporting injuries

sitting awkwardly or for too long

lifting badly

motor accidents

work related injuries

surgery

tripping or stubbing your toe

fights

knocking into things

Every one of those injuries (and more) has the potential to change your

posture. The bigger or more repeated the injury is, the more likely it is to leave

damage. Thankfully, our bodies have an incredible ability to heal most of this.

However, when we cannot correct our posture, our bodies will compensate.

Compensations are an amazing adaptation that allows you to continue living.

Without them, you would be in big trouble! However, there is a price to pay

and it is that they reduce your level of function. The more you need to

compensate, the more problems you get, as your muscles, joints and skeleton

work harder. The result is that you get stiffer and tighter.



How can you correct these bones?

Like most people, it is likely that you are stuck in some form of compensation

posture. This means that whenever you are standing or sitting, your body

wants to fall over and you have to work extra hard to stay upright. There is a

part of your brain that does this correction automatically without you even

being aware. To help take some strain off your muscles you may lean on

things, prop yourself up, cross your arms or legs, or use a walking aid.

In time, the areas of your body working the hardest, will start to fail and may

become painful. You can take drugs, apply heat/cold, massage, stretch,

strengthen, tape, needle, etc. to relieve the symptoms. However, none of

these things will fix the underlying problem if you have a crooked posture.

Even surgery doesn’t fix the true cause.

The only way to get rid of the problem properly is to rebalance your frame.

When you do this, your body will remove its compensations all by itself, as

they are no longer needed. This is amazing news!

The protocol I use at Upright

is called Advanced

Biostructural CorrectionTM

(ABCTM

for short). It is a

system which detects and

corrects the position of the

bones that are at the root of

your problem. It is also the

only system that can non-

surgically remove the deep

scar tissue that builds up as a result of your injuries. This scar tissue keeps you

stuck and without removing it, you won’t progress.

The longer you have had your problem, the longer it takes to undo the damage

and unwind all of your compensations. However, the small changes from the

very first visit will begin improving your symptoms immediately. This is what

makes ABCTM

so great!



If you’ve ever trained or worked hard

towards something, you’ll know that

it took time and effort. Whether it

was excellence in a sport, your job,

education, or a hobby. You can make

life easier by training smart, having

the right coach and being consistent

but, ultimately, you still have to put

in some work.

What I am trying to say is, that there is no magic bullet or gizmo that does it all

for you. Changing your posture is a process which needs the right approach,

support and encouragement and, some effort! However, I have made it very

simple to follow and the longer we work on your posture, the better you will

get.



Common compensations and “being forward”

There are thousands of compensation patterns you can be stuck in depending

on what injuries you’ve had, when they happened and how your body

compensated to each one. On a joint by joint basis things get very complicated

but if we look at the overall picture we see common patterns.

Have you ever noticed how people hunch forwards as they get older? Have you

ever seen someone hunched backwards? No, neither have I and there is a

reason for that. Commonly it is our spine that gets injured. From the neck

down we cannot pull back a bone that has gone forwards.

So, if a bone does go forward, everything above that point will

be falling “forward” too and a compensation will be set up in a

more stable part of your body to keep you balanced. For

instance, you may start to get knee pain several years after you

injured your lower back. I bet you never thought the two things

were related? Hopefully by now, you are starting to see that

they almost certainly are. The body is an amazing machine and

everything is connected.



If you have ever played Jenga you will know

that you cannot keep taking blocks from the

same side or it will fall over.

If you have a bone out of place that your

body cannot self-correct, your brain has the

ability to decide which blocks (body parts) to

compensate in order to keep you upright.

This is why you may think you have recovered from an injury, only to suffer

again down the line. Your body didn’t fix you, it compensated. Each time you

re-injure that area, you are getting worse.

As time passes, your body is able to stiffen up areas of stress leading to muscle

shortening, tendinopathy, calcification and osteoarthritis. Don’t forget that you

will be accumulating more injuries in the meantime! We call this process

“winding up”. This is how things can get very complicated.



Posture and organ function

So, if your body has become crooked what else happens?

Well, everything inside you also becomes crooked too. This includes your

organs - muscles, brain, spinal cord, intestines, liver, heart, eyes; everything.

This is why your posture affects everything about you. How you feel and how

your body works.

When your insides are being stretched, compressed and twisted, you can get

all sorts of other problems.

Commonly, you may have

Brain fog (feeling a bit hazy and unfocused)

Muscle weakness or fatigue

Digestive issues such as heartburn or reflux (your stomach is getting

compressed and squeezing food back up your oesophagus)

Trapped wind

Shortness of breath

Numbness or tingling

The complete list is too long because as I said above, everything is affected

because everything is connected.

Are you taking medications

for some of these

conditions? Those

medications will not be

fixing the underlying

problem and will have

harmful side-effects.



Posture and stress

Everyone knows that stress is something that happens in your head, right?

Well that is where the stress response is triggered. But the trigger itself can

come from many sources.

Emotional or mental stress is triggered by our thoughts.

Chemical stress is triggered by some drugs, toxins, toxicants, viruses, etc.

Physical stress is triggered by excess or prolonged injury/strain.

If your posture has changed, it is important to realise that you will be triggering

your stress response very frequently. This causes a huge amount of hidden

stress that most people are not aware of. This is important as chronic (long

term) stress is a major factor in poor overall health.

The great news is that a reduction in any of the stress triggers will help the

whole stress response to reduce, which is great for your health and wellbeing!



In conclusion

Your posture dictates your function. The worse your posture, the more

problems you are likely to have.

These problems are likely to worsen as you get older.

A mild problem could prevent you from hitting that PB in the gym.

A moderate problem can lead to disability.

A major problem can threaten your life.

So, I hope you have now learned the basics of posture (and a few other useful

tips too).

If you have received this booklet via my website, over the next few weeks, I

will be sending you some more information about posture and your health in

general. This will include tips on how to reduce physical stress.

Please share this document. I have found that most people are not aware that

they could be pain free and living well. No matter how bad your situation, it

can be improved!

If you feel that this is not for you. The option to unsubscribe will be present on

your first email.

Lucky Gidda BEng MChiro



H

About Lucky Gidda and Upright Posture Correction

I, I’m the founder of Upright. I’ve studied as an Aerospace Engineer

and a Chiropractor so I have a unique perspective on physical health

and fitness.

Due to various injuries from a

young age, I have been on a

quest to fix myself for some

years. Over this time, I have

found that many commonly

used therapies are ineffective. In

2014 I came upon a very

promising protocol and I have

found it to be the most complete

and effective therapy yet for chronic physical injuries. The protocol is called

ABCTM

and I have been using it exclusively since then, on myself and on my

clients, with astounding results!

Upright was formed to help educate and increase awareness of the importance

of posture and the benefits that ABCTM

can achieve.

My clinic in Birmingham is one of only a few using ABCTM

in the UK, where you

can come to achieve levels of function and fitness you never thought possible.

My Kick-start programme helps to quickly eliminate many common symptoms

that people suffer with on a day-to-day basis. This 90 day programme removes

enough damage so as to allow my clients to return to work or get back to doing

a physical activity they enjoy.

The Regenerate programme is designed to continue the unwinding process

until you are happy with your level of function. For most people, the sky is the

limit.


UNDERSTANDING YOUR POSTURE AND REDUCING PHYSICAL …€¦ · If you know of someone else that may...

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