How to Care for Your Back While Working from Home
Many of us are working from home. We’re taking our lives into our own hands and starting side hustles. We’re working with the internet and from far away lands. We’re in the new digital age of sitting. But what’s all this sitting doing to our backs? They say that sitting is the new smoking. Why is that? What exactly is it about this most common and comfortable position that has everyone all bent out of shape? Most importantly, how can we care for it and keep it healthy? Here we’ll explore techniques to help keep your back safe and healthy while working on your homework.
See a Professional
The first thing you need to do is see a professional. You need someone to assess the potentially wrong things. If you have a perfect bill of health, that’s great! If you need myotherapy or other musculoskeletal treatments, you’ll find out rather quickly.
The important thing is that you’re in the know. Seeing a myotherapist or a physical therapist allows you to get an accurate baseline to build on. You could very well require some assistance. But before anything you need to get a professional to assess you.
Lower Back
The next thing you can do is keep your iliopsoas muscle healthy. As health trends go, gym bros and meatheads tend to isolate a singular aspect of health and focus on that as the “holy grail “ of optimum performance. One of the few things they got right is paying attention to your iliopsoas. It’s a massive complex that connects to your lower limbs to your spine, all while positioned against your hip bones.
If they’re not properly stretched, they shorten while sitting. The result is an actual compression of the lumbar spine, leading to slipped discs and chronic pain. To stretch it, take a knee, and lunge forward, feeling the stretch along the hip, on the side touching the floor. Hold for 30 seconds. Repeat on the other side.
Thoracic Spine
An oft-forgotten part of back health is the thoracic and cervical spine. That’s the middle back and the neck. People have such massive issues with their lower back that they don’t even think about their thoracic spine. Reach for the sky, retract your shoulder blades, and flex those middle back muscles as you bring your elbows down.
Another great movement is cat/camel. While on all fours, round out your back and tuck your hips in, stretching out that middle back portion. Pretend as if you have a string in the middle of your back and someone is pulling it up towards the ceiling.
The world took a sharp turn not too long ago. One day we were all up and about, walking to the subway or biking to work. We had our routines set and our coffee waiting. We knew exactly how to grind and what it entailed. Nowadays, it’s not quite the same. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do everything we can to keep healthy. The responsibility is still ours, out and about, or at our home office.
