#kouseki

I’m really busy with school right now, but perhaps I’ll start posting some of my half finished asks every now and then.

In other news, I’ve recently hit my goal of losing 40lbs, and I haven’t shared that with anyone besides my fiancé. So I wanted to celebrate with you all since you’re all so lovely and supportive and patient.

Here I am now.

Kiriska: I’m probably the worst person to ask because this is definitely an area where I need to critically improve. I have awful posture and terrible sitting habits and have horrible chronic back and neck pain because I haven’t been able to really break any of my bad habits.

It’s good that you’ve noticed the pain when making an obvious change in how you work though. I think this should help you narrow down the root cause of the pain, which should allow you to better come up with solutions. Consider:

What’s different between your posture sitting at the couch VS sitting at the desk? What parts of your body does the couch support that your desk seat doesn’t? Usually it’s your back – what can you change about your desk seat so you have more back support?

How is your head angled at the desk VS the couch? Are you looking down a lot? This is a huge culprit in upper back/neck/shoulder pain because looking down constantly puts a ton of pressure on those areas. Can you change your desk setup so you’re looking down less?

Are you moving your arm differently at the desk VS the couch? Are you more restricted in your range of motion? Are you putting extra weight on your arm, which in turn puts more pressure on your shoulders?

Overall, what can you change about your desk setup that allows your posture, range of motion, etc, etc, be more similar to what it was in your old work area?

If there are a lot of things you can’t change, or even if you are able to make the desk setup work better for you, it’s good to program in timed breaks when you work. Make sure you do stretches and exercises that fully stretch out the muscles in your problem areas. 

This is one of my fav seated stretches (hold 10 seconds, stretch up again, inhale, stretch + hold 10 more seconds):

You can look up lots of different seated stretches for the upper back and neck. Some are more involved than others. I recommend doing some basic stretches at your seat every hour and then some longer, more involved, full-body stretches/yoga once a day, if you can.

Also, this back massager has helped me a little and feels nice, but I think it’s much better to do a long stretch routine.

Building a new routine/habit of stretching exercises can take time, but definitely don’t be like me, put it off forever, do lots of strenuous work and lifting and carrying no top of having bad drawing posture, and end up with back pain so bad you sometimes just wake up in the middle of the night because back pain and also you don’t remember the last time you weren’t in pain. :’)

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