Yoga for the Back: Improving Posture Can Improve Your Long-Term Health

If you want to improve posture, why not make it a fun, pleasant, enjoyable experience? Consider trying corrective posture exercises based on yoga poses and techniques.

Studies have shown that yoga exercises help improve bad posture and even reverse hyperkyphosis, the age-related posture issue also known as dowager’s hump. Even more than that, yoga creates numerous health benefits for body and mind, ensuring that you improve posture, increase well-being, relieve stress, and even enjoy many other health benefits.

Our posture is an important dimension of health that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Your posture influences the alignment of the spine and, thereby, the overall health of your body. The spine is the central nervous system channel, and when your spine is healthy, the pathways of the nervous system are strong and clear, and vital energy flows unimpeded, creating maximum vitality and well-being.

New research clarifies that posture is important in staying healthy throughout life.

Yoga for the Back: Benefits of Improving Posture

Feel Better. People with good posture and healthy, strong backs are generally happier, more confident, and have more energy; they may even be less prone to worry, depression, and anxiety.

Prevent Chronic Pain. Keeping your back flexible and correcting posture imbalances can be more effective ways to prevent and treat back pain. 

Live Longer. People with deteriorated, hunched posture (hyperkyphosis or dowager’s hump) are more prone to fractures and more likely to lose balance and function as they age.  A chronic, hunched posture restricts breathing, creating shortness of breath. In the elderly, this is associated with increased anxiety and depression and is considered a main factor of general health deterioration in elderly. Older men and women with a forward hunched posture have higher death rates, as much as 44% higher.

Yoga Exercises for the Back to Improve Posture

Taking steps to improve your posture will not just help you prevent back pain and joint stiffness. As you increase the health of the back by building holistic strength, increasing flexibility, and improving alignment, the health of your entire body will benefit. You will experience more energy, vitality, and greater well-being as vital energy flows more freely.

Research has shown that therapeutic yoga exercises can be tremendously effective in improving posture and overall back health. Yoga for posture increases flexibility and strength and, in addition, offers relaxation and stress management.

Yoga for Posture: The Healthy Back, Healthy Body Program

It’s important to take steps early to improve posture. Over time, bad posture can develop into the hunched back of hyperkyphosis or dowager’s hump.

Particularly useful for improving posture are yoga poses that target the muscles and joints most affected by bad posture, including shoulders, spinal erectors, abdominals, and neck. As part of the Healthy Back, Healthy Body program, yoga therapists Terry Smith, PhD, and Eva Norlyk Smith, PhD, have created a downloadable series of yoga practices, which help restore strength and fluidity to the spine while opening the heart area and reversing or improving bad posture.

The three-part Healthy Back, Healthy Body series of exercises is designed to reverse the early stages of hyperkyphosis. The program consists of three 20-minute Downloadable yoga practices.