Does Poor Posture Cause Stress and Poor Sleep? [Video]

Does Poor Posture Cause Stress and Poor Sleep? Video Summary:

In this discussion, we explore the relationship between poor posture, stress, and poor sleep. When your posture is misaligned, it doesn’t just affect your muscles—it also impacts your internal systems. Poor posture can compress your organs, restrict your ability to take deep breaths, and reduce blood flow and oxygen delivery to your tissues, all of which contribute to feelings of tiredness and stress.

Additionally, poor posture can overstimulate your vagal nerve, triggering a fight-or-flight response that heightens stress and anxiety. Over time, this can lead to chronic fatigue, tension headaches, and even sleep disturbances, as your body struggles to relax.

Misalignment also causes certain muscles to overcompensate, leading to fatigue, pain, and discomfort. This ongoing tension can create a cycle of stress and poor sleep, as your body works harder to function properly.

By improving your posture, you can alleviate the physical strain on your body, enhance circulation and oxygen flow, and create a more relaxed state, helping reduce stress and improve sleep quality. Watch the video to learn how addressing posture can lead to better overall health and well-being.

Does Poor Posture Cause Stress and Poor Sleep? Video Transcript:

Hey, guys. Welcome. Today, I'm here with Matt and Carrie Ann. My name is Paul. And, our question that we got is “Why do I feel more tired or stressed when my posture is poor?”

There are a lot of answers and a lot of reasons. I would say answer number one is all of your organs are in your torso where your spine is. So if your spine is doing that, it is squishing all of your organs. So none of them are able to do their jobs to their fullest capacity if they're being crushed. Think about your lungs number one, if you're hunching over, you're not going to take a big enough inhalation. You're not going to get enough oxygen. I think that's like probably the lowest hanging fruit in this answer. Number 1, we need air to live and breathe and feel good. And if you're hunched over, you're just not getting a good breath.

Yeah. And then piggybacking off that too, like blood flow circulation. Right? So you need to deliver that oxygen to working tissues. So if your structure is not anatomically neutral, so let's say you find yourself rounded forward, like you're talking about that closes off that thoracic abdominal cavity there, blood flow is impeded.

Think of like kinking up the hose in that sense. So if you're not getting adequate circulation or blood flow to the tissues because there's tensions that are almost occluding that blood flow, then those tissues are going to fatigue. They're not getting their fuel as oxygen that they need to work properly. They know that might feel heavy, lethargic, muscles just aren't responding as it needs to. So, yeah, the systemic piece is a huge one.

The one I think of the most is the vagal nerve response, which is, so if we’re off and, just our bite, let's say, if our teeth are uneven and we don't bite, when you bite down, if you don't connect evenly, and let's say one side connects earlier than the other, or front versus back, that can also trigger a vagal nerve response. So that's just in your bite. And so then, you think about all the pieces stacked up, your pelvic position, your spine position, shoulders, how even they are, if you're rotated or rounded, or uneven shoulders, then that can, that's all the platform upon which your head sits. And so if that's off, then that can throw off your jaw. And, so that's just a really small thing seemingly, but it has a huge response because the vagal nerve there - you're now triggering your sympathetic response system versus going into a relaxation parasympathetic system response, and so that's gonna bring up more stress.

So if you're already prone to, oh, busyness of the day or worry, you know, worry warts and thinking about all the things you gotta do and a lot of stuff or just pressures coming at you left and right, then that's not gonna help. Because when you're then trying to decompress and go into relaxation, your posture is saying, well, nope. Sorry. Not gonna be able to do that very well, because you're off, you know, asymmetrical. 

Yeah. You get that fight or flight response kicked up. Right? Like you're talking about that vagal nerve overstimulation. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. And it goes into Carrie Ann's point about the organs and the breathing and being able to take a deep breath and that oxygenation that breathing is such a big thing in terms of our parasympathetic response. You know?

Yeah. Being able to slow down. And then to your point also about the circulation, occlusion, and whatnot, our blood pressure goes up literally because it's because the body's trying to overcompensate to deliver oxygen and and whatnot. So it's like, okay, well, we have to increase heart rate or we have to increase vasoconstriction and so those are contrary to what we need to truly relax and take the edge off. 

Yeah. Absolutely. And that and that word overcompensation too is another big piece of what we see, especially with posture and the musculoskeletal side of things. You know, talk about the systemic, but then the musculoskeletal side is a big piece where if the posture is misaligned or imbalanced, that then is causing certain muscle groups to overcompensate because there are other muscle groups that are under facilitated. They're not doing the job they need to do and keeping the body aligned. And then those overcompensating muscles are overworking.

So they're outputting more energy or increasing the or outputting the energy expenditure that's unnatural. That's outside of their allotted or preprogrammed energy expenditure. So if you have an overcompensating muscle or muscle groups, it's gonna get tired faster. You know? And it might get irritated, inflamed, because of that chronic overworking which will lead to that fatiguing or just feel like it's not responding.

Like, it’s a common thing for clients actually. I had a client Sue today who we're talking about this too. It's a lot of people will say, my legs just feel heavy or my arms just feel heavy. Like, it feels like I'm walking through molasses or syrup or something. You know? And if you're trying to move and you're just not getting that fluid movement or unimpeded movement, it's just taking a lot of effort to do.

That's a good sign, that along with the systemic stuff we're talking about, that there probably is some muscular overcompensation under facilitation that's happening that's giving you those symptoms. 

Yeah. And that's a great point because one of the things that we try to facilitate if people don't already have it is that kinesthetic awareness or that sense of self and how do you feel within your body and how at peace, at rest, do you feel? And when your posture's off, and we see it all the time with people and they just don't feel stable. They don't feel secure. There's a sense of uncertainty. And then if you add pain to that, it's like, well, I don't know when the pain's gonna hit next. I don't know if it's gonna, if I'm just gonna go down, tie my shoelaces, or if I'm gonna get out of bed, and all of a sudden it's there. And it's like, that causes stress in and of itself. The lack of sleep or sleep deprivation, that causes an increase in stress as well.

And then if you're trying to sit and let's say you work and you're in pain from that, then it's like, well, when do you rest? When does your body and brain get a chance to turn it off? You know? And you think of something like yoga, the original - and this is going towards maybe the woo side a little bit, or woo woo - But it's the chakras aligning and having that all in harmony and having sort of our all of our bodily systems and synergy and good energy.

And the practice of yoga in terms of just trying to clear the restrictions of our physical, of our physiology in order to get to Nirvana or to get to the sense of peace and at rest where we don't have those limitations or those things imposed on us. So while we're not necessarily going there in our therapy, it's a place that a lot of clients, they're pursuing that and it's peace of mind. And when we think of Maslow's hierarchy in terms of meeting our needs, if we don't have our physiological needs met, then we're always in this constant stress of poor posture, pain that goes along with that, limitations that go along with that, whether it's heavy legs or something else, then, yeah, it all adds up. 

Yeah. Adds up and then compounds. Right? Over time too. You know? So it's just a lot of times, it just gets worse and worse and worse there. And or to a much higher degree as time goes on. So yeah. It can be a tough tough thing to deal with, chronic fatigue syndrome, restless leg, things that we'll see that are issues that compound over time, because of everything you just said.

Are there any stress related symptoms that you guys see?

Headaches. Headaches, number one. And a lot of that is when your head is heavy, it's hanging forward. Number one, you're not getting proper blood flow in, but you're also not letting lymphatic fluid come out. So, you're just keeping the garbage in your head, and you're not getting fresh oxygen.

And it's really easy. I mean, you can just sit slumped for even a minute and feel the pressure back here and here, or you can go against a wall and put your shoulders and your heels and let your head go against that wall. And you can almost feel the draining happening in your head, and you come away just feeling lighter just by giving yourself that alignment against a plumb surface and just letting everything get in and out that that we need. We're just a nice little roadway inside, and we need to keep everything uncongested. No traffic jams.

Yeah. Especially if that's related to upper trapezius tightness. Right? We have a lot of people say, I carry my stress on my neck or my shoulders. So when they get stressed, they feel more tension.

It's because those muscles are already compensatorily tight. Right? So then if you have a stressor that creates this the stress response in the body that does cause you to tense or cortisol levels to rise that you were talking about before, Paul, that vagal nerve response, and then if there's already a baseline level of tightness in the area, abnormal level of tightness, then that stress response is gonna feed into that. You know? And that's where a lot of people feel that and either tension headaches, carrying, like you're saying, or just neck aches or shoulder aches.

And the lower back is another common area that a lot of people say I carry my stress in the lower back. Well, it's because the lower back's another area of the body that is a very common overcompensator for muscle dysfunction, under facilitation, either in the upper body, so above the lower back, or anything down below that's not facilitating properly. So, another big area. And then I think another area too is like the psoas. You know?

Iliopsoas, psoas complex, that hip flexor muscle. That's where we find a lot of clientele carry tension or stress. That is really fascinating when we help people release or lengthen that psoas. I know you've had this, Carrie Ann. We have a lot of people who feel emotional after that psoas lets go or releases or that people just have tears running down their eyes.

I don’t even know why. I'm not sad. But I'm totally crying. But it's just that they're saying the issues get stored in the tissues kinda thing. And as you release these chronically tight areas or areas that can have tension fed into them from external stressors, it is a release for the body. It's a recovery in that sense.

Yeah. I think that's a good point because in general in our western model, a lot of times we'd like to think of cause and effect, and so we think of things directionally. And I would say that from our perspective there's poor posture creating stress, but then there's also stress creating poor posture. So, it's mind body as well as it is body mind.

Two way street. You know? And when we're working with people, then sure, there's a lot of expression and people wanna tell us a lot of what's going on and so forth, and it's good to get that out. We're not doing psychology necessarily. But at the same time, as they change their physiology, as they change their posture, improve it like Carrie Ann was describing just using something as a tool for alignment, then all of a sudden, their psychology changes. All of a sudden, their state and mood change, and it's that's such a killer thing.

I was just describing this to a person the other day where it's not uncommon where we get people to come in, and they're totally stressed. They're totally just mean and ornery and don't wanna deal with anybody and it’s their first time coming in. It's like, okay. I get this one. And then you go through and you work with them, and then by the time they're leaving, they're a totally different person.

All that stress came off. They feel much better. Their body is in a much better place, and, it's like a hundred pounds or two hundred pounds was taken off their back, you know? Yeah.

Because they were just so burdened down and stuck. And I would say that to me, that's one of the big things about what we do is the relationship of if we if we have a fight or flight system in our body, right, where whether it's a saber toothed tiger or whether it's the stock market or whether it's the ongoing elections right now. It's like, okay, those are stressors, but it's how do we respond? How are we equipped? How is our physiology able to cope and adapt with that?

And do we have ways to channel that out and, that thing about the energy systems and everything flowing. Right? So it's are we ready to do those things? And then through the movement, through the exercise and so forth, then you're also having those releases and getting rid of the hormones and whatnot that are creating stress. But just being in good alignment also gives you flexibility, which I think translates into the brain of, oh, I have choices.

I have flexibility. I can move right. I can move left. I can move backwards. I can move forward. I can rotate. I can spin. I can do all these different things, which is kind of, again, relates back to the brain thing, which I have options. I have 360 degrees of which to operate and make decisions from rather than being stuck in just on this one course. So we think of a posture that's stuck in flexion and stuck and they can't turn and move.

It's like, well, that translates metaphorically into your decision making ability in a normal living, in normal to all these stressors that are going on versus if you're in a better place, then, yeah, I have choices. I can breathe. I can move. I can do whatever I need to right now. 

Yeah. You're trapped. You're not cornered. Right? Which, like you say, I listen to that fight or flight. If you're stuck your body's gonna freak out and says, uh-oh, I'm cornered. I'm a target. I'm vulnerable in that sense. Yeah. And then to your point too, not just that release Paul, but then building resiliency too.

Right? Like, stressors are always gonna be part of our life. We're not gonna ever not deal with stress. But if your body is aligned and mechanically biomechanically efficient and your muscles are all balanced systemically, you're healthy, carrying, like you were talking about earlier, your body is gonna be more resilient to being impacted by those stressors. Right?

You'll be able to handle it better physically in that sense too. So that's something we talk with our clients about is just building resiliency to it. 

I think at the heart of that is honestly less fear. If you're stuck, if you don't have the ability to go in different directions, there's fear underlying everything you do all day long.

And if you are free and can do and move any way, then that fear just kind of goes away, and then you can do all of the things you wanna do. And so that's really – It's a great empowering feeling. 

Yeah. It's freedom.

Are Stress, Anxiety, or Poor Sleep Holding You Back?

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