There is currently no scientific evidence supporting an ideal posture to reduce, prevent or avoid pain. The issue of posture causing pain often arises as people try to rationalise their pain and I think this is completely understandable. When it’s difficult to understand or assign something to the cause of pain, posture is often blamed and unfortunately strongly reinforced by our social beliefs, health professionals and a huge industry built around the ‘bad’ posture = pain marketing campaign.

The truth is that pain is wonderfully complex and at times difficult to understand. Especially the fact that pain is emergent in nature. That is, pain emerges from biological, psychological and social influences.

Pain doesn’t follow a simple linear pattern. The idea that “I sit in a certain way and I get pain, therefore my sitting posture is causing me pain” is a common misconception.

We should therefore focus our treatment plan on factors that do contribute to pain.

Factors that do contribute to pain:

These include your physical activity levels, general level of conditioning, stress, sleep, beliefs about pain, social influences and even mood and other psychological factors.

In saying that, its normal to experience pain when we sit (or stand) for too long. Our body has receptors specifically designed to pick up on chemical changes that keep our tissues healthy and a normal pain system will let us know when we need to move. This still doesn’t mean your posture is causing pain, it simply means its time to move.

How can Physiotherapy help?

It’s important to deconstruct your story with your health professional and start to learn about pain. Specifically, what evidence based factors may be contributing to your pain experience as its different for everyone. You should also let go of the belief that your posture is the cause of your pain, this might be the thing holding you back.

By Jason Clarke