To understand what a posture pole is and why we prescribe to it most of our patients, you have to understand what poor posture is and what it’s doing to your body long term. What is poor posture and what does it do to the body? When your head drops forward and your shoulders round forward, this sends an immediate signal to the brain to activate the Sympathetic nervous system (aka fight or flight response). This response should only be activated when there is an immediate threat to your survival, which requires immediate action (i.e. to fight or to run away). Prolonged stress can cause the following:

Sympathetic Dominance occurs when a certain area of the brain (mesencephalon) is wound – up. This can be influenced by lifestyle, stress, posture and other things.The way our muscles are distributed on our body is different on the top and bottom half of our body if we draw a line horizontally across the body at the level of the shoulder blades (about the midpoint of the spinal column) But like anything if we understand why we are doing something, we are more likely to follow through with it and be more consistent if we are clear about the purpose and the end goal of our actions. The Edinger Westphal Nucleus – which constricts the pupil when someone has been in sympathetic dominance mode for too long. Generally, we ask our patients to start by laying on a posture pole two times per day for 5 minutes at a time. Once they can lay on the posture pole for 5 minutes without pain or any feelings of discomfort, they can then progress by increasing the time they lay on the posture pole. The ideal amount of time to work up to is 15 minutes. Sympathetic Dominance occurs when you stay in fight or flight mode for too long. It suppresses the digestive, reproductive and immune systems.

This is why we prescribe posture poles and other types of exercises to help improve poor posture. What is a posture pole? minutes of laying down with no interruptions might be easy for some people, but for people with busy minds it can be quite difficult. Today our focus is on explaining the workings of the posture pole and this takes us on a more in-depth look at number 2, the red nucleus.Bad posture is something I see every day in practice – yes, EVERY DAY! But why is posture so important? it’s not because it simply looks bad, it’s because it sets off a cascade of events in the body which can lead to pain, and poor overall health. While the Autonomic Nervous System is largely automatic, we can actually have an impact on it. We can restore it to parasympathetic mode. Basically there are 5 important neurons in this mesencephalon which are important when it comes to Sympathetic dominance: