The Link Between Bad Posture, Movement, and Anxiety

Although more research needs to be done on relationship between posture, movement, and anxiety, we have found a clear correlation between the three while training to improve people’s biomechanics. Exercise is often seen as a good tool for managing stress, but could we setting the bar a bit higher by not only focusing on moving more, but improving the quality of that movement?

The Nervous System

Our nervous system has two modes of operating. “Fight or Flight” or sympathetic, and “Rest and Digest” or parasympathetic. Both of these functions have been carefully developed by nature over millions of years and have been reserved for a specific purpose.

“Fight or Flight”

This state would have generally been reserved as the name suggests, for moments of fight or flight. If we needed to battle it out in confrontation, or flee from impending danger our body would kick into this mode in order to help us escape the situation. Our heart starts pumping more, our muscles receive more oxygen, and our body is flooded with stress hormones like cortisol which can help us to do superhuman things.

“Rest and Digest”

This function of our nervous system is the state we are supposed to be in the rest of the time. This allows our body to rest and regenerate and during this nervous state arousal our body priorities things like digestion, cell regeneration and healing. we are designed to be in this state the majority of the time, only dipping into fight or flight when absolutely necessary.

Modern Life

Unfortunately, the stresses of modern life have created a situation where we as humans already spend more time in fight or flight than we are supposed to. Stresses like financial worry, family problems, and even the pressure of simply working can keep us in an elevated nervous system state. On top of that, we are the only animal that can manufacture this stress response in the absence of any real danger.

Other animals turn to fight or flight in moments of danger, but automatically shift back when the threat is gone. Imagine a zebra awake all night worrying about the possibility of facing a lion the next day the same way we could keep ourselves awake with worry about a big presentation that needed to be done in work. Our human brain makes this possible but not theirs.

Bad Posture and Movement

While we can generally accept the above life stresses as contributing factors when it comes to anxiety, we generally don’t think of how someone moves or carries themselves as being something that could be very impactful. Again, let’s imagine a scenario less like today’s world.

Years ago when we roamed the Savannah, how we moved would have been critical for our survival. If we couldn’t travel long distances maybe we would be unable to acquire food, or maybe the tribe would have to leave us behind if we couldn’t keep up. This inability to move well would have absolutely triggered a stress response in us, and while we have evolved beyond these problems in today’s world, our nervous system is still set up the same way.

Not only this, but it generally takes our bodies a lot more energy to move badly. Every day tasks can be a real slog if we are dealing with constant pain or risk on injury. Our nervous system can feel the stress our body is under just simply moving day to day, and takes it as a threat. This leads us back to fight or flight and having to deal stress hormones running through our body more often than we should.

Quality over Quantity

While exercises is often seen as medicine, it’s important that we are a little bit more critical of how this is done. People often get the short term benefits of an endorphin rush after completing exercise, but in the long run if this exercise is compounding existing postural and movement issues this benefit will be short lived.

It’s a much better approach to try to improve your structure and the quality of your movement before thinking about simply moving more. That way you can still benefit from endorphins associated with exercise but do it in a way that also allows you better nervous system regulation in the long run.

This is also a much better first step than looking to things like breathwork and meditation in order to help calm anxiety. For the same reasons, how you move will be the most impactful thing that you can do to get started.

Conclusion

Training to improve your biomechanics is a great way to improve your general levels of anxiety and is really important in order to regulate your nervous system. Clients who can improve their structure have reported improving mental health issues as a result, even without directly focusing on them, so this is something we fell very passionate about promoting at Functional Patterns Dublin.