Ideal posture while online relaxes body

The way we sit at the computer goes all the way down to our feet.

Sitting at the computer is not a temporary state, made for tensing and holding muscles in contracted positions. It’s a permanent state, like sitting, standing or holding a yoga pose. This type of active sitting is not just about the perfect alignment of fingers to keys, or the relaxation of the wrists, it’s a total body experience, filled with alignment and awareness.

The body is an interconnected network, and we can choose to hold tension or create alignment. The tension we carry spreads throughout the body in the same way that relaxation does.

Relaxation can be facilitated through good posture and taking breaks throughout computer use.

Sitting up straight is all about parallels. The thighs should be parallel, and the feet should be flat on the floor. Altering the knees lower or higher than the hips can compress the lower back or the stomach, said Jasmine Lieb, Hatha Yoga teacher and therapist.

There should still be a natural curve in the low back. From the side, your shoulders should be aligned with your hips, and your ears should be pulled all the way back so that they are lined up with the shoulders, said Pamela Randolph, personal fitness trainer at the John Wooden Center at UCLA.

This alignment frees up a lot of space in the chest, so we can breathe more easily when we do stressful activities like check our e-mail, write papers or even more relaxing things like reading on-screen.

“As your chest elevates, you come to a point where your shoulders can sit comfortably on the sides of your chest,” Lieb said.

The shoulders should be close to the rib cage, but not held there with tension. The mouse and keyboard should be placed within comfortable proximity of the arms, and the elbows should be at about a 90-degree angle, said Jiin Kim, physical therapist and orthopedic clinical specialist at the UCLA Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center.

The next thing is to be mindful of the hands and the arms. These are maybe where the pain sits, but they are only parts of the whole puzzle.

“Your hands can then relax to the keyboard and move. If you were playing piano, it would be the same thing. A pianist would never bend their wrists backwards to play piano, because eventually they know they’d wouldn’t be able to play piano,” Lieb said.

To prevent pinched nerves in the neck area from sitting at computers for long periods of time, make sure that you keep the chin retracted and be aware of the stretches that you need to do. To facilitate this type of alignment, imagine a string pulling from the crown of the head up toward the top of the ceiling, Randolph said.

Kim said she recommends that all her physical therapy patients do shoulder rolls, or more specifically, backward shoulder rolls ““ we already roll forward.

The eyes may be the most forgotten part of computer posture. Your eyes should face the screen at the height of an even horizon. Even if your posture is good, you can be drawn in to slouching by gazing down at the screen and keyboard of a laptop. The answer: Be sure the screen is at eye level. Use some books to prop up your laptop. More importantly, use an external keyboard so that the alignment of your eyes does not start to misplace the alignment of your arms and shoulders.

Lieb occasionally referred to sitting at the computer as a posture or a pose. This relates to the mindfulness in yoga, as the practice of holding a yoga pose engages the body and mind.

Physical stress and discomfort can sometimes be a result of forcing ourselves to sit at the computer for very long amounts of time. Remembering to take breaks is very important, even when we think we’re too busy to leave the desk.

A principle of yoga is ahimsa, or nonviolence, an important concept to remember as we force ourselves to sit at our computer writing essays, checking e-mails, or even just reading on-screen.

“We have to acknowledge our needs and practice ahimsa towards ourselves,” Lieb said.

I’ll hopefully be having a nonviolent relationship with my computer, as long as I can remember to take a deep breath, stretch, and align my posture from now on.