How to Sleep for Better Posture

We use intention and pay attention to the way we move during work hours. We overlook the fact that sleeping in the proper position can also help improve a person’s good posture. There are many benefits of recovering in a good sleeping position. We rest better, recover better, and wake up feeling refreshed. Sitting with good posture at a computer desk for 8 hours is an endurance event. It takes strength, energy, and balance. The less our sleep quality is, the quicker we get tired the next day. The earlier we get tired in the day, the quicker our good posture turns into bad posture. Conversely, using more healthy sleeping habits will directly improve the posture we have throughout the next work day.

How to Sleep for Better Posture
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How to Sleep for Better Posture

Sleeping with bad habits can easily cause muscle tension issues and repetitive strain injuries. To improve your sleep quality, practice these good sleeping habits to prepare the body for a good night’s rest and recovery.

How to Choose a Good Pillow

My personal choice of pillow has both a medium density and a medium thickness. It’s not too firm, so it doesn’t feel like I’m resting my head on a hard foam yoga block. It’s also not too soft or too thin, which wouldn’t support my head, neck, and spine correctly. The medium density, medium thickness type of pillow that is ideal for me supports both my neck and head when I’m sleeping on my back. When I sleep on my side, I will fold the same pillow in half, doubling the thickness of the pillow, which is perfect for keeping my neck and spine straight and well supported (which avoids neck pain). We’ll talk more about each sleeping position later in this article.

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How to Properly Sit at a Computer Desk

The average American office worker sits at a computer desk 40 hours per week. That’s over 2,000 hours per year. Multiply those 2,000 hours by how many years you’ve had a job working in a sitting position. That’s a lot of repetitive strain to undo before we can sit with correct sitting posture. Learning to sit properly in an office chair is going to take patience. The good news is that I’ve been obsessively learning and testing different good habits for years. My story is based on my own experience. The different ways I corrected my poor posture aren’t medical advice. Choose which info could be helpful for you and your situation. Talk with your doctor and be the strongest advocate possible for your own health.

How to Properly Sit at a Computer Desk
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It’s super easy to hunch over a keyboard when you’re working for prolonged periods of time. It’s the most common poor posture habit when sitting in a desk chair. Reading a monitor from arm’s length, as well as using a keyboard and mouse, are all actions that occur in front of our bodies. These actions naturally force a large amount of muscles and tendons to constantly pull us out of sitting up straight.

Not sitting properly at a computer desk causes many negative effects. The short-term effects that bothered me the most were being tired constantly and having a cloudy mental clarity. The long-term effects I suffered from were pain in the neck and back, poor blood circulation, weak legs, stiff neck, tight hips, and weight gain.

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Welcome to SittingPosture.com

Welcome to my website, SittingPosture.com.

I’m incredibly proud of the website’s design and content. I’m excited about the future and this quick article will give you a preview.

3 Ways to Improve Computer Posture Immediately! Book by Todd Bowen
Ways to Improve Computer Posture ebook, by Todd Bowen.

Thanks for joining me on this journey. I respect your inbox and promise to only email you crucial content that’ll improve your quality of life. That is, if you’re on my email list. So if you’re not on my list, sign up to get my free updates here or at SittingPosture.com/newsletter.

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What is a repetitive strain injury?

What is a repetitive strain injury?

re·pet·i·tive strain in·ju·ry – a condition in which the prolonged performance of repetitive actions, causes pain or impairment of function in the tendons and muscles involved (definition credit: Google)

Many people talk about how sitting for long periods of time causes many different injuries (heart problems, joint pain, weight gain, skeletal alignment issues, headaches, etc etc). However, notice how the above definition for repetitive strain injury only contains 2 body parts: tendons and muscles. When it comes down to it, the health of our muscles and tendons is where we need to put our ergonomic focus.

When I say improve the “health” of our muscles and tendons, this doesn’t mean go and overtrain in the gym.

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Dear desk jockeys, (an open letter)

Dear desk jockeys,

We sit at a computer desk 40+ hours per week. The human body wasn’t designed to do that. It actually wasn’t designed to be in ANY one (same) position that long. It’s only going to cause massive pain and dysfunction in our bodies. 

As desk jockeys, it’s not our fault. But, it IS our responsibility to adapt, change, and heal.

Many years ago, it was a fascinating new concept to sit at a computer desk and make a living. People realized they could pay for a house, cars, all their bills while not even getting out of their chair. They realized they hardly had to move at work anymore. Work was going to be great and life was going to change tremendously. They were right about one of those.

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