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Once your body begins to slouch, return to the wall to reestablish your posture. Throughout the day, practice good posture habits like holding your cell phone at eye level and taking note of your posture any time you pass a mirror or window. For more tips on how to stand up straight, including how to strengthen your neck, shoulder and pectoral muscles, scroll down. Did this summary help you?
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Cookie Settings. Learn why people trust wikiHow. Download Article Explore this Article parts. Tips and Warnings. Related Articles. Article Summary. Part 1. Back up against a wall. If you can find a spot of floor and wall that are flat and roughly perpendicular, you can easily assess your current posture and reset your body into proper alignment.
Your feet should be shoulder-width apart, flat on the floor beneath you, and six inches off the wall. Notice what touches the wall. Ideally, you want three contact points between your body and the wall: the back of your head, your shoulder blades, and your buttocks. If you have poor standing posture, you may find that your mid-back perhaps along with your buttocks touches the wall first. Although less common, some people lean back too far instead of slouching forward, in which case your head alone may touch the wall first.
If you are not making contact with your head, shoulder blades, and buttocks, reorient your upper body without moving your feet so that you are in a proper standing position. Step away and hold your positioning. Once you get a feel for standing up straight against the wall, try walking away while maintaining your proper upper-body posture.
Before long, your body will want to revert to its former, familiar positioning. Try to focus on how proper positioning feels so that you can maintain it as long as possible. Remind yourself of the benefits. It is not a complicated process for most people to improve their posture, but it does take time and effort. It also makes it harder to breathe deeply and fully, which further reduces energy levels. The pressure placed on the vertebrae due to poor posture can lead to pinched nerves, stiffness, decreased flexibility and mobility, and even reduced sensation in the extremities.
Good posture makes your muscles more limber; relaxes tension in your neck, shoulders, and back which can reduce your stress level ; and can even boost your mood and psyche. Studies indicate that people with good posture are on average more confident and energetic, and have better memory skills. Part 2. Practice good posture habits.
Not surprisingly, this helps to instill poor posture habits. With active awareness and some simple changes, you can instill good habits instead. This simple adjustment can do wonders for your posture. Take note of your posture any time you stand in front of a mirror or pass a reflective window. Remaining vigilant will help you retrain your body. When you have the option of standing or sitting, choose to stand. I slumped farther down in the car and at the dinner table, rolling my eyes and proudly accepting my role as a slouchy kid who had more important things to care about than poor posture.
I had the confidence thing down, thank you very much. But when I picked up a roll of film from a disposable camera a week after my senior prom, I sat in the CVS parking lot in a pool of year-old devastation: Despite the careful thought with which I had picked out my perfect fuchsia dress, I didn't like any of these pictures.
And it was all because my posture was bad. This sent me on a decade-long mission to learn how to stand up straight, and it wasn't just because I wanted to look better. As technology evolved, so did opportunities to slump—computers and smartphones made it so that my neck was never not craned toward an illuminated screen.
This led to neck pain and headaches , shoulder pain, and constant knots in my back. The funny thing is, for years I thought standing up straight came down to the simple act of having the willpower to stand and sit in a more erect position, no matter how painful it was to hold.
But nothing worked, and when the time came for me to get married, I decided enough was enough—I would not recreate those slouchy senior prom photos on my wedding day. And so began an intensive research project on posture, and I'm happy to report that by my wedding day, I was pretty proud of how straight I could stand up, not to mention how much better my back, shoulders, and neck felt.
Here's what I learned. No, good posture doesn't start in your shoulders—it starts in your core. I figured that out when I started working with trainer Karen Nuccio , who explained to me that when most people feel tense, they hold that tension in their shoulders and neck.
So whether I was having a difficult moment in a workout class a recipe for my shoulders to head straight for my ears! And you know what? My core got a lot stronger. I'm a big believer that yoga helps with everything, but posture is high on this list. As someone who goes to yoga about four times a week, I can't say enough good things about those poses that open up your upper back.
Bow pose, bridge pose, and even full wheel when I was feeling particularly open! Plus, yoga classes actually involve more core work than most people think, so that was another helpful factor in my yoga practice. I also started utilizing props more often in yoga classes, and I found that sitting on blankets and blocks helped my posture in class, which translated to helping my posture in real life.
One thing I hadn't spent enough time thinking about was how much the persistent knots in my neck and shoulders were holding me back from good posture. But when my colleague Lindsay who has excellent posture, I might add pointed out that massage could be worth a try, I started getting regular massages from the in-home massage service Zeel and wracked every massage therapist's brain for tips on opening up my back and shoulders. Regular massage encourages balance in your body and helps create the space to move in a more natural, healthy, and free-flowing way.
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