Slouching Kills
Feb 23, 2025
And now, a guest article from Friend and OS Instructor, Sarah Young...
Slouching Kills
and other lies I’ve been told...
As I write this, I’m currently slouching with my laptop in my lap. Is my slouching going to leave me in pain or sick or take years off my life? Nope. That’s not really how things work.
For years, I was taught, and pretty much accepted, falsehoods about bad posture. I was taught that good posture is important to health and that bad posture causes or is a sign of all kinds of maladies.
Without good posture and proper alignment, weakness, injuries, pain, illness, and even decreased mental acuity would occur.
And if you engaged in sports, you had to line up all your anatomical dots — ears, shoulders, hips, ankles — to achieve your full athletic potential and prevent injury.
Stand up straight or die!
However, none of this is true.
These misconceptions explain why, for years, I was often complimented on my good posture, but I was also experiencing pain in my body. The compliments were nice, but the pain sucked.
But I continued on the proper posture path because I’d heard from many people, chiropractors, coaches, trainers, massage therapists, and health care professionals, that proper posture held the promise of feeling better and living more optimally.
This kept me studying the subject of posture. So, I read books and attended posture-based workshops and workshops that focused on proper alignment in movement.
I did the exercises I was taught.
And I could stand upright against the wall and make my body fit the mold of “good posture.”
It was a lot of work.
And it didn’t really work.
The information and training I received didn’t create the sustainable changes I hoped to see in myself and my clients, which was frustrating.
But then I heard the most honest and insightful take I’d ever heard or read about posture.
The take? Posture is a reflex.
No talk of good posture or bad posture. Just — posture is a reflex.
It was a mic drop kinda moment.
Proper (good) posture wasn’t something to achieve. Posture was something to be lived and expressed.
Where did I hear this simple and powerful truth about posture? I heard it at the first Original Strength Pressing RESET course I attended.
Along with the posture being a reflex revelation, the folks teaching the workshop (wave and say hi to Tim) also shared the keys to strengthening the reflex.
The keys? You work with how the body is designed to move. The way to do this is to Press Reset.
Pressing RESET allows your body to naturally provide data to your nervous system, data that might be missing or temporarily misplaced due to lack of use, misuse, or injury.
This data informs your nervous system, enabling your postural reflex to operate more efficiently and helping your body make better choices.
And it all happens at the speed of the nervous system. And that’s wicked fast.
RESETS are the foundation of a more robust, dynamic, and resilient postural reflex. This is important because your posture is how you meet and interact with the world. Essentially, your posture is you.
At that first OS course, as we Pressed RESET, I saw people reach squat depths and strength PRs they didn’t think possible. I witnessed people move more fluidly as their bodies found a more natural and optimal alignment as they moved. They didn’t have to stop and think about it.
I experienced the same shifts within myself and witnessed the same phenomenon at every OS course I’ve attended.
And one young guy at that first course had scoliosis. It was easy to see the effects of his curve when the course started. But as we moved through the RESETS, his body shifted. His body found more balance within the uniqueness of the scoliotic design of his spine. And like all of us, he was geeked — full of joy— because he could suddenly do things he thought were out of his reach. He skipped that day for the first time in his life.
And here’s the thing: our designs are unique because we are all different and the same in so many ways. But Pressing RESET works for every body—for everybody. It has helped me move out of pain when I’ve done stupid things, and the RESETS have greatly benefitted my clients.
Unfortunately, because the Original Strength RESETS aren’t fancy, people can miss and/or forget the powerful shifts that come with Pressing RESET.
But I can attest that just when I think I’ve gotten all I can out of a RESET, it’s usually a sign that there’s more richness to be discovered.
Now, back to my slouching…
Slouching is just a form my body takes for a period of time. It’s neither good nor bad.
Now, if I’ve fallen off my RESET wagon, my slouching can become me because my postural reflex isn’t strong enough to quickly shift me out of my slouch mode. That doesn’t feel good.
However, if I show up each day and do as little as 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there of RESETS, my body can move into a slouching posture and easily out of it. My body can inherently find its balance and shift from slouch mode to upright mode.
The RESETS nourish my posture reflex — my nervous system — and sustain it.
So yeah, slouching doesn’t kill.
And posture isn’t good or bad or right or wrong.
Posture isn’t a thought-through and over-cued alignment of your body.
Posture is a reflex.
And Pressing RESET renews that reflex.
Which ultimately will renew you.
Sarah Young, MS lives and works in Michigan. Her goal is to serve others in breathing better + moving better + feeling better — to help people feel more at home in their bodies and reclaim more of their untapped reserves of strength + resilience + health. She works with clients both in person and remotely. Her email is sarah at asimplewellness dot com if you’d like to contact her with any questions you may have.
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