by: Rachel Tice, LMT, 200-RYT, Holistic Wellness Practitioner

Many of us go through life hearing, “stand up tall and strong,” or we are asked to balance books on our heads while walking for our posture. But why? Posture is a direct reflection of spasticity (stiff and rigid) of the muscles within the body. This can directly affect many processes within the body like balance, lung capacity, pain throughout the body, mood, confidence, and energy levels. Good posture can vary from person to person depending on physical limitation and genetic difference that causes irregular growth within the body. Traditionally, posture is where the head is over the shoulders, shoulders over the hips, knees under the hips, and ankles under the knees. This can look different from person to person, but what if we can improve our posture by looking deeper into the function of the musculoskeletal system (muscles and bones in the body)?  

At Sacred Transcendence, we perform something called Postural Assessment each time someone comes into the office or a service (excluding workshops and classes). Postural Assessment is a screening process that allows medical professionals to evaluate the functionality and dysfunction that is happening within the body. This is a great tool that allows medical professionals to understand what areas in the body may be in compromise and directly affecting how the structure of the body may be causing some of the symptoms that you may be experiencing. There are many ways medical professionals assess the body and all have their own reasoning just like taking your blood pressure at the doctor’s office, Physical Therapists, a Massage Therapist or Myomassologist will take images and measurements, with the use of goniometrics, of things like forward head posture, angles of the joints and much more.  

This aids us in providing the community with the utmost therapeutic session possible each time! This is why we perform Postural Assessment no matter what service you receive! We take measurements for forward head posture, as well as images of your standing posture for initial assessment. This gives us a basic idea of what we may encounter like short pec muscles, weak quadriceps and more! We also use these images and measurements for comparison to previous sessions to see if we are achieving the goals that you come to us for, like better posture, or less pain in the neck and shoulder region, or less lower back pain. These images and measurements are kept private! Meaning no one sees them except the staff that is working with you! As licensed medical partitioners in Michigan, we are required by law to take notes (SOAP NOTES) for each session that depict what your medical history is (the reason we ask for a detailed medical history), your chief complaint of the day, the lotion type we use, the techniques we perform, what we have noticed within the session (muscles that are tight, new scars or cuts, lack of range of motion, etc), and what we (you and your therapist) plans on for between sessions (like certain stretches, exercises or different sessions) and what we want to focus on for the next few appointments. All of which is to benefit your posture and provide you with a different approach to health and wellness by improving your posture one massage at a time.