I Have Forward Head Posture - HELP!...

Forward Head Posture of Forward Head Carriage is when the head is noticeably forward in relation to the rest of the body.

Heredity

An accident or injury

Continued activity or positioning that your body got used too.

Notice the ear forward of the shoulder; the neck spine is often straight (basically it's lost the normal curve), the shoulder tend to roll forward, and the head will tilt upward independent of the neck to look straight.

The eyes always stay in line with the horizon, so on top of a neck that juts out you will actually have another postural misalignment too - the head will tilt upward...

We've talked about the shoulders rolling forward, but we may also hyper-lordosis or extension of the lumbar spine to tilt the eyes and head upward too.

You can see at this point, the ear primarily lines up with the front of the shoulder, the head is upright, upper back is straight, monitor is at a good view height and distance, arms and hands are in a comfortable typing position, and the feet and hands appear resting straight on the floor.

Over time this position may fail, and we simply need to "take a brake". (In other words - Get up and move around!)

In the video she also described head retraction exercises to help correct forward head posture.

Head Retraction Exercises are very good to help get rid of forward head carriage. Here's how to do them:

I like to utilize a mirror just to see my neck a bit. Basically imagine your head being on a track that goes front to back. Your head is slid forward a bit and we want to slide it back. Remember that visualizing the head and neck from the side, the ear is lined up with the front of the shoulders.

You are going to slide the head back, hold for 5 seconds and relax. Repeat this motion 10-20 times.

Don't:

• tilt the head up or down
• continue doing if you are really sore
• move the rest of your body

Let's face it, no one likes the look of forward head, any noticeable bad posture for that matter. The bodies nervous system is of major concern since it is the main control center for everything we do. Your neck spine is especially important because it is that much closer to the brain.

Even more activity occurs here, and part of the brain (the brain stem) actually goes down into the cervical spine. We are talking millions of reactions happening in milliseconds. Really, we have only scratched the surface when it comes to fully understanding the brain. So let's just acknowledge that and do whatever we can to keep our central nervous system working as best as possible.

Glide you head straight back (retracting the head) almost as if on a track going anterior to the posterior. Hold the head in the retracted position.

Do you sometimes feel like Egor, or the hunchback of Notre Dame? This is actually slightly different. They had a scoliosis (that's an accentuated curvature of the spine looking at it from the anterior or posterior. It cause what we call "rib humping". When we have a big curve the spine rotates too. Since the ribs attach to the sides of the thoracic vertebrae, when we turn or rotate the spine, the ribs are turned too.

Now, these guys may have this mainly, but I know they had forward head so they probably had some humping looking from the lateral or side view too. That's what I'm referring to here; that big ole hump that starts to form at the very base of the neck. As you can imagine, when the head and shoulders pull forward so does the upper back spine, this is the "hump" I'm referring to.

Take a look at this lateral cervical x-ray. Notice how the backs of all the vertebral bodies line up to make a nice "C".

We may get a "C" here but it's in the wrong direction. Imagine that spinal cord with its nerve branches, all relaxed in the first picture, being pulled taut in the opposite direction. That's what's happening here. When someone has a cervical kyphosis (curve towards the front of the body) or a military neck (completely straight).