Maintaining better posture while sitting at your desk at
work
By AMY SCHOENFELD, the New York Times
MATT DRUDGE recently noted an
anniversary of his aggregator news site with a Twitter post: “18 years of
DRUDGE REPORT in February! And STILL sitting ;).”
Mr. Drudge, 46, hasn’t just been sitting for two decades.
Like so many workers chained to their technology, he has been hunched over
desktops, laptops, smartphones and tablets, and it’s all taken a toll on his
body. He tries to limit the time he spends sitting to four or five hours a day,
but sometimes he sits for up to 17 hours.
To ease his back, neck and shoulder pain,
Mr. Drudge says he has learned how to adjust his posture. Whether he’s typing
in the car, from the wooden folding chair in his Miami home office, or from a
boardwalk bench at the beach on cloudy days, he makes sure to tilt the top of
his pelvis forward, roll his shoulders back, elongate his spine and straighten
his craned neck.
Mr. Drudge is one of thousands of people who have trained
with Esther Gokhale, a posture guru in Silicon Valley. She believes that people
suffer from pain and dysfunction because they have forgotten how to use their
bodies. It’s not the act of sitting for long periods that causes us pain, she
says, it’s the way we position ourselves.
Ms. Gokhale (pronounced go-CLAY) is not helping aching
office workers with high-tech gadgets and medical therapies. Rather, she says
she is reintroducing her clients to what she calls “primal posture” — a way of
holding themselves that is shared by older babies and toddlers, and that she
says was common among our ancestors before slouching became a way of life. It
is also a posture that Ms. Gokhale observed during research she conducted in a
dozen other countries, as well as in India, where she was raised.
For a method based not on technology but primarily on
observations of people, it has beenembraced
by an unlikely crowd: executives, board members and staff members at some
of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies, including Google and Oracle; and heavy
users of technology like Mr. Drudge.
“I need to do things that make sense and that I can see
results from. Esther’s work is like that,” said Susan Wojcicki, 44, one of
Google’s senior vice presidents, who has suffered from back and neck pain that
she attributes to doing too much work at her desk.
Ms. Gokhale is not the first to suggest that changing
posture is the key to a healthy spine. Practitioners of the Alexander Technique and
the creators of the Aplomb Institute in Paris similarly help
clients find more natural and comfortable ways to position themselves. Pilates
and physical
therapy can improve posture and bring awareness to it. A handful of
companies, like Lumo BodyTech, now sell personal posture monitors, offering smartphone
users constant feedback about the way they hold their bodies.
Ms. Gokhale’s methods have not been tested scientifically,
though a doctor at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation is planning
on conducting clinical trials by the end of the year.
But Ms. Gokhale, who was trained as a biochemist at
Princeton University and studied at Stanford’s medical school, has some
influence among medical professionals, particularly in Silicon Valley. Over 100
have referred patients to her, and a similar number have taken her course, she
says.
FOR many office workers in the United States, sitting at a
desk all day goes hand in hand with back, neck and shoulder discomfort. Stress
and poor positioning can bring on aches or exacerbate injuries among workers
faced with heavy computing, constant travel and long meetings. Regardless of
occupation or lifestyle, backaches affect most Americans — about 8 in 10 deal
with the pain at some point in their lifetimes, according to Dr. Richard Deyo,
a professor of family medicine at Oregon Health and Science University.
The expenses are huge as well. By one estimate that appeared in The
Journal of the American Medical Association, the national cost of treating
people with back and neck pain was $86 billion in 2005. And with back pain one
of the top reasons for worker disability, missed work because of these aches
may cost employers close to $7
billion a year, according to one study.
For the majority of people with back pain, the aches are
short-lived and relief comes with rest and time, according to Dr. Deyo. But
methods to help those with chronic pain are diverse. Using a standing desk at
work has become a popular way to ease discomfort. Exercise, yoga, acupuncture and
chiropractic have also been shown to reduce pain. Medical treatments like
surgery and steroids continue
to be important options, doctors say, even amid concerns that these have
been overused.
Dr. Haleh Agdassi, a rehabilitation doctor with the Palo
Alto Medical Foundation in California, sees back and neck pain so frequently
among heavy users of computers that she calls it the “Silicon Valley syndrome.”
She encourages clients to try a mix of nonsurgical strategies, but finds it
frustrating that treatments for such a common problem are only modestly
effective.
“There’s no magic bullet out there for back pain,” she says.
“That can be overwhelming for patients. It’s an anxious, vulnerable crowd —
they’re looking for solutions.”
Ms. Gokhale, 52, can relate to the anxiety of searching for
an answer. She previously dealt with pain in her lower back, first as a college
student practicing yoga, then as a young mother with sciatica. She
eventually had surgery for a herniated disk, but it failed, she said.
When doctors suggested she try a second time, Ms. Gokhale
began a search for other answers. Many of her own clients come to her similarly
exasperated, she said.
Mr. Drudge read Ms. Gokhale’s book, “8 Steps to a Pain-Free
Back,” before training with her in person. “I needed her touch, her
observations and her humanity,” he said.
Donna Dubinsky, co-founder and former chief executive of
Palm, worked with Ms. Gokhale two years ago after trying chiropractic,
cortisone shots and physical therapy to minimize the pain of herniated disks in
her back.
“All of these other things were about symptom relief. The
question for me became: what could I do to address the root cause?” said Ms.
Dubinsky, 57, who now stands during many meetings to practice Ms. Gokhale’s
posture lessons. “Not that it’s a miracle cure, but of all the things I’ve
tried, what Esther taught me was the most effective,” she added.
IN Ms. Gokhale’s courses, offered in her
Palo Alto, Calif., studio and in cities across the
country, students relearn how to sit, stand, sleep and walk. While some clients
take private classes, many enroll in group workshops with eight to 10 people
who meet for six 90-minute sessions. While the students are often strangers,
the classes are casual and intimate: most clients wear yoga clothes or sweat
pants, and they giggle awkwardly as Ms. Gokhale adjusts their bodies.
Ms. Gokhale says that most Americans tend to be relaxed and
slumped (think of a C-shaped spine), or arched up and tense (an S shape), the
stand-up-straight style of posture that some parents demand of their children.
She helps her students return their bodies to the stance that she says nature
intended: upright and relaxed (a tall J spine).
With the care of a kindergarten teacher, Ms. Gokhale adjusts
clients’ bodies from bottom to top. She helps clients relax the front of the
pelvis downward, so the belt line slants forward and the butt angles back, so
“your behind is behind you, not under you” (a contrast to the neutral pelvis
recommended in Pilates and some physical therapy).
Ms. Gokhale guides students’ rib cages that sway too far
back, so they are flush with the stomach. She takes their hunched shoulders,
rolls them up and brings them gently back and down. And she helps students
release tension in their necks by re-centering their heads over their spines
and pulling upward slightly at the hairline on the neck. The result is an
elongated and well-stacked spine that many students say they can maintain
comfortably because their muscles are not strained.
Ray Bingham, 67, the presiding director of Oracle’s board,
was referred to Ms. Gokhale last fall for his lower back
pain. Mr. Bingham says he has found relief after using her methods and he
diligently practices his newfound ways of sitting, walking and standing. “This
is not an approach like physical therapy with a beginning and an end; this is a
new way of being from now on,” Mr. Bingham said.
Ms. Gokhale encourages people to take the class with
co-workers and family members, so that students can help remind each other to
adjust their bodies. But even those who work alone find ways to remember their
posture.
After doing a group workshop with Ms. Gokhale this year, Mr.
Drudge says many things now remind him to make adjustments — seeing others with
poor posture at Starbucks or the gym, passing by his reflection in a window, or
sitting down in a chair to work.
“But I don’t beat myself up about it. When I’m aware of my
posture, I fix it,” Mr. Drudge said. “And eventually, I think, it becomes who
you are.”
A version of this article appeared in print on May 12, 2013,
on page BU3 of the New York edition with the headline: The
Posture Guru of Silicon Valley.
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