Posture & Ergonomics Videos in Mount Prospect, IL

Short, practical videos to help you sit, sleep, stand, and move with less strain.

THE SERIES

7 Short Videos, One Topic Each

Welcome to our office. We are so glad you are part of the Advanced Physical Medicine and Therapy community. As you start your care these, Dr. Vijay Patel, DC, CCSP®, walks you through simple changes you can make at work, at home, and in bed. Each video is 2–3 minutes. Watch them in order or jump to the topic you need.

VIDEO 1 OF 7

Why Good Posture Matters More Than You Think

Posture affects more than how you look. It changes how easily you breathe and how much strain your spine carries every day. Dr. Patel explains why posture matters and gives a quick tour of the spine.

Key takeaways

Slumping makes it harder to take a full, deep breath.
One study of older adults found a stooped, forward posture was linked to a 44% higher death rate over about 4 years.
Your spine holds you up, lets you move, and protects the nerves that run your whole body.
Posture is a habit, and small daily changes add up.

Read the transcript

Hello everyone, Dr. VJ Patel here, chiropractor with Advanced Physical Medicine and Therapy. Welcome to our multi-part series on ergonomics and posture. I’m going to start our series with posture.

Why should it matter more than you think? Number one, I want you to do an exercise first. I want you to take a seat on a stool or a chair and kind of sit as you would normally sit in a slouch position. I want you in this position, take the deepest breath that you possibly can in.

Next thing I want you to do is sit up as tall as you can. Chest out, shoulders back, lower back supported, head retracted, jaw parallel to the floor. Do the same exercise one more time. Most of you should notice that there was a dramatic improvement in lung capacity.

So, not only does having good posture and ergonomics reduce stress on your lungs, allow your lungs to get a deeper breath in, turn over some of that old stagnant air, but it also helps to reduce stress on your digestive tract as well as your circulatory system by reducing pressure in your abdominal cavity when you’re in a slouch position. Sitting up nice and tall helps to create more space, thereby reducing strain on your digestive system, as well as your postural muscles. One thing that’s important to know is posture is a habit and it’s not a trait. Small daily changes can add up.

Pain is often the last sign and not the first. And you shouldn’t change your posture after you notice pain. The earlier you do it, the better off you are. Some studies have found that older adults with forward head position, slouch posture have a 44% higher risk of mortality over a 4-year period.

So, another good argument for practicing good posture. Again, Dr. VJ Patel here. Keep your eye open for our next installment on posture and ergonomics.

VIDEO 2 OF 7

How to Set Up Your Office Chair to Prevent Back Pain

Most people spend hours a day in a chair. A few simple adjustments can take pressure off your lower back.

Key takeaways

Sit all the way back in the seat.
Support the curve of your lower back with lumbar support or a rolled towel.
Keep your knees level with your hips and your feet flat.
If your feet don’t reach the floor, use a footrest or sturdy box.
Stand up and move every 30–45 minutes.

Read the transcript

Hi folks, Dr. VJ Patel here, chiropractor. This is part two of our series. I’m going to tell you today how to set up your office chair to prevent back pain and to improve energy levels.

The first thing you want to do is you want to make sure your hips are all the way back into the back of the seat. And you don’t want to be sitting off the edge of the chair where you don’t have any back support. You want to sit all the way back to make sure that your lower back is supported so it’s hard for you to slouch or slump. You also want to make sure you have a lumbar support curve in the lower back.

If you don’t have a lumbar support cushion that you can vertically adjust, whether you’re 4 foot 10 or 6’4, you can roll up a towel and you can move that up or down. And the best place to put it is where it feels most comfortable for you when you sit back in your chair. The next thing you want to make sure you do is that your seat height is adjusted so that your knee and your hip are parallel or the thigh is parallel to the floor. You want to make sure that you’re not too high or conversely either too low or your knees are all the way up.

So that’s the ideal height position. You may find that for those individuals that are too short, you might want to get a stool underneath your feet. If your desk is high and your feet are short, your feet don’t actually touch the ground. Get a little stool so you can put your feet up.

It’ll help to reduce the strain on the lower back. Common mistakes, perching on the front of your or the edge of your chair. That undoes the back rest. The best chair still fails if you never move.

You want to get up every 30 to 45 minutes. A home office or a kitchen chair. Make sure you add a cushion or a rolled up towel. And most people spend more time in their office chair than they do in bed.

So, you want to make sure that your back is supported correctly. I look forward to seeing you during our next segment.

VIDEO 3 OF 7

How to Set Up Your Desk for Sitting and Standing

A screen that is too low pulls your head forward all day, and standing still for hours tires your lower back. Dr. Patel shows how to set up your desk, monitor, and laptop, and how to stand with less strain.

Key takeaways

Place the top of your screen at or just below eye level, about an arm’s length away.
Keep your keyboard and mouse close, with elbows at your sides and wrists straight.
On a laptop, raise the screen and use a separate keyboard and mouse.
With a sit-stand desk, switch positions through the day.
When standing, rest one foot on a 6" ledge or stool and switch sides every few minutes.

Read the transcript

Hi folks, Dr. VJ Patel here, a chiropractor with Advanced Physical Medicine and Therapy. Today I’ll be talking to you how to set up your standing or sitting workstation. The rules are essentially the same, particularly if you work on a laptop.

When you’re sitting and standing or standing at a desk, you do want to make sure that the keyboard height and mouse height are at a position where that you don’t have to reach or raise or lower your arms. You’ll notice here this desk height or countertop height is right at where my elbows are completely relaxed. I have my keyboard here. You want to make sure the keyboard and mouse are close to your body so you’re not reaching.

So when I’m typing, I can be back and forth here with a very slight motion of my arm without having me to reach up like this or forward. You want to make sure that the mouse is at a place where I can keep my elbow exactly stationary. So, I use these muscles in my neck and shoulders a lot less. Monitor height.

When we’re sitting on a laptop, typically if you don’t have a separate keyboard, you don’t have an easel or something to set up your monitor. So, it’s a little higher. There’ll be a lot of strain on the neck, upper back, and shoulders. Make sure you elevate your monitor to the point where your view when you look directly out in front of you is viewing the top portion of the screen.

Make sure you’re at a distance where you don’t have to reach in or lean back. Ideally, you want to get a wireless keyboard and mouse with a little USB or Bluetooth dongle and that will allow you to work very comfortably for longer periods of time without straining the neck and lower back. Again, when you’re standing for long periods of time, make sure you have good footwear. Make sure you’re standing on an anti-fatigue mat as opposed to a hard floor or tiled floor.

Use a stool. And you can alternate every five, 10, 15 minutes moving it from side to side or you can get your leg elevated. This will help to reduce the strain and fatigue on your lower back. The same thing applies when you’re washing dishes, preparing food, or working at a counter for long periods of time.

VIDEO 4 OF 7

Text Neck: How to Use Your Phone Without Neck Pain

Looking down at your phone adds load to your neck. Here’s how to use your phone and tablet with less strain.

Key takeaways

Bring the phone up to your eyes instead of dropping your head.
Tuck your elbows in to support your arms.
Take regular screen breaks.
Never text and drive.

Read the transcript

Hi folks, Dr. VJ Patel here, chiropractor, and welcome to part four of our ergonomics and posture series. Today I’ll be talking to you about how to use your phone without neck pain or reducing fatigue on your neck and your shoulders. Your head weighs 10 to 12 pounds.

So when you tilt your head down, there’s a lot more work that the muscles in your neck and shoulders have to do to support that head. One modeling study estimated that the load on the neck more than tripled if you started flexing your head compared to when your head was in a neutral position. Easy way to fix that is you want to make sure you try to bring your phone up to your eyes. So instead of looking down at your phone like this, you want to ideally make sure you get your arms up here.

Maybe rest them on your armrests. Or if you’re at home, you can place a bunch of shams on your lap and put your elbows up on the shams so that you can bring your phone up to your head and you can type like this without holding your arms out in space where your shoulders get tired. So that is one technique you can use to help reduce the stress in your neck. You do want to make sure you tuck your elbows in.

Take frequent breaks. Try not to be on the phone for extended periods of time. I know we’ve all had the experience where you get sucked into a rabbit hole. You’ve been on your phone for an hour, god forbid, playing a game or on social media, and by the time you come up, you all of a sudden you realize your neck hurts.

Sometimes you’re a little lightheaded. You might even have a headache. So, try to avoid that. Safety tip, never text and drive.

Tablets and reading in bed also cause the same problem. Kids and teens tend to pick up this habit early, so you want to make sure you avoid that. So again, pillows on your laps, use your armrest, get your arms or elbows in and up so your head is not angled down. You want to make sure your head is up when you’re typing and working on your phone.

Please stay tuned for our part five and I’ll be talking to you about sleep position and sleep posture. I’ll see you then.

VIDEO 5 OF 7

Best Sleeping Positions for Neck and Back Pain

You spend about a third of your life in bed. The right position and pillow help your spine rest in a neutral position.

Key takeaways

Back sleeping: a thin pillow under your neck and a pillow under your knees.
Side sleeping: a pillow that fills the space between ear and shoulder, plus a pillow between your knees.
Stomach sleeping twists your neck for hours; try switching to your side.
Your head should stay level with your spine.

Read the transcript

Hi folks, Dr. VJ Patel here, chiropractor with Advanced Physical Medicine and Therapy. Welcome to our next installment on ergonomics and posture. Today I’ll be talking to you about sleep position and how to reduce neck and lower back pain when sleeping.

I’ll be talking to you about the ideal sleep positions. I’m going to start first with sleeping supine or on your back. When you sleep on your back, you want to make sure that you’ve got a nice relatively firm mattress, not really too soft and not too hard. Something that’s going to allow to conform to your shape and size, particularly if you tend to change positions from your back to your side.

When you do sleep on your back, you want to make sure you have a pillow that is not so thick or so high that it is forcing your chin to your chest. You do want to make sure you have a nice contour so your head can rest on the pillow while a part of the pillow helps to support the nice rounded curvature of your neck. For the lower back, you want to make sure that you unload the hamstring muscles. When your legs are outstretched or flat or straight in your bed, they may put a lot of load on the pelvis due to tight hamstrings.

So, putting a pillow underneath your knees or some type of a roll will help to reduce or shorten the hamstring, which will unload the pelvis and lower back. This is what it should typically look like. It’ll be something in a position like this. Just like that.

If you’re somebody who likes to switch positions, you like to turn onto your side. Make sure that when you turn to your side, you don’t sleep directly on your shoulder. You want your shoulder out slightly in front of yourself. And when you pull the pillow in, your head should be supported neutrally.

It shouldn’t be with too much support with your head pointed towards the ceiling or not enough support with your head hanging down towards the mattress. So that you may want to throw your arm underneath to get extra support underneath your head. So again, the pillow should be thick enough to accommodate for your width so that your head rests neutrally in line with the rest of your spine. Since we’re most of us are wider at our hips than we are at our knees, you want to make sure you put a pillow between your knees so your thighs remain parallel.

You want to try to avoid sleeping like this where you’re in a twisted position. That puts a lot of strain on the pelvis and lower back as well as increases stress on the hips and the IT band. So ideally get a pillow between the knees. That’ll be the best position.

The last position, the position I don’t recommend is sleeping on your stomach. When you sleep on your stomach, what you do, you hyperextend the back. And typically what we most of us do is turn your head 90 degrees to one side or 90 degrees to the other. When you do this, this will put a tremendous amount of strain on your neck, shoulders and often will result in you waking up frequently throughout the night to reposition yourself.

So again, in review, sleeping either on your back or either side should be fine. And make sure that the mattress is comfortable somewhere medium to medium firm. Make sure your pillow is thick enough so when you turn onto your side, there is enough space between your head and your shoulders. If you have any questions, feel free to bring it up to one of your providers at our office.

You can feel free to call our office at any point in time. I look forward to seeing you in our next installment video.

VIDEO 6 OF 7

How to Lift Without Hurting Your Back

Many back injuries come from how we lift, not how much. Dr. Patel shows the right way to lift everyday objects.

Key takeaways

Get close to the object with feet shoulder-width apart.
Bend at your knees and hips, not your waist.
Brace your core and keep the load close.
Turn with your feet instead of twisting your back.

Read the transcript

Hello everyone, Dr. VJ Patel here, chiropractor with Advanced Physical Medicine and Therapy. Welcome to our next installment video on how to lift without hurting your back. Common fact, most back injuries we see at our office don’t come from lifting heavy objects.

They come from lifting light objects or things that you do numerous times throughout the day, including lifting up a laundry basket, picking up shoes or socks from an awkward position, or picking up little kids or toddlers, or even lifting something out of the trunk of your car. That’s a common trap. So, make sure that you either ask for help, it’s an awkward shaped object or if it’s a heavy object. First rule of thumb is make sure when you’re picking up an object, it is as close to your body as it can be.

Make sure that when you bend to pick it up, you bend at your knees and your hips. Keep the object in close to you and lift straight up. It’s an easy way to prevent back injuries. When you’re turning, you want to make sure you turn with your legs and your feet and you’re not twisting with your body when you’re turning to go to move the object to another location.

Also, returning objects back to the floor or back to a counter. Again, square up. Make sure you’re not twisting it, putting it down. Make sure you keep it in front of you.

And when you’re laying it back down, knees and hips, let it go. And if you’re bringing it up to another object or another counter level, bend at your elbows. Keep your elbows close to your body. Try not to reach like this.

That’s an easy way of hurting your back. Keep your elbows in, raise it up, and place it back onto the counter where you need to set it down. Please keep your eye open for our next video, which will be stretching or stretches that you can do at your desk. Have a great day.

VIDEO 7 OF 7

3 Easy Desk Stretches to Undo Sitting All Day

Sitting all day tightens your neck, chest, and hips. This quick routine takes less than 5 minutes and can be done 1 to 3 times a day, right at work.

Key takeaways

Chin tuck: sit tall and draw your head straight back. Hold 30–45 seconds.
Chest opener: palms together behind you, straighten your arms. Hold 30–45 seconds. Skip this one if you have a rotator cuff injury and ask us for a modification.
Hip flexor stretch: staggered stance, rock your pelvis back. Hold 30–45 seconds on each side.
Stop if anything feels sharp or causes numbness or tingling.

Read the transcript

Dr. VJ Patel here again, chiropractor with Advanced Physical Medicine and Therapy, and welcome to our next video installment. Today, I’ll be talking to you about stretches or stretch breaks that you can take throughout the day at your desk. I’ll be talking about a routine.

It’ll take about 30 to 45 seconds a stretch. You can typically do these stretches once, twice, or three times a day. They take less than 5 minutes, and it’ll address both your neck, shoulders, as well as your pelvis, hips, and lower back. The number one stretch that you can do is something that’s called a chin tuck.

If you’re sitting seated at your chair, what you want to make sure you do is that you want to sit up head up, jaw parallel to the floor. You want to retract your head all the way back and place a slight overpressure on your chin. And you can hold that for about 30 to 45 seconds. You should feel stretching along the front of your neck on either side.

You’re stretching muscles that typically tend to become short and tight from sitting at computers for long periods of time, particularly when we’re extended and your heads are forward and you tend to lean into the desk. It’s hard not to have that happen, so you just have to make sure you’re taking frequent breaks to make sure you’re working or counteracting some of that tightening due to ergonomic and postural issues that we all have. The next exercise I’m going to show you is called the chest opener. Basically, what you can do you may have to stand up for this one if you have a back to your chair.

The chest opener is basically placing your hands behind you like this, putting your palms together. This is given that you don’t have any rotator cuff injuries or problems. If you do, come to our office, we’ll give you modifications to this exercise. Keeping your palms together, you want to extend your elbows and try to straighten your arms and bring them all the way back.

And when you do this, you’ll feel a good stretch across your pectoral muscles, drawing your shoulders back, including both your pec minor as well as your pec major. And that will help to counteract some of that forward rolling that we get from just sitting at a desk and a keyboard all day long. The next exercise I’m going to show you is called the hip flexor stretch. Really simple exercise.

What you do is you stagger like this, keep your pelvis in a neutral position and perpendicular to the direction your feet are pointed. What you want to do is you want to rock your pelvis back. When you do that, you should feel a stretch along the leg that is back or in front of the thigh, around the hip, and the upper quadricep area. Hold that stretch for about 30 to 45 seconds, and then you can switch to the opposite side.

Over here, I’m stretching my left thigh. Again, pelvis parallel or sorry, perpendicular to the direction of force. Make sure you’re not back like this or leaning forward. If there’s a lot of movement forward and back, you’re not doing it correctly.

This stretch is performed in the pelvis and the hips. You should feel an intense stretch right here. Again, 30 to 45 seconds. These are great stretches you can do.

You want to make sure you do them on both sides. Try those, and if you have any questions or if you need modification, feel free to reach out to our office. You can come and make a visit for a personal posture screening, and we’ll give you customized exercises and stretches that will help to remedy any of your aches and pains.

FOR PATIENTS WITH A PRESCRIBED DEVICE

Instructions for Your Home Device

Has one of our providers prescribed a Posture Pump® Scoligon® or an LSO back brace for you? These short videos from Dr. Patel walk you through using your device at home. Use your device only as directed by your provider, and call us at 847-222-9060 with any questions.

Posture Pump® Scoligon®

How to set up, use, and safely get up from your Scoligon, plus how long and how often to use it.

LSO Back Brace

How to put on, adjust, and take off your LSO brace, plus tips for wearing it comfortably.

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NEXT STEP

How Does Your Posture Measure Up?

These videos cover the basics. For a plan built around your body, schedule a posture screening with our team. Learn more about chiropractic care at APMT.

These videos are for general education only and are not medical advice. They do not replace an exam, diagnosis, or treatment plan from a licensed provider. Stop any movement that causes pain, numbness, or tingling.