Work From Home Postures That Keep You Pain-free and Productive

BY jenfit Back Pain✨

You’ve probably heard (or felt!) that working on a laptop all day can contribute to poor posture. Maybe you’ve seen diagrams about work from home postures where the keyboard and mouse should be in relation to your shoulders, or where the laptop screen should be in relation to eye level…

So you’re probably looking for the ONE work-from-home posture that is ergonomically correct and will prevent pain, especially in your back and in your neck.

Here is the thing: the best posture is the NEXT posture. You want to keep changing it up and moving around!

Below are several work-from-home posture positions that will relax the body and invigorate the mind as you work from your home office during these wacky coronavirus times and beyond.

(Watch the video below!)

Proper posture in a chair (kitchen chair-friendly, too!)

When sitting in a chair while working from home, you want to be relaxed. Many of us will end up with a rounded back and that’s ok! But we want to avoid sitting in flexion the entire workday.

Scoot your chair as close to the desk as possible so you have something behind you to relax into. If you don’t have any back support behind you, you might notice some aching in the lower back.

Sit on support

When I sit on a pillow it helps to create an angle where my hip bones are higher than my knees. When my hip bones are higher than my knees it helps keep the anterior pelvic tilt (which takes the pressure off your spine.) This also helps to keep you sitting on your sit bones, aka the ischial tuberosities. If I can sit on my sit bones I can keep my body naturally stacked and aligned.

Mix it up! Feel free to play around with how you’re sitting throughout the day and see how it benefits you.

Support the lower back

Remaining in a position where your pelvis is turned under and your back is stretching tightens and stresses your muscles. This is typically when the back gets overworked because it’s working in an elongated position.

It also doesn’t help that sometimes when we’re working, we get mentally stressed and we breathe from the chest as opposed to deeply into the tummy. This creates more inflammation and tension within the body. Add that to the elongated back and it makes sense why we start to feel some aches and pains!

If this is happening to you, take a small pillow, a towel, a sweater, basically anything that you can roll up and stick behind you to create some support. Place it behind your low back as reinforcement for the hip bones to push back and create an anterior pelvic tilt, resulting in a natural curve in the lower spine.

Neutral wrists, arms, shoulders, and gaze

We want to keep our gaze towards the computer screen neutral and straight ahead. So if necessary, place your laptop or monitor on some books or use a device to lift the screen.

Make sure the arms are in a relaxed position. You can try propping the keyboard on some books as well. Ideally, we don’t want our arms and wrists working in too much flexion and we don’t want too much extension either. Look for the happy medium where your arms and wrist are in a neutral position.

Check that your shoulders aren’t creeping up, either!

So overall when sitting…

Pull your chair close to the desk so you can lean back into it
Place a small pillow behind your lower back to allow the pelvis to tilt outwards as it would naturally do while standing
Lift screen up to eye level by placing on stack of books
Find neutral position for arms and wrists
Make sure shoulders aren’t creeping up

Using standing desks

Everyone is talking about standing desks and they are important because they get you from sitting all day to standing. Definitely mix it up. If you don’t have a standing desk, you can always prop your laptop under some books. But we also don’t want to go from sitting all the time to standing all the time.

Work-from-home posture: Seated position on the floor

I’m talking criss-cross applesauce like they had us do when we were younger.

Sit on pillows

I have sitting pillows in my home that I love to sit on. I’ll either sit on one or stack them and sit on two so the bum is a bit higher and you can come into a more relaxed seat. Stacking the two is especially helpful if it’s hard for you to get into external rotation. Keep in mind that the higher the bum goes, the easier it is for the legs to externally rotate.

Don’t be worried if you notice that in this position, the shoulders fall into flexion or that there’s some internal rotation within the arms. It’s all okay, because the whole point is to keep things moving. I’m not going to be sitting in this position all day. As long as I’m keeping my shoulders relaxed, elbows town, and any tension at bay, I’m fine here.

You can also place another pillow behind your back to make an even more relaxed position.

This helps promote that anterior pelvic tilt and amplify comfort in the lower back. You can have total extension in the arms here while keeping the wrists as neutral as possible.

Extension and twists

If you’re working intently you might notice your gaze coming down and forward, creating tension in the neck. If you catch yourself doing this, pause, then neutralize the body. Take a nice stretch into extension. Twisting is also great in this seated position!

You can open up your arms like in the cactus yoga pose. If you open up your shoulder enough you’ll feel a nice pectoral stretch as well. You can lift the arms up and stretch out the sides.

Taking this seated position is really helpful for increasing awareness of when tension is building up, taking a moment to get out of that position and introducing extension and stretching, then coming back to neutral.

Lying on your stomach for extension stretching

We spend so much time sitting that over time, we find ourselves with a posterior pelvic tilt. The best thing to do is get your body used to finding more extension, not just with a pillow, but by working with gravity.

Lay down on your stomach on a couch. The best thing about using a couch is that we can access a little stretch in the hamstring and maybe even into the adductor as well. Make sure to stretch both sides!

As always, encourage the shoulders to stay relaxed and down.

Think- head back, gaze neutral, shoulders down, wrists relaxed.

There’s also a great opportunity to get a leg stretch in, like when you’re just listening during a webinar, you can just relax the head, grab your foot, give a little stretch, then do the same thing on the other side.

We don’t want to spend too much time here because the elbows can get a bit swollen. If you have restricted external rotation within the hips, like me, you can come into a cross-legged position, lean the chest over, and prop the head up. These are great positions for whenever you’re actively watching something, like a web-seminar.

Changing posture to avoid low back and neck pain

The idea is to mix it up and find different positions throughout the day. Especially when you’re working from home and have the access and ability to play with posture and find stretches!

Try setting a timer for every 30 minutes and then get up and change positions. You’ll even notice that it’s great for the brain as well. This is a helpful way to keep you energized, creative, active, and focused on what you’re working on.

Last tip– if you’re home, get outside and enjoy the fresh air! Get some vitamin D and get creative with your workspace.

What work from home postures are your favorite? 🙂