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TEXT NECK: Home ERGOnomics: Tips to prevent stress-related injuries in your home office

Now that some of you are back to working from home, this #TechTuesday, we introduce a Home ERGOnomics series where we can help set you up with a comfortable home office that will prevent repetitive stress injuries.

Text Neck

Not the official medical diagnosis, but a term commonly used to describe someone who 

• Suffers from aching neck and shoulders

• Rounded/hunched shoulders

• Regular headaches

• Limited neck mobility 

Resulting from excessive watching or texting on hand held devices or improper positioning of a laptop or tablet over a sustained period of time.

How to prevent it:

✅ Sit at a desk.  Think of your sit bones and pubic bone reaching toward to ground. Imagine your entire pelvic floor connected with the chair. 

✅ Lengthen through your lumbar spine and then continue to reach up through the top of your head as if a piece of string is pulling you up from the top of your head.

✅ Reach your chest forward. As your chest reaches forward draw your chin in towards your spine. 

✅ You should feel a stretch through the back of your neck, but make sure you continue to reach your chest forward while drawing the chin back to reap the full reward of the stretch.

Why this works:

Repeated flexion of the spine and shoulder blades from reaching the chest forward realigns your spine, and builds muscle memory from holding your spine in the correct place.

What else you can do:

✅ Put your laptop on some books or a couple reams of paper

✅Hold your phone or device at eye level whenever you need to use it

✅ Stand up more often, and walk when you’re on a call

✅ Get an external mouse and keyboard so you’re not reaching over too much

✅ Regularly rotate your neck