Are You Fixing Your Patients’ Posture All Wrong? Try Dr. Weiniger’s Method for Long-Term Results

According to Dr. Steven Weiniger, if you want to fix your patients’ posture, you should tell them to imagine their body is a briefcase and their brain is the person holding it.

“You can carry a briefcase by the handle or pick it up from both ends, but one option is much more efficient than the other!” Dr. Weiniger says. “Your body has handles, too, and posture teaches you to use those handles in a way that fits our modern lifestyle — which is different from the lifestyle humans have had at any point in the 1.9 million years we’ve been on Earth.”

Dr. Weiniger (DC, FIANM, and creator of the CPEP and StrongPosture® programs) is one of the county’s leading posture experts who advocates for better posture every May during National Posture Month. We spoke to him because, as he sees it, many chiropractors teach posture to their patients the wrong way.

“It blows me away how often people just want to tell their patients, ‘Do this exercise,’” he says. “Instead of creating a therapy for that individual, they’re dispensing a biomechanical pill for the problem that walked in the door.”

This strategy doesn’t address the patient’s underlying habits, meaning the same pains reappear. Usually, the patient ends up right back on the chiropractor’s table — which is great for business but terrible for their health!

Instead of relying on quick fixes, Dr. Weiniger recommends using a three-step framework for long-term results.

1. Help the patient become aware of where their body is in space.
2. Teach them how their body should be in space.
3. Retrain their body to move and balance differently to achieve correct posture.

If you take this approach, Dr. Weiniger says, you “become the guru” helping patients achieve unconscious mastery of good posture. Dr. Weiniger can help you achieve guru status (and give you patient resources) in his seven-step continuing education course, “Posture, Rehab, & MCE,” on CESoup.com.

In the meantime, consider investing in a PostureZone Posture Grid for your waiting room to spark conversations about posture with your patients. The grid will give them ownership over the process of fixing their posture and kickstart their healing. Click here to order your Posture Grid from Chiro1Source today.