Is Your Posture Causing Back Pain? Here’s How to Correct It

Back pain is one of the most common complaints I hear.

It comes up in workshops, in messages on the platform, and even in the comments on Instagram.

“My back is killing me.”

“I know my posture is awful.”

“Can you fix it?”

Let’s start here.

Your posture isn’t broken.

You’ve just stopped moving properly.

Posture is not something you correct once and tick off forever. It’s not a chair you buy or a strap you wear. It’s the way you sit, stand, move and rest every day.

Think of it like brushing your teeth. You don’t do it once and expect a lifetime of clean teeth. You do it daily because it makes sense. Your joints deserve the same care.

Why posture matters for back pain

Poor posture isn’t just about slouching. It changes how your joints move and how your muscles support you. When you spend hours rounded over a laptop or hunched over a phone, certain areas of your spine are overloaded while others switch off completely.

Over time that can create stiffness, tension and pain. And when you try to sit up straight after years of slumping, it feels forced and tiring.

The good news? Your body is incredibly adaptable. Give it better input and it responds. Restore movement to the areas that have gone missing and holding yourself tall starts to feel easy again.

The missing link: daily movement

Most people wait until pain forces them to act. A sore lower back. A stiff neck. A twinge that won’t go away. But your back pain is rarely about one moment. It’s about how you’ve been moving (or not moving) for years.

Good posture isn’t built by sitting rigid at your desk. It’s built by moving your joints through their full range often enough that your body remembers how.

That’s why the Roger Frampton Method focuses on movements that wake up what’s gone dormant. Movements that every child does without thinking, but many adults have forgotten.

Three key movements to restore posture and ease back pain

These aren’t complicated. They don’t need equipment beyond what you have at home or at the park. They’re simple patterns your body already understands.

1. Hanging

Hold on to a pull‑up bar, a tree branch, or even the top of a sturdy door frame. Let your body weight hang and let your shoulders open. Stay relaxed through your jaw and take a slow breath out.

Why it matters:

Every child hangs. Watch a playground for five minutes and you’ll see it. Our shoulders are built to support us in a hanging position. Yet as adults we spend years sitting and typing with our shoulders locked forward. Hanging gently decompresses the spine, stretches the chest, and teaches the shoulders to move as they were designed. This is one of the quickest ways to undo the hours you’ve spent hunched over.

Start with 5 to 10 seconds and build up. Even small doses, done often, help your back feel freer.

2. Standing Reach

Stand with your feet under your hips and soften your knees. Reach both arms overhead, letting your ribs lift slightly and your chest open. Keep breathing, slow and steady. Repeat a few times throughout the day.

Why it matters:

We spend most of our day curled forwards. This reach is the opposite pattern. It opens the space between your ribs so you can breathe deeper. Deeper breathing helps your spine and ribcage move, which directly reduces tension through the mid and upper back. You’re not forcing posture here. You’re giving your body a chance to remember length and openness.

3. Deep Squat Hold

Lower yourself into a squat with your heels flat and your chest lifted. Hold on to something for balance if needed. Let your hips sink and stay for a few breaths.

Why it matters:

All toddlers squat perfectly. They sit and play on the ground with their hips fully open and their spine free to move, a perfect example of natural human squatting. As adults, we lose this ability because we live in chairs. When your hips lose range, your lower back has to do extra work, which often leads to pain. Restoring your squat — and reclaiming this foundational pattern of human squatting — gives your hips their share of the job back, which takes strain off your spine.

If it feels awkward at first, that’s normal. Stay supported, don’t force depth, and keep practicing. Over time your body will adapt.

Why these movements help back pain

Back pain isn’t always about one joint or one tight muscle. It’s often a sign that something else isn’t moving enough. By adding in these patterns, you’re spreading the work across your whole body again.

• Hanging takes pressure off the spine and restores shoulder function.

• Reaching teaches the spine and ribcage to move, improving breathing and posture.

• Squatting restores hip range so the lower back doesn’t take all the load.

None of these are quick fixes. They’re simple habits that build a body which holds itself well without effort.

Building the habit

Here’s the part most people skip. Consistency.

You wouldn’t brush your teeth once and call it done.

You wouldn’t go to the dentist once a year and ignore them the rest of the time.

The same goes for your joints.

You don’t need to overhaul your life. Start small. Hang for ten seconds when you pass a bar. Reach tall when you get up from your desk. Drop into a supported squat in the evening while you wait for the kettle.

These micro‑moments add up. Over weeks and months, your posture improves and your back pain often fades without you even noticing when it happened.

A final word

If you’re living with back pain, don’t see it as a sign that you’re broken. See it as feedback. Your body is asking for more movement variety and better posture habits.

By bringing back these simple movements. Hanging, reaching, squatting. You remind your body what it can do. And that’s when posture stops being something you think about and starts being something you just have.

HUMAN SQUAT IS THE KEY TO MOVING PAIN - FREE

What One-Year-Olds Can Teach Us About Movement

The benefits of the squat as an exercise has been debated for many years. However, if you really want to know what the purpose of sitting in a squat is, ask a one year old...

“But one year olds can only speak on average around 20 words!”

What I’m saying is, by looking at ‘how they move’ you’re going to get a really good idea of how humans are designed to move. Or even better how you ‘used’ to be able to move simply because... they’re teaching themselves!

Young children are humans in their most innate form. They’re at a time in their lives before culture conditions them not to sit in a squat. Quite simply because it’s not socially acceptable! Or because it’s the same position we crap in. Have we denied our resting position through embarrassment?

Have we denied our natural resting position through embarrassment?

The Evolutionary Design Behind the Squat

“Maybe as babies we sat like this but why would you assume that as an adult I should be able to sit like this? I mean, don’t babies have shorter limbs?”

In my TED talk I introduced you to a lady called Esther Gokhale who spent years visiting indigenous cultures where she discovered groups of people (adults) moving naturally, that just happened to be free from back pain. One of the go-to positions for indigenous people is the squat sitting.

The message of my TED talk is simple:
By moving ‘how we are evolved to move’ we can also become pain-free.

So now we’re aware that as adults we too are designed to sit like this, let’s get the ethnicity argument out of the way.

The Human Squat – Not Just for One Culture

“It’s the Asian squat!”, “no, it’s the Slav squat!”

Well if it’s either the Asian/Slav squat why does every able-bodied child of every race on the planet sit like this? And secondly, how have I taught thousands of non-Asian & non-Slavic adults who had previously lost the ability to squat to do it again… including myself!

This is because it’s the human squat or to be more precise. This is the ‘human resting position’.

Really, the squat is just a position humans do when we are tired from standing. That’s it!

How to Reclaim Your Resting Position

"So how do I get my resting position back?"

A. Dedicate 10 mins of your day to getting your squat back.This can be at home, at work, in the kitchen or even on the train & you can divide this 10 mins up throughout the day.

B. If you feel like you’re going to fall backwards or if you feel pain in your knees when sitting in your resting position, wedge a block or roll up a mat underneath your heels until you can sit in it comfortably or until you feel a stretchy sensation. This is the sensation you want to feel for improvement.

C. Never give up! The biggest reason for people not squatting better is people not trying to squat better. Quite simply if you don’t do it you won’t receive the benefits. If you do however, you’ll be laughing all the way out of a hip replacement. Goodbye chronic pain. Hello resting position!

Final Thoughts

I hope you enjoyed this blog. If you’d like to see me on the TED stage talking about getting schooled by a 5 year old... please find it below.

To moving better! Stay tune with Roger Frampton.