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.