Fixing the Modern Body
How has modern life shaped you?
Your head weighs about as much as a bowling ball. Balanced over your shoulders, your spine barely notices it. Carried a few centimetres forward, it loads your spine like two or three.
One side-on photo shows where yours sits. You'll see:
About 5 minutes. Your photo never leaves your device.
When your body sits away from its centre of gravity, some areas quietly pick up the extra work. Tick anywhere you feel it.
Your body adapts to what you repeatedly ask of it, so the hours add up. Slide each one to where you honestly sit, from good to very poor. Nobody is marking this.
The front camera opens with a 10-second timer, so you have time to prop the phone and step back. Your photo stays on this device. Nothing is uploaded.
This is an example. Drag any dot and watch the numbers change.
Put a dot in the wrong spot? That's OK. Tap its name here, then tap the right place on the photo, or drag the dot there.
Measuring your head position and angles…
Sometimes, not always. A body that sits away from stacked works harder to do the same job. For some people that extra work shows up as tightness, fatigue or pain. Others carry the same shape and feel fine.
Two things sit behind that. The first is how far these points sit from your centre of gravity, shown by the dotted line. The second is the curve of your spine. Together they give clues to how your body is carrying its load.
In a stacked posture, the ear, the centre of the base of the neck, the hip, the knee and the ankle all sit on the dotted line, like blocks stacked squarely one on top of the other.
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The score adds these four angles together. Lower is closer to stacked.
A textbook spine has three gentle curves, shown on the green figure. They work like a spring, sharing the load each time you move.
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Distances are estimates from average body proportions.
No baseline saved on this device yet.
Head position is measured from the centre of the base of your neck, which stays put when the shoulders roll forward. The angle is how far your ear hole sits in front of that point. On the textbook figure it sits directly above. Forward shoulder is how far the front of your shoulder sits in front of the dotted line, in millimetres, against what is typical for your height.
Your head weighs roughly 8% of your body weight. Balanced over your shoulders, that is about what your neck holds up. Forward of them it behaves like a weight held out on a lever, and the muscles at the back of your neck pull harder to stop it tipping. The estimate adds about one head-weight for every 3 cm forward. It is a simple lever model, so read it as a sense of scale.
The green dotted line stands for your centre of gravity and rises from the centre of your ankle bone. The green figure beside you shows textbook alignment at your height, with ear hole, base of the neck, hip, knee and ankle stacked on its line. The skull, spine and pelvis drawn inside it show the three textbook curves, inward at the neck, outward at the upper back and inward again at the low back, with the head level and the pelvis in neutral. Your own lines are drawn solid.
The line runs from ankle to knee, hip, base of the neck and ear hole. The score adds four angles: ankle to knee, knee to hip, hip to the base of the neck, and the head-forward angle. On the textbook figure all four are zero. Your body adapts to what you repeatedly ask of it, so measure again in four weeks and see what has moved.
Kyphosis is the outward curve of the upper back. Here it is the angle between two lines on your back, one from the top of your upper back curve, around T4, to the point that sits furthest back, and one from there down to the bottom of that curve, around T12. Stopping at T12 keeps the low back curve out of the measurement. Hyperkyphosis means too much rounding, which can push the head further forward. Hypokyphosis means too little curve, which can reduce the spine's shock absorption.
Lordosis is the inward curve of the low back. Here it is how far the deepest point of your low back sits in front of the furthest-back point of your upper back.
Emailing isn't switched on yet. For now, tap Copy my results, then paste them into a message or email to Christine. If you're happy to, add a screenshot of your results picture as well, so she can compare your numbers with what she sees. Your photo is not part of this text.
Your photo stays on your device. Add your name and email and I'll send you what your numbers mean, a few short emails on the everyday habits that shape your posture, and a reminder to measure again in four weeks.
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