In this episode of Where Parents Talk, host Lianne Castelino speaks to Dr. Brett Hill—chiropractor, entrepreneur, and father of four teenagers—to uncover the surprising connection between posture, overall health, and parenting.

Dr. Hill explains why posture is more than just “sitting up straight.” From screen time to stress management, posture plays a critical role in our children’s brain development, emotional regulation, and confidence—and it impacts parents, too.

He shares practical strategies to help families improve posture at home, including easy daily check-ins, movement-based screen time rules, and small habits that make a big difference over time.

Whether you’re worried about your teen’s hours hunched over a device, or you’ve caught yourself slouching through a busy day, this conversation will give you tools to boost energy, reduce stress, and model healthy habits for your kids.

Tune in and learn how posture can be a simple yet powerful key to raising healthier, more confident children—while improving your own well-being as a parent.

Takeaways:

• Understanding the profound impact of posture on our mental, emotional, and physical health is crucial, especially for parents navigating their children's developmental changes.
• As device usage increases, particularly among youth, it is essential to educate them about the long-term consequences of poor posture linked to social media and gaming habits.
• Communication about posture should extend beyond simple reminders; it must incorporate discussions about consent and independence in managing screen time effectively.
• Bullying related to physical appearance can be mitigated by fostering confidence through good posture, which positively influences self-esteem and emotional health.
• Implementing regular posture checks and movement breaks can significantly enhance mental clarity and energy levels, reducing stress and improving overall well-being.
• Parents should model healthy posture habits, as children often emulate adult behaviours, creating a supportive environment for both physical and emotional health.

Links referenced in this episode:

• yourpostureprogram.com
• whereparentstalk.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Experience Life Chiropractic
• your postureprogram.com

This podcast is for parents, guardians, teachers and caregivers to learn proven strategies and trusted tips on raising kids, teens and young adults based on science, evidenced and lived experience.

You’ll learn the latest on topics like managing bullying, consent, fostering healthy relationships, and the interconnectedness of mental, emotional and physical health.

Foreign.

Welcome to the Where Parents Talk podcast. We help grow better parents through science, evidence and the lived experience of other parents.

Learn how to better navigate the mental and physical health of your tween teen or young adult through proven expert advice. Here's your host, Lianne Castelino.

Welcome to Where Parents Talk. My name is Lianne Castelino. Our guest today is a chiropractor and an entrepreneur.

Dr. Brett Hill is the founder of Experience Life Chiropractic clinic and your postureprogram.com an online posture correction course. Dr. Hill is also a father of four teenagers and he joins us today from Calgary. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Thanks for having me.

I appreciate is something that we all have and should be thinking about, but I don't know how many of us really do. We're talking about our posture now. Many people think of it just simply as sitting up or standing up straight.

How do you define posture in a more holistic way?

That's a great viewpoint. I mean, posture affects us in everything we do. Basically, if we're not sleeping, we have to use our posture.

When we think about exercising, sitting at the chair, driving in the car, we're using it whether it's good or bad, but it's unconsciously controlled. And that's the trick with posture, trying to fix it. It's not something we think about.

It's not something like, oh, I want to strengthen my biceps, I go to the gym and just lift that weight and you'll get it stronger. We compensate. We adapt. It's called neuroplasticity. With that neuroplastic change in our spine, it just adapts to whatever we are doing.

So if we stimulate sitting a lot or looking at phones a lot, our body gets really adapted to that and our posture is affected that way. And it's not just connected to the physical, but posture is also related to how emotionally or mentally we feel at the time.

I mean, if you see someone who is sad or depressed or anxious, you. You can kind of tell in the way that they might carry themselves, shallower breathing, holding their shoulders tight, looking down.

We can see that in their postural tone because again, it's that unconscious system and it's really related in a lot of things that we do, not just when we sit up.

You have been helping people with their posture for well over a decade now. What made you first realize that posture was such a powerful and overlooked key to overall health?

Well, I, I love that because it sounds so simple. Oh, I just need to fix my posture.

But what we found with patients, and my goal has always been, since I graduated chiropractic school, I had done some neurology training and extra things. And I was like, you know what?

I feel like I can get people better faster than just constantly coming in, getting an adjustment, getting out, and doing that repetitively. I'm like, if we're not changing the activation to the nervous system, were not making a lasting change to support that system.

And so I kept seeing a lot of the same problems.

People that would do weekend warrior stuff, but they're sitting all day during the week doing computer work or this or that, they have stress, they're holding their tight in their shoulders, their tension, they have tension headaches, jaw pain. All of these things I found are all related to similar root causes. And if we just addressed the posture system, which relates to balance control.

So we do balance work, work, we work on strengthening the core system, the head positioning, the breathing, all of those things related to the posture. And so what we ended up doing, what I did was I found to get people better, faster, and to maintain that we want to empower them.

And we simplified it by doing this posture program.

Basically got created from doing a lot of the same exercises with people and different things, even though they maybe had slightly different complaints.

Because the root of it all came down to we need to transform or build the neuroplastic changes in the nervous system to strengthen the spine in a way that uses these small unconscious muscles so that they can support themselves throughout their day. Most people are working on a computer or this or that, and it adds micro strain into the body.

And we get these shoulder injuries, these knee injuries, these back problems, tension headaches or migraines. So a lot of the things that I found related to the same root cause. And so we developed this and we've been using it with clients in office.

And then we decided, you know what, we can help a lot more people by taking this online and doing video calls and assessments virtually where we can help people get that sense and control to get at the root of their problem, to help build strength and empowerment, to not have the same things come back all the time.

So on that note, just to pick up on one of the points you made there, have you seen any kind of uptick since the pandemic given that we, you know, we're working from home and spending copious amounts of time in front of screens of all kinds? Any trends around that?

Definitely, yeah. We've seen as people started working from home, the ergonomics were worse.

They would get up, have their coffee, go sit at the desk and they can stay there all day. They don't have to get up to talk to a co worker, go to the water cooler as much. Things like that, like they would be.

They're like, oh, I'm just working on my kitchen table now, or whatever. I'm like, yeah, it shows. You're so much tighter, you're so much more stressed or shoulder problems because you're using that mouse repetitively.

People are like, I don't know how this happened, I don't know where, you know, why this started bothering me, but it's been years or months or chronically using the mouse or chronically using their device or phone. So, yeah, we have since the pandemic, because of that, people are. I mean, so much has gone online with meetings.

People are constantly in my office, they're still doing work on their phone and they're like, oh, I'm just working from home and stuff. But we're. It doesn't matter where we are, we're looking down at a device. So, yeah, it's. It's been a bit more of a problem, for sure.

Now you work with people from all walks of life curious as to what specific challenges as it relates to posture, poster posture that parents face.

And I love that because as a parent, if you were to ask my kids, they'd be like, what. What's one of the things your dad always is on your case for? And they'd be like, oh, sitting up straight, like, working on my posture.

Don't let my shoulders roll in.

So I focus on a lot because one of the big things that is, is impactful with posture is our brain health, you know, just without diving too much into it, because there's so much to it. But when we're born, one of the first things we, we learn to do is lift our head up to look at the horizon. You know, tummy time is really important.

That starts developing those curves of the spine and build that posture system. Then we start to crawl and then we start to stand.

And once we stand upright now gravity is acting on that posture system and on those joints and muscles to where it starts to fuel our frontal lobe in massive ways, massive speeds. And then we start to develop the other things like the speech and the fine motor control and the awareness of things as we continue to develop.

But that's one of the very first things we get, is our posture. And then as we get older, and especially in youth nowadays, I see youth walking down the street and they're Walking like this.

And I'm like, if they knew what it was doing to their brain, they might think twice. Because what that does is offload, where our highest concentration of these, what's called proprioceptors, are in our neck.

And it changes our vestibular system in our ear canals and our visual system to have awareness of where we are. And so it doesn't load our spine, it doesn't fire.

That frontal lobe allows us to have more anxiety, stress, and dysregulation of emotional things and other things because of what it's doing in our nervous system and our brain health. And so that's one of the biggest things as a parent trying to manage phone, social media, gaming, all of those things.

And this is a whole other topic I could go on and speak on with families that I've done. But how do we help regulate that?

And one of the biggest things I would say to parents and things that I've done in my own home is working with the kids, with youth or children to educate them on the health benefits of good posture, of managing screen time of movement in general. Because the less we move, the less we fire that frontal lobe.

And that frontal lobe is so important for being able to make good decisions, to recognize this isn't an immediate threat, to be able to reason a little bit more and have that higher center learning. And so it's really important that we move, that we are active, that we have. Yeah, good posture has a huge impact on that.

So is there an optimal posture or positioning that we should all be considering when we are looking at screens just based on your examples? And we all do it walking down the street with our head down and our neck contorted. Is there a right way of doing that?

You know, it's really difficult because nobody wants to walk down the street holding their phone or their device like this. Ideally, we want.

When we assess people, one of the things we're looking at in these measurements is we want to see that the ankle, the knee, the hip, the shoulder, the ear all line up in the same center of gravity line. But as we're walking or using these devices, even if we hold them out in a way that allows our head, the body follows the head.

So the head is the most important. Most people think, oh, I should pull my shoulders back so they, they roll. I gotta sit up straight.

Well, all that does is it tightens up these stress muscles anyway. And then in 30 seconds we're like, oh, boy, I'm tired. That was those. That was hard. And so when we slouch more.

So if we just focus on pulling the head up and bringing that back, that allows our chest to open up, our breathing to expand, our ribs to expand. But we don't want to overdo it, because to hold this position, people do this all day, is impossible. Like, that's not natural.

So we want to think of pulling long and slightly back through the. Through the chin at like a 45 degree up.

So if we were using a device, sitting or walking, you know, holding it here where I can kind of look down, but I'm not dropping the head forward, because now I've offloaded my whole spine in that position.

So kids on a couch, if they're on a device, maybe a computer, an iPad, you know, use some pillows to prop that up so that you can put a pillow behind you so you can rest back into that pillow and hold that at a neutral position without, like. The worst is crunching your spine forward, then looking straight down and just letting gravity pull the head straight down. That's the worst.

So what happens over time for somebody who is doing exactly what you just described?

Yeah, look, in the neurophysiology of what's happening in.

In the structural musculoskeletal sense of it, their spine will offload these joints, so our brain will lose a little bit of a sense of where that is. So we can. And this can be in the younger population, the older population. It does. It's not just an age thing.

And what happens as we look forward, we offload these joints in the spine. So then we go to move or we do something, and it's like, oh, that hurt. Because your brain isn't getting good feedback.

It hasn't been building that neuroplastic change to sense these joint proprioceptors. One of the big things I see as we look down, then we look back up to the horizon. It's called the writing reflex.

So neurologically, we want to look straight, but as we've adapted to stretch these ligaments and muscles and shorten other ones, now when I look up, I don't bring it back over my shoulders. I just tighten these muscles here at the base of my skull. So those that are listening, I'm pointing to the top of my neck, base of my skull.

These muscles are designed to keep my head balanced and to just keep it aligned with my eyes and my ear canals. But as we come forward now, we start looking at a screen more, we start coming forward.

These muscles get super tight all the time, and it leads to these headaches. It leads to an offloading of the lower back because my hips here now I'm going to offload.

My, my body will just naturally adapt by bringing my hips forward. And that builds. Yeah.

Other problems and as we age, and it's not just when we get to 60 or 70, if it starts early, we can see this in 20s, 30s, where we get degeneration of the disc, we get thinning of that disc and it can lead to arthritic changes much sooner than people would anticipate.

When we look at parents and you've gone through this four times yourself, there's no shortage of things that we do in terms of physical activities that involve our children. Take us through some examples of those activities that in particular could strain and sort of undermine what you're describing as optimal posture.

Yeah.

So one of the things that I've heard and deal with with kids and, and youth that come in, you know, that have anxiety or social anxiety or things like that, they're often gaming a lot or they're sitting on social media. So you know, screen, screen time is a big, a big thing because we aren't moving our body.

So without movement, we don't get that proprioceptive change, we don't get that neuroplastic change.

And so one of the things that's been difficult is how do we, how do we balance that out in like all, all my kids friends are playing this device or have this device and so they want that. So for the longest time we had a week because it got them up and moving and that was all I would say, okay, this is your electronic device.

You can use and play and fun and whatever. And then like an Oculus VR.

So again, they're up, they're moving, they're doing things actively, but they can still kind of interact with friends online or this or that.

But I find that's the most difficult thing for families or parents nowadays to regulate is they're always on their phone, they're always on a device because it's instant gratification. It's instantly there.

And so do some of the techniques that we've used is, okay, every time you say it's fortnight, you die or something, I want you to do 10 push ups. I want you to do something that's quick, easy, easy 10 jumping jacks. It doesn't matter, but it gets them moving.

It gets them to be like, okay, I'll do that really quick because then I can get into the next game. And then we put a limit on it. We put time limits on it to help them regulate that.

Because if I just say, okay, get off, what happens is their frontal loads shut down. They're playing, say, say a violin game where it's like their sympathetic system or that stress response is going. They're.

Their blood's going, their breathing's going there. They feel like they're in that game. And then we just ask them, okay, it's time for you to get off.

Well, their brain can't process that they are in this important thing right now. And they don't have that frontal lobe firing to reason, oh, this is just a game. I need to turn it off and whatever.

So being able to understand how to regulate that. So that mental aspect is really important for kids. The movement aspect is really important.

And more importantly, I think one of the things that we've tried to do is spend time with the kids doing activities, whether it be throwing a ball or a football or a frisbee or jumping on the tramp. Taking time to say, hey, okay, let's take a break. We're going to go do this. We're going to enjoy these things.

So hopefully that answered your question and what you're looking for.

Yeah, and the other piece, too, you've talked about how posture can affect stress and emotion. How does it affect confidence and energy levels as well?

Yeah, that's a great question. And it's really related.

I mean, when we, we have talked with speakers who train others on speaking, and they say, okay, get into your super pose, your superhero pose before you go on stage. There's a reason they say that. There's a reason they say, okay, sit up, straw talk, Paul, be strong. Act like a superhero.

Because that physical change that we do to our body changes that mental perception that others see in us, but that we feel and see in ourselves. Having good posture and being able to use that all the time, you know that that makes a big difference in that confidence that we feel.

You, you, you won't see someone walking down there and be like, that person is confident.

You can just, you can tell as we do this, it allows greater oxygenation, allows us again, it fires areas of our brain that use that frontal lobe that help us feel stronger, help us feel more capable and, and help shut down areas that are more of this. It's called the limbic system, more of that stress response area, reactionary system.

And so when we load the spine that is constantly acting against gravity more than anything else. And so it really impacts the healthy areas of our brain to really impact that confidence a lot.

And so we work with youth, we work with kids who they come in and their shoulders really round and they're just timid. But as we work on this, I mean, their parents are like, man, what a change. They've grown tall, smaller just as they've gone through this program.

And they look so much more confident. Are often one of the things we hear as well.

In the middle of trying to raise kids today, you know, it's easy to forget your posture as a parent.

So is there something that you can offer to parents in terms of check ins that they could do throughout the day or, you know, frequently that would focus them on their posture?

Yeah, and that's something that's great. I would say if you're sitting and maybe you're sitting right now, maybe you're standing.

I do encourage people that work on a computer to use a standing desk and to mix it up, go from sitting to standing. If you just stand all day, that's also going to be pretty tough on the system. That hasn't been built up into the strength.

But I recommend setting a timer. You know, if you work at a computer, set a timer every 45, 50 minutes to move. And it can be a short thing that you're doing.

But typically those that go through our program will say, okay, I want you to do one of those exercises. We've designed this program to be very simple to do those exercises. And they're more like activities throughout your day.

Because if they get up and they just do one, we call it like a rainbow exercise where it combines balance. They're focused on bringing their hip and knee over the ankle and then engaging their core, holding the head up, dropping their shoulder blades.

And then they just, if they had like a three pound weight or a ball, they just cross that ball, drop the shoulders, push the head back and do a few circles. And so that activates that spine in a short, simple way. So there's check ins. When you know which muscles to fire, that can be really helpful.

And that's the trick. Most people compensate so they think, oh yeah, I got to sit up straight.

But their head's been forward, so they do this and they pull the shoulders back and they're not using the right muscles. So they build into these neuroplastic changes that feed into how they've already been compensating for a long time. And it's really hard to correct.

It's not as simple as just sitting up straight or just pull the shoulders back or those things, because those are big mover muscles, the ones with the posture are unconscious small muscles where it's like, what does that even feel like? And so the first few series of our, of our program is all about feeling the right control through the head, through the core, through the shoulders.

And then we build those together and then we make it more difficult with combining balance, exercise and coordination. And it builds upon itself, but it is tricky to correct on your own. There is one thing I would say, here's a good check.

Anytime you get in the car, set your chair in a way that's comfortable, but you can get your butt back into the back of the chair, your head, wrists, relax, like it tall and back onto the headrest. You're not pushing too hard. Then I would set your mirrors.

So if you set that mirror here and those mirrors there, as soon as you slouch, you bring it down. It's like, oh, I can't see. I check my mirrors. I better change my posture and gives you that cue or that awareness.

The next biggest thing is, is get it assessed. So we, we always recommend the first step is get it assessed because it's unconsciously controlled.

Most people think, oh yeah, my posture is not good, but they don't know where it's actually at. So with this assessment that we do and, and we can offer that for free for, for you and for your listeners is to see where they're aligned.

And so you just take a picture from the front, from the side, we put in the dots and analyze it and you get a measurements of where everything's at. And it's very telling for people to be like, wow, I didn't, I didn't realize I was tilting my head. I didn't realize I was doing this so much.

I knew it wasn't great. But that's the first thing, because when you have that awareness now, you can correct it.

Otherwise, people don't know where they should actually be correcting.

Dr. Hill, I'm curious, what is the correlation between posture and how we handle stress? And I asked the question, particularly as it relates to parents.

We're, you know, managing all kinds of stress during the day, but it might also influence potentially the mood they're in and therefore how they are, you know, dealing with their kids. So posture and how we handle stress, what's the correlation?

That's great.

And, and as a parent, I mean, I, we get busy, you know, starting a business and we had, we had four young kids when I started my practice, practice, and it was, it was stressful, it was busy, and, you know, finding time to go work out for an hour at the gym wasn't an option, wasn't possible. But movement and posture in general, good healthy movement is really healthy for de stressing.

You know, exercising can help with de stressing and this and that.

But we often are in a very stressful world and environment of work and family and kids, sports and running here, running there, it's hard to get that in for yourself.

And so taking five minutes here, five minutes there and doing little things and this is, this is why we designed this program to try to make it simple.

Because as a parent myself and finding it so difficult to just have, take whatever time I wanted to go and, and run for an hour or exercise or whatever, it didn't always fit well. And so what I find is I'll just do a little bit here and there and it helps me ground myself, it helps to relax, helps me to reset.

And as I'm doing it, I'm focusing on all the postural exercise, whether it be a push up or whether it be whatever. But it doesn't have to be like my planned workout. It can just be an exercise here and there.

And so that makes a big difference in helping us feel confident.

So it goes back into that confidence state, feel empowered ourselves and then we can handle those other stressors as they come without feeling guilty of like, well, I haven't moved or well, I, I'm, yeah, I meant to lose some weight but I, I don't have time, I can't do this and that. Take the little wins. We need to reward ourselves for little things.

And so when we go dealing with, with our kids, you know, it's also important that we're the example. They see us looking down at our phone, checking a message or an email. It's important that we take time to recognize what is my posture?

Like what am I doing with my spine, am I looking down all the time? Put that down. Take a deep breath in. So this is another great way to just take a deep breath through your nose.

Be tall, pull the head back, Keep tall with your head, but relax your shoulders and that helps reground yourself, helps you be confident, but relax. And so say there's a stressful thing or you're annoyed with something or you're trying to deal with your kids.

Sometimes just taking that deep breath, pulling tall, lifting your head tall, relaxing your shoulders, but staying confident and tall in the chest and head now going and talking to them, you're, you're a little bit more aware of, okay, I'm in control versus if you, if we allow ourselves to not focus on the posture. We allow ourselves to pull the shoulders tight and we're immediately in this stress response response. We're going to overreact on things.

We're going to handle things in a way that going back it's like I wish I hadn't done that, I wish I hadn't said that or reacted so much.

So taking a second to be aware of what's my body doing, where's that stress, how am I holding that breathing, resetting that can help control and modulate it.

Are there any particular examples of patients that you've had that really stand out to you? That when you first saw them they were, were at a certain level and you know they needed a lot of help with their posture.

And then over time you saw a marked difference whether they are, were a parent themselves or somebody younger. You mentioned dealing with youth as well. Anything stand out?

Yeah, we've had a few where we're really awesome. One in particular, you know, it was doing it virtually online and going through their initial assessment. Assessment.

It was like he was I believe a 15 year old where we, we really needed to work to bring that head back. And it's a common thing. We'll see.

These kids don't realize, you know, they're sitting at, at school all day, then they're, they're on a device, they're on their phones all the time.

And he was really for forward and he knew it but they, he wanted help to, to fix this and just had back soreness and, and chronic tension in the neck as we worked through him.

I mean just the excitement that he got, the confidence, the strength that he, he gained and then to reassess at the end like he was, he was just so happy with the change that he made. He's like, I can feel this at school. I'm not as tired, I'm not as, as fatigued. I, I can hold my posture so much better. I feel more confident.

You know, these changes that they mentioned is the coolest thing because they didn't come to me because they had a lack of confidence but they always report me. Yeah, I feel way more aware of my posture. I feel more energy. I feel more confident in school and in what I'm doing and holding that better.

And so that was a cool one. We also had a, I believe 11 or 12 year old where the dad brought him in because he was really concerned about his posture.

And as we went through it at the end when we ask, you know, what are some of the biggest changes you've noticed.

And this thing's like, you know, my, my son has grown like 2 inches, like just in standing up straighter, just in the way that, you know, we, we've measured it. He is taller now, literally just by changing his posture. And he's like, he, he is, he looks so much better, more confident and feels so much better.

And so those, those were pretty cool.

And then, you know, we've taken through one of our clients who travels a lot, engineer, works at a computer, traveled, oh, about a 12 to 13 hour drive every couple of weeks. He'd have to do. And he's like, oh, my back kills me every time. By the time I get home, it's just done.

And so we went through this program and he's like, you know, I really tried to implement those little things that you mentioned as I was driving, paying attention, doing the breathing, setting my shoulders down the core and all the things we work through. He's like, by the end of getting home, I felt amazing. I didn't have any pain at all.

He's like, I got out, told my wife, I've got to thank Dr. Hill for this. He went for an hour bike ride. He's like, it feels amazing. So things that he's able to do and feel empowered, it's great.

We love that we're almost out of time, but I did want to ask you, there are going to be people in the audience who think I'm too far gone. My posture has been terrible for a long time. Is it ever too late to correct your posture?

Rarely, Rarely. There are cases that are pretty severe. Arthritis changes where the bones have fused or they have. They've had too many surgeries.

There's so much scar tissue. It's very difficult if they're really elderly at that point.

But to be honest, I've worked with patients who are really severe and in their 70s where we have seen changes. And it's all dependent on your willingness to make those changes. If you keep in the same patterns you've been, it won't make a difference.

But if you go through a program, you really want to change. It's just doing the daily little things. You will see improvement, guaranteed.

The brain is neuroplastic, and the older we are, the harder it can be because we might have more degeneration, we might have a little bit slower in adapting, but we can still see changes and improvement. And it's actually very empowering and awesome to see. So, no, I would say it's rare, but there are some cases.

But it's rare where you are too far gone.

If there's one thing you want people to take away from our discussion and specifically about their posture, what would it be?

I would ask people to think about where they want to be in 5, 10, 15 years from now. Because posture isn't something that just happened last week or two weeks ago where it's not good anymore. It takes a while to adapt again.

It's just your brain adapting to that.

So if you see where you want to be, see what you want to be doing affecting your posture now, your, your body, your your self in the future will thank you for doing that work today to be aware of that.

And, and like I said, it's not just the physical, the way we feel in the tension, but the energy, the confidence, all of those are impacted by our posture. If you were to see someone in an old folks home who is hunched over, you wouldn't say that's what I want to be when I'm older.

Because that's, that's the epitome of health. It really does impact our health in many ways.

So take the little steps now because it's the incremental little things that we adapt to that build over years that make big differences. So take those steps now to make big changes in your future.

Such an interesting conversation. Dr. Brett Hill, chiropractor, founder of your postureprogram.com thank you so much for sharing your insight with us today.

Thanks so much for having me, Leanne. I've really appreciate it and it's been wonderful.

Thank you.

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