Postural patterns or habits are determined by our sedentary lifestyle, frequency of changing positions, use and misuse of the Mitzvah Mechanism. The below passage examines this process. It is quoted from “Nehemia’s Mitzvah Technique and Mitzvah Exercise” by M. Cohen-Nehemia, Toronto, Ontario, 2001,.

“Many of us throughout the world suffer from aches and pains and resulting disabilities from postural and spinal problems inflicted on the neuromuscular and skeletal systems.

The root cause of this global problem remains uncorrected despite all of the exercises, sports activities and many rehabilitation methods and techniques that are prescribed.

The primary cause of these problems is that we confine and abuse the operation of the Mitzvah Mechanism daily, from early childhood, particularly in the long hours of sedentary lifestyle at desks in school, at home, at work, when driving a car etc.

Sitting for an extended period of time without moving, without changing postural patterns, inhibits the natural stimulus for instinctive frequent operation of the Mitzvah Mechanism, to correct the body and forces the back to hunch, the shoulders to round, the chest to cave in

This restricts breathing and circulation, causes the neck vertebrae to sink, collapse and bulge forward and the head to retract backward and poke forward from its proper spinal alignment.

This causes both the spine and the muscles of the neck to shorten.

Eventually these muscles adapt to their shortened state and tense.

Many people develop a hump where the vertebrae of the upper back connect to the neck, to become tight and rigid.

The head becomes static and locks on the spine, unable to balance freely; a twist of the body and spine, and malcoordination, follows.”