Most people have never seen their own posture. You see your face in the mirror every morning. You almost never see how you stand from the side or the back.
A posture assessment shows you. It’s the first step in posture therapy → and for many clients, it’s the moment their pain starts to make sense.
What a Posture Assessment Is
Let’s keep it simple. A posture assessment is a set of photos of you standing, taken by your practitioner, that shows how your body lines up from head to foot.
It isn’t an X-ray or a scan. It isn’t a medical diagnosis either. It’s a careful look at where your body is holding itself well and where it’s compensating.
Small shifts matter more than you’d think. A 2014 modeling study found that tilting the head forward by 15 degrees raises the load on the neck from about 10 to 12 pounds to about 27. A side-view photo shows that kind of shift in a second.
It can take anywhere from 10 to 45 minutes, depending on how much detail your practitioner goes into.
The Seven Photos
A Function Rx assessment uses seven photos:
- Four standing views: front, back, and each side
- Three test positions: taken from the side, with a small change to how you stand
Here’s why there are seven: one photo shows a position, and several photos show a pattern. The three test positions show how well your kinetic chain is working. That’s the linked system of joints and body segments that force travels through when you move.
How to Prepare
There isn’t much to do. A little planning makes the photos far more useful.
- Wear fitted clothing. Loose clothes hide your posture.
- Go barefoot. Your feet are part of the picture.
- Keep your ankle bones visible. Shorts or leggings that stop above the ankle work well.
- Keep your ears visible. Tie long hair back.
- Stand the way you normally stand. This is the important one.
Most people straighten up the moment a camera appears. Try not to. The assessment is only useful if it shows your everyday posture, because that’s the posture your body lives in.
Nobody is grading you. There’s no good or bad result here → only information.
What Happens After
Here’s the breakdown of what follows the photos:
- Your practitioner submits the assessment to the Function Rx posture therapy team.
- We build your sequences. That takes up to 48 business hours.
- Your practitioner reviews and approves them. They know your history, so nothing reaches you without their sign-off.
- Your first sequence arrives in the app.
From there, you do one sequence a day, about 20 minutes, and a new sequence each week. Four sequences take roughly a month.
The exercises are built around what your photos showed. That’s why two people with the same sore shoulder can get very different sequences. For more on how the work itself runs, see what posture therapy is and how it works.
What Surprises People
Clients are often surprised by their own photos.
They see a head sitting well forward of their shoulders. One shoulder lower than the other. A pelvis tucked under. Feet turned out. Things they’ve never noticed, and nobody has ever pointed out.
Then the second surprise arrives: how closely the picture matches what they feel. The tight side is the side that’s working harder. The sore neck belongs to the head that’s sitting forward, a pattern we cover in our guide to forward head posture.
For a lot of people, it’s the first time anyone has shown them why they hurt, instead of only where. That’s what makes the next month of work feel worth doing.
The Reassessment, and How to Start
After your four sequences, your practitioner takes the same seven photos again. The new set goes next to the first.
You don’t have to take anyone’s word for it. You can see what changed → and your practitioner can see what to work on next, with add-on sequences if you’d like to keep building.
Function Rx assessments are offered through practitioners: chiropractors, personal trainers, and workplace wellness programs. If your practitioner has a small team, virtual appointments with Function Rx trainers can guide you through your sequences from anywhere.
See how it works for clients → functionrx.health/patients
If you’re a practitioner: the assessment takes as little as 10 minutes, and our team builds the sequences for you → so you add a service your clients can see working, without writing programs yourself. See how it works for practitioners.
Seven photos. One clear picture → and a plan built around your body, not a guess.
