The ErgOHListic Method®

Overcoming Traditional Limitations

Two approaches coexist in the fight against work-related pain, each with its own limitations:

• Ergonomics focuses on adapting the work (tasks, workstation, environment). This is essential, but often insufficient. A perfectly adjusted workstation does not protect an employee who adopts awkward postures out of habit, due to stress or a lack of awareness of their own body. Furthermore, technical or organisational solutions are costly, slow to roll out and sometimes impossible to implement immediately. We cannot change everything straight away.
• Traditional posturology (such as the Mensendieck method) has revolutionised body awareness by teaching us how to conserve our energy in everyday activities. But focusing solely on the “correct execution” of movement can sometimes lead to mental and physical rigidity. In a fast-paced, imperfect and ever-changing world of work, striving for the perfect posture is a source of additional stress.

These two approaches therefore often lack practical applicability, tend to fuel conflicts between employees and employers, and lack responsiveness:

• The ergonomist says: “Change your chair.” (But you spend two hours in a meeting without an adjustable chair).
• The posturologist says: “Stand up straight.” (But you have to lift a heavy load in a cramped space).

The result: the employee waits in the hope that things will get better later, which fuels pain, a sense of victimisation and fatalism.

There is an urgent need for a paradigm shift: if everyone understands how the body works, everyone will be able to play their part in completing the “preventative and curative puzzle”, independently, in any situation.

This is where the ErgOHListic Method® comes in, based on ergonomics, engineering and Mensendieck therapy.

The four elements of the ErgOHListic Method® are all based on three absolute rules, which are applied in conjunction during all our sessions.

• No vague or even misleading instructions (“stand up straight”), but only anatomical phenomena that everyone can understand, observe, and apply to all occupations.
• Priority is given to reducing the strain on the body, whether through equipment, organisation or behaviour. This is done using common sense, distinguishing between short-term solutions and the long-term ideal.
• Relentless structuring, both in clinical and ergonomic analysis and in teaching and the formulation of the action plan: ‘what is well conceived is clearly expressed’.

Result: A pragmatic approach to prevention that depends neither on an unlimited budget for new equipment nor on a perfect posture that is impossible to maintain. Everyone plays their part, both at work and outside work, and in this way a culture of shared responsibility is fostered.