Let's start off by saying that as of a month ago, everything I knew about good posture was straight up wrong. After years of half-heartedly sitting stick-straight in my chair and dealing with unbearable knots in my back, I decided to tackle my bad posture once and for all — only to discover that pulling your shoulders back, forcing your chest up, and pinning your legs together is not the right way to stand, sit, or even lay down. Oops."If you have good posture, you’re actually breathing well, you feel more relaxed, and you feel more present," Lindsay Newitter, of New York's Posture Police , told me. "It shouldn’t feel uncomfortable. The trap that a lot of people get into is that they think it's a way they have to hold themselves, or something that takes a lot of effort."A typical work environment, however, isn't exactly the most conducive to improving posture — especially when most office jobs require sitting at a desk for eight hours a day (talk about uncomfortable!). In fact, there's so much research showing just how bad remaining sedentary is that Time called sitting " the new smoking ." The Washington Post has pinpointed nearly every issue that crops up with sitting all day, from disc damage to a bad back, strained neck, and sore shoulders.So I took it upon myself to figure out how to sit properly at work — without killing my shoulders and neck — and called upon Newitter to teach me the basics of the Alexander Technique. This 125-year-old practice, which avoids the overly arched backs of model poses, focuses on how I naturally hold myself and move around, hopefully banishing all my bad habits for good.