When binding can you slouch/lay down?
This may sound like a weird question but I wanted to know:
When wearing my binder, can I slouch/just lay on my bed(Not sleeping, just laying down)
I can’t find any good results for this question
Tobi: Hey nonnie! Firstly, absolutely no worries, i do not consider questions to be weird, strange, wrong, or anything else here, they’re all just questions, and I will always try my best to answer to the best of my ability.
That being said, I’m both surprised and not surprised there’s nothing in particular on slouching or laying down in binders, so know this answer is coming directly from my own experiences, and may not be applicable to everyone.
For slouching: I’d say intermittent/not constant slouching is a-okay. Best practices while binding would be keeping good posture as much as possible and ensuring the best possible opportunity for your lungs to expand fully, as the main concern with binding in general is its restrictiveness to the ribcage/torso/lungs.
Slouching inherently squashes that important expansion ability, and the severity depends on how and how much you’re slouching, but either way, while it’s not going to be terrible for you to do here and there, it’s not recommended that you stay slouched for long periods of time while binding.
For lying down: So long as you’re not sleeping, lying down is a similar answer to above. The restriction with lying down is more gravity based-On your back you’re expanding against both gravity and the binder, on your stomach you’re expanding against your own body and the binder, and on your side, you’re adding another point of pressure to the front and back the binder already covers.
Mind you-these restrictions are minor, even less so than slouching. However, that is not a reason to not be aware of how these positions can affect your binding health and safety. Sleeping is a concern for binding in particular because your breathing pattern changes and deepens as you sleep, meaning the binder adds unnecessary restriction for a long period of time.
Overall advice: My biggest emphasis when talking about binding is highly focused on being in tune with your individual body and it’s cues.
Good posture is always going to be helpful in the long run, but I know just how hard that can be to maintain. A good rule of thumb that I live by, as I do still bind myself and I have made far too many mistakes in my youth that still haunt me:
If you are feeling short of breath at any given time, that’s a good indication to take off your binder and do some breathing exercises, do some deep coughs to stimulate circulation, etc.
No amount of dysphoria is worth binding improperly, incorrectly, or for too long. Please trust me on this, because it can (and has for some folks) affect your ability to get top surgery down the line.
For myself, as an example, my previous excessive binding has somewhat ‘warped’ my ribcage, and as such, forced me to really scale back how much I bind to avoid it causing any more problems.
To be fair, I’m glad that I’ve been forced to cut back though, because it’s really helped with my own resilience towards outside perspectives of my body. No matter what I do, wear, act, whether I bind or not, etc, 90% of the time I’m perceived as a woman by strangers. This in turn forced me to reckon with how other people’s perceptions of my gender expression AND the forms my body takes has NO bearing on my own understanding of myself, and subsequently my own understanding of my gender.
At the end of the day, I know I’m a man. Anyone is welcome to disagree with me, or think otherwise, but they don’t get any decision on who I am, only I have that power.
If you choose to bind, ensure you are doing so with a full understanding of what it can and cannot do for you, as well as making sure you’re doing it as safely as possible. This means:
- Monitoring your breathing and posture.
- Ensure you do not wear one excessively. The general consensus is up to 8 hours, but it is always better to wear for less time.
- NOT wearing one to perform excessive physical activity (workouts, running, anything that gets your heart and breathing rate up for extended periods), or to sleep in.
- Taking it off the moment anything hurts, you find it harder to breathe, or even if anything feels off. Your body wants to keep you safe, listen to its cues!
All in all, I hope this helps! Good luck and stay safe! ♥️
