Posture Brace or Taping

Two months before PMR diagnosis I was sent for physical therapy and they taped my shoulders a couple of times.  But my opinion was it didn't help or hurt.

      What has helped was their idea to very subtlely contract my shoulder blades- just a little- and do it frequently- but just a little.  This brings my shoulders back and opens my chest.  I especially like to do this when sleeping on my back.  They also gave me shoulder massage;  later my shoulders hurt so much that I couldn't bear the massage.

    My shoulders continued to give me huge problems, so I ordered a shoulder heating pad, a tens machine, and a body buddy from Amazon.  The shoulder heating pad did not go far enough down my back;  the tens machine was useless because I didn't have anyone to attach the stickers to my back, but the Body Buddy did help.  It is a large S piece of plastic that helps you reach all the places on your back that you couldn't reach so that you can give yourself trigger point therapy.  I spent hours doing that because I had hundreds and hundreds of painful spots.   This way I could control the pain level as I couldn't when someone else was giving my a shoulder massage.  Eventually I ran out of spots and my shoulders still hurt- though not as much.

jon5, I take it your female, if not, ignore the next bit.  It is possible to buy a bra which helps your posture.

Also you could ask to see a Physio, they can help.

A great deal depends on the cause of the poor posture. If you have a back muscle problem then your posture will adjust to what hurts least and the muscles will get used to that and trying to make them go anywhere else will hurt. IMHO, a better approach is to have any such problems identified by a physio and treated and then do physical therapy to retrain the muscles to be where they should be and strong enough not to hurt. 

Bowen therapy will also achieve a good result in dealing with an underlying problem - and then you can do targetted exercises to improve the muscle support of the spine.