Yes, unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how comfortable your chair is! If you can spend the day sitting in it without moving much it is actually not doing you good at all. Just on the contrary. Because the best posture is the next posture.
Our bodies are made to constantly move. I am sure everyone knows that on some level and still we are obsessed with being comfortable.
All of my massage clients that work on a computer come to see me because they are experiencing some kind of discomfort. Almost all of them point to the shoulders and neck – tightness, pain. Most of them want attention for their backs. While working I usually find that their hip mobility is limited and the sides and the back of their thighs need a lot of work.
What happens when we sit for long without changing our posture?
The hip flexors (the muscles that we use to bring the legs up to the belly) shorten as we keep them in same sitting position for hours and with time they shorten permanently. This will make some of the movements of the hip joint harder or even impossible. The more we sit in chairs, the more we find sitting cross-legged for example difficult.
Sitting for long will usually make us tilt our pelvis backwards or in other words “tuck our tail”. People can even sit on their sacrum which is the lower bit of the spine.
This changes the natural curve of the spine and can lead to short term or long term changes, discomfort, feelings of tightness and pain along the spine and actually anywhere in the back and neck as changing just one of the natural spinal curves changes them all.
I can actually go on for a long time as everything can be and is affected – feet, legs, pelvis, spine and back but also blood circulation and cardiovascular system (varicose veins and heart problems), the internal organs are compressed, the breathing is compromised (less oxygen is available to the system) because of hunching, slouching and other ways of “comfortable” sitting in chairs in front of computers for hours.
So for the really important part – what can be done.
Well, you might have guessed already – get uncomfortable. Sit on the floor. I know this might sound impossible but you can start small. Sit on the floor for several minutes today. Or use a cushion, a bolster or low stool. Remove the back rest at least. Experiment what is possible for you today. And yes, being uncomfortable will force you to change your position often, that’s exactly the point!
I am writing this sitting on my futon on the floor. And I have moved countless times already. There are so many possibilities and it feels almost like an exercise.
Our bodies are amazing and adaptable. It might take time and if you think about the years spent sitting in chairs so far, you will easily see that you won’t get big results straight away. But change will happen. The more you sit on floor, the easier it gets. And in the meantime some of your joints and muscles will change, certain movements will become more accessible, your blood vessels will thank you and every cell will be positively affected because it is all connected in our bodies.
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