Full Circle Health: Sitting is the new smoking

By Joanne Gailius

“Sitting is the new smoking” is a trendy phrase right now, yet many of us sit a lot! We sit at work. We sit because our muscles and joints are sore or simply because we’re not active. What to do?

Here are some very simple physio yoga rules to help you sit well, feel ease in sitting and help gravity pass vertically through you, not push you forward or backward. Short-term sitting is OK. Long-term sitting isn’t!

•When you are in a chair, sit back so that you can tuck your bottom (sacrum/pelvis) against the lower chair back and your mid-spine (bra strap level and up) against the seatback of the chair.

•Make sure your hips are level or just slightly higher than your thighs, with your feet flat on the floor.

•Place both feet flat on the ground in front of you. Check that your heels and balls of your feet to your toes are all restful. Check that your right and left foot are bearing weight evenly. Don’t cross your ankles or thighs or jam your knees together or tuck a foot under you.

•”ind your “sit bones.” Place your hands on the rim of your pelvis just below your waist and roll your pelvis back, so you are slumping. Then roll it forward, arching it, so you are sitting up very tall. Tip back and forth through these two extremes until you feel those lovely solid, thick sitting bones underneath you centrally. Make sure you are evenly weighted through the left and the right sit bone. Repeat often.

•Check in with your upper back, making sure that you’re supported by the chair. If you’re on a stool, find that middle, central place where your shoulders and upper back are quiet and there is no strain.

•Check in with your chin. A restful neck and head-on-neck is found when you have a slight double chin with a gentle tuck inward. If you are new to this posture, you’ll notice a slight “thick feeling” in your throat when you do this because your throat structures are used to functioning on stretch. Gently teach them to be long and tall again. This helps your voice strengthen, your swallowing improve, your breath deepen and your digestive system function with ease. It’s also good for your bone health as you have less downward-plus-forward strain on your spine.

•Press your tongue to the roof of your mouth and imagine growing taller through that space, as if your spine is lengthening upward or there is a string attached from the top of your head to the ceiling.

•Place whatever you are looking at directly at eye level. Be particularly aware of this if you are in progressive lens glasses. In these glasses, we tend to jut out our chin to peer through the reading lens — adjust the screen/book/glasses, not your neck!

•If you need to stay sitting for long periods, find this restful, gravity neutral position with support under your feet or around your thighs or behind your lower spine/pelvis or behind your midback. It’s relearning, then strengthening then finding endurance, like training for anything in life, and you may need support to begin relearning. You may need to use support on long car trips. Have compassion for yourself using a cushion or rolled towel.

•Change what you sit on: Try a high stool to perch, up on your feet to stand, a standing/sitting desk (there are combos), and sit now and then.

•Undulate your body in tiny movements (no one can see!) and then stand up tall every 30 minutes to “reset” your tone/postural support system.

•Keep checking in, every 10-15 minutes to find the places where you hold tension. Take a deep breath in and a long breath out and release it release your tension with your breath.

Think of our grandmothers. I was incredibly blessed to know my grandma well as she lived next door on our dairy farm and was the hub of our family wheel. She had such variety in her daily activities and that’s what kept her from sitting too long at once. Let’s be like grandma!

Joanne Gailius, BSR, PT/OT, is a physiotherapist at Full Circle Physiotherapy, working in women’s health, oncology and pelvic physiotherapy.