Are you sitting comfortably?

How many hours a day do you spend siting in the same position? 

A couple of years ago I discovered that there was a reason I had always hated and struggled sitting on chairs and in that realisation, I was given permission to not do that anymore! Fast forward to now and we don’t have a single chair in our house! (Except the sofa – for now!) 

So why did we choose to sit on the floor?  I heard someone talking about how our ancestral tribes squatted and sat in ground sitting positions throughout the day. These positions soon get uncomfortable, which mean that we shift and move. Being sat in a desk chair we can easily get stuck in the same position for hours. 

There are still several indigenous tribes living as we would have in our hunter-gatherer era. This era was a 200,000-year period, compared to the last approximately 10,000 years which we have lived as farmers, domesticated by the humble Wheat plant... but that’s for another day! 

Like us, these tribes spend about eight hours of their days sitting in fairly sedentary positions and yet don’t suffer the same issues from sitting that we do.  

According to the NHS “Sitting for long periods is thought to slow the metabolism, which affects the body's ability to regulate blood sugar, blood pressure and break down body fat.”  

But when these tribes sit on the floor, they don’t see the same issues. One of the reasons for this is the humble squat, look at any toddler and you’ll see them perform the perfect flat-footed squat, but most lose this ability before reaching adulthood. 

When we squat we’re not actually sat down, although it’s a resting position, we’re putting all our weight through our feet, as if we are standing. Unfortunately, though most adults have to relearn to squat, because when we sit in a chair, our hip flexors tighten, our ankles seize up and we can no longer get our bodies in that shape.  

I don’t spend all day in a squat though, I have a cushion, like a yoga bolster which I sit on cross legged, sometimes I kneel up on it, sometimes I turn it around and straddle it. But the key thing is I’m shifting around all day long. 

Handy then for my home office desk to be short with its legs cut off, we also eat dinner around our floor sitting dining table, that looks like the biggest coffee table you’ve ever seen in a tiny cottage!  

When I told my partner this is how I wanted to live, his initial reaction was “but what will other people think of us, when we have them round for dinner?” Quick off the mark I responded, “Other people’s opinion of me is none of my business!”  

And sure, some people find it weird, even socially extreme, it's just perspective though. I know the benefits of it and can happily share these benefits to anyone interested and can happily ignore any raised eyebrows. 

How many hours a day do you spend siting in the same position?  

You don’t have to go as far as me and sit on the floor, getting up every hour and walking about a bit can help. 

Would you be willing to try sitting on the floor every now and then rather than going straight for the sofa?