Sitting Bull

A recent study correlates sitting for more than four hours a day with a host of ailments.  What the study doesn’t mention is that it is talking about the Western style of sitting — that is, in chairs.

Have I not been speaking about this and without the wasted time and expense of a “study”? Why do we need a study to tell us what we know already.  Sitting in chairs is deadly!

Of course the so-called ergonomic experts advise the same old chair-based postures invented around the same time compulsory education was forced upon us — by gunpoint I might add.  Sit down and be still.  Back straight, feet flat on the floor, head angled down toward the busy work at hand.

Throw out the chairs!  Then you will also have no use for the desks!  Think of the money saved for school districts everywhere.  Substitute with cushions, pillows, zabutons and our children and our office workers will avoid spinal compression, shoulder tension and hemorrhoids.

Now you can sit reposed in seiza or aguira style as well as other styles — legs extended out and so on. Now you will stretch and massage the hip joints and the knee joints.  Your “core”, lower back and abdominal muscles, will work together to stabilize your posture.  In other words, you are exercising as you sit unfettered by chairs, couches, or benches.

Next time you are asked to sit down, you must ignore the presence of chairs in the room and claim your place on the floor.