Chair Living:  The modern-day lifestyle of sitting in a chair of differing varieties for almost the entirety of the day; typically consisting of the following progression – car to desk to couch.

At this point in time, large swathes of the populace in the Western world spend more time sitting in a chair than ever before, with many of these people spending almost their entire day sat in a chair.  We travel to work sat in our car to then sit at our desk at the office and once we are home we progress to our couch.  In each of these scenarios, we are sitting in order to focus on some form of computer; be it our car’s computer, our work computer, or our television.
 

Whilst engaging with our computers, our minds can be very active; however, our bodies are not; when sitting we are adopting the same, static posture.  Our current obsession with activities that require us to be sitting still manifests in a widespread and chronic lack of movement: A recent 2016 NHS Health Survey uncovered that a quarter of adults in England do less than 30 minutes of exercise a week.
 

Watch this TEDx video for a brief synopsis of some of the health issues that arise from chair living.

Movement is an essential part of being a healthy human animal.  Our bodies, and our brains, rewire themselves according to the forces acting upon them.  Being in a static posture exerts limited and imbalanced forces on our bones, muscles, and connective tissues, and shapes them accordingly.  A persistent lack of movement adapts our structure to facilitate a continued lack of movement.
 

It’s the “use it or lose it” principal.

An ideal sitting posture is one that sees the skull resting in balance on top of the spine as a counter-point to the pelvis.  Typically when chair sitting, we are prone to rounding the shoulders and sending the weight of the head forward.  The head is incredibly heavy, weighing approximately 5kg, and this places a lot of strain on the muscles of the neck and back.  This hunched posture will also lead to imbalanced compression in the parts of the spine.  When this imbalanced movement pattern is sustained and repeated over long periods of time it leads to postural dysfunction.  Yet, even if we adopt a well-balanced seated posture, the muscles and fascia at the back of the legs and the front of the hips are inevitably constricted and shortened by the seated posture.
 

The remedy?  Sit less and move more.  And, if you can’t avoid sitting for large periods of time, then it is imperative that you develop a seated posture that is as balanced as possible and find opportunities to break up long periods of sitting with a walk or a stretch. In addition, you will need to dedicate time to specifically work on opening and stretching the tissues at the back of the legs and the front of the hips, which is where a regular movement practice such as yoga can act as your medicine.
 

Image source: Arthur Tress