6 April

I discovered something a few years ago, and others may have before me. If you have a foam roller like this one (useful in so many ways), place it vertically, down the midline of your back, between you and the back of any chair you’re sitting on. You’ll likely find that it causes your upper body to be effortlessly suspended, it prevents all slumping and slouching and instantly removes lower back pain. One reason I suspect these rollers do this is because with flat surfaces, it’s easy for us to forget that all standing and sitting is really a balancing. We tend to slump onto the flat surface. When you curve the surface you’re supported by, you can’t actually slump onto it, it forces your body to achieve a dynamic ongoing balancing. We evolved on uneven surfaces, and many of those have been removed from our environments. We sometimes curve our seating, but the other way, because we think it will be more comfortable because those curves match our slumps and slouches. But if we flip the curvature the other way, it’s like magic. You can sit or stand on a roller or other curve too, and get a similar effect. It’s like standing on a tree branch, and we did a lot of that in the last few million years.