1 June

If you sit like this as many do, you will over time get tight hips, neck, shoulders and torso. If you go to a physio, they will give you stretching exercises for each of those areas, and maybe tell you your ‘core’ needs strengthening. None of that will work. We are a whole body, in everything we do. This person is out of balance, forwards. They slouch over the computer, but still want to see the screen ahead of them (B), so their head gets pulled back, straining the muscles in the neck and torso (C and D) to do it. Their hips are strained because their body mass is shifted back towards A, so those muscles are holding that mass in place. It’s one complete pattern. All of that tightening is the body holding itself in this out-of-balance position. To fix it you have to shift all of it, at once. The body needs to rotate forwards at the hips (A), which will automatically bring B, C and D into effortless uprightness. The chair will then push that upper body upwards, automatically and continuously. Ergonomics people will sometimes suggest instead that you take this slumped posture, and pull yourself upright. ‘Sit up straight’. That magnifies the strain and tension by orders of magnitude. Allowing the whole body to rotate forward from the hips instead will also activate the ‘core’ muscles that some think are weak. They’re not weak, they’re just not turned on.