29 May

Think yourself fit. Much cheaper and easier than a gym. We each of us have a fair chunk of mass we carry around with us all day, every day. That mass generates lots of sometimes huge forces, doing everyday things that are not even ‘active’ in the way we think of active. Sitting, for example. So we go to the gym to ‘get in shape’, but maybe a better question is - why don’t all those forces every day already have us in shape? I would say - because we don’t use them properly. Just one tiny example. ‘Sitting down’. It’s a really bizarre concept, when you think about it. As in the picture, how can the person go ‘down’, when they’re already on the ground? How can they get any lower than that? Our everyday language and ideas tell us everything we need to know, it’s clear we have a sense of ‘me’ that is just that top half, up towards our head, and it’s this part of us that is going ‘down’ when we sit down. We let that top half drop onto the chair, but our lower half is on the ground the whole time. What would sitting down look like if we didn’t do that? A bit like a squat. People can squat in a sitting position without much problem. Every time you sit in a chair, you can do it like a squat, without letting yourself drop. And there’s a ‘workout’, in an everyday activity. Sitting is really just your body, your whole body, in a different shape, it’s not a going ‘down’.