"Skeletons are a sort of "living story" you are continuously writing. bone robusticity is a result not only of genetic data, but of data created via behavior. It is through your choices of movement and the cellular loads these choices create that your body becomes your autobiography."

 -- Katy Bowman: Move your DNA.

Katy Bowman

This woman is brilliant.
Go directly to her blog to read everything she has to say, or listen to the many inspiring podcasts she is firing out, or better yet add Move Your DNA to your online bookbuying wish-list.
It is a must read if you move (i.e. if you are human). I cannot recommend it highly enough. In it Katy forms a brilliantly written, scientifically based alternative way of thinking about movement and exercise, which maybe, just maybe, will change the way you see the whole damn universe. Revolutionary and a truly beautiful thing.

 

However, there's no point in starting a revolution if you're hungry. So why not add this mighty fine cook book to your (NOT AMAZON) basket while you are at it.

Gordon Hewes

There are minimal health benefits to sitting (repeatedly) in a chair, and yet, as Katy Bowman describes in her new book Move Your DNA, the typical childhood is spent making chair sitting a fine art. 

“after a couple of years, sitting still in your chair would be your most-practiced skill, trumping time spent reading, writing, playing games, and physical education in school. Like a ninja of sitting, you practiced sitting still in a chair more than any other activity, with hours and hours in training, with no other learned activity even coming close in time spent practicing.”

--Katy Bowman in "Move Your DNA"

It’s time to start thinking outside the chair and practicing new positions. In her work, Katy cites physical anthropology professor Gordon W. Hewes study, World Distribution of Certain PosturalHabits. Hewes examined 100 different resting postures from all around the world.  As fate would have it, most of these positions don’t involve chairs.
Inspiration!

Alternatives to sitting in a chair. From Hewes "World Distribution of Certain Postural Habits"
Notice how nobody's at a standing desk. (Here is what Katy says about that...)


But before you get rid of all your sofas, make sure you are working within your actual joint range. Work with progressions and load your new found freedom slowly by using bolsters/blankets/cushions to help make your new floor office comfortable.

put your movement cap on...

Today I just have THIS podcast from Katy Bowman for Well Rounded Athlete . It is fascinating.
I'm currently reading Katy's book Move your DNA and as a result I now walk EVERYWHERE I can and have stopped using the furniture in my flat...currently typing this sitting in a squat.
Check it out...I shall leave you with some of the best quotes.

“You adapt to what you do most frequently….not what you do with the best of intentions.”

“You have ‘casted’ your body by walking only on flat, level ground.”

“We’re all overdosing on Vitamin Sit On Your Butt.”

“We’re bent on trying to fix our problems, without changing the environment in which the problem was created.”