week 5

GET UP STAND UP

Since you have already spent the past week challenging yourself to find 10 different ways to sit and stand throughout your day...you have right? This weeks resolution/challenge/life changer should slot right in nicely.

When you sit on the floor (or in a chair or on someones lap) try and sit down and stand up without using your hands. This simple but surprisingly tricky task will serve to help maintain mobility and flexibility in several joints in the body (hips, spine, ankles, etc.) over time.

There are many many many ways to practice transitioning from floor/chair/lap to standing and back down again and I would recommend taking a look at some of the MovNat challenges for inspiration.

NO HANDS to stand and sit is a golden rule in our house....although my husband to be is a rebel and rule breaker so I will be making sure he gets this memo too.

Thanks to Dr Andreo Spina for the inspiration and to Bob Marley for EVERYTHING. 

week 4

SIT DOWN STAND UP.
What is your position in life?

I'm going to copy and paste directly from Katy Bowmans blog Nutritious Movement (go there immediately after this and read EVERYTHING) for this weeks 'become an opportunistic mover' task because she says so brilliantly..

"So, we’ve got a situation where sitting constantly is creating disease and standing constantly is creating disease. Do you see the theme? Although the research and media are going to probably miss the boat on this one, the problem isn’t the sitting (or the standing, for that matter), but the constant and continuous use of a single position.

...As many anthropologists know, the way we move is mostly a result of our cultural inheritances and has very little to go with genetics. Clothing, terrain, temperature, gender, class, and fear are only a few of the many factors that affect how we adjust our joints when sitting and standing. Gordon W. Hewes reported on about 100 resting postures of the world, and I have posted this image from the study so you can see, perhaps, why our Western joint health and metabolism (which is dependent on muscle length) is the poorest in the world.

So, we need to think bigger. There is more than just sitting and standing. Create ten different options of each! If you have a standing work station, stand a few different ways every hour. When you sit, sit a few different ways every hour. Open your mind and open your joints! When you get home, stay out of your chairs and try out a lot of these Worldly Options. (Note: If you don’t have a spear, a broom may work…) Circle the ones you can’t maintain for longer than five minutes and make a note to practice that posture at the beginning and the end of an exercise session. And, parents, don’t insist that kids sit in the same fashion as us stiffer folks and allow them to explore other options. And, join them! They can teach you something about natural movement.

Also, if you do spend a yoga/stretching class cycling through10 or so of these postures, know that while this cycle is a good thing, getting back into the sitting position the other 6-10 hours of the day reduces your health just the same. Adjust the way you sit, as often as possible for a real, deep, and cellular change."

Bravo Katy. I concur!

Found here

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.