Using Pilates to Learn How to Sit when sitting causes pain

Last week we started a series of blog posts about learning how to sit.  As we continue the series I am finding some humor in the fact that as a culture that sits for more of its day than most, it seems funny to me that we are a culture that doesn’t know how to sit.  I find myself thinking, "I remember when I learned how to sit."  The funny part is that I was 25 years old not 6 months old, and ironically I learned how to sit by moving not sitting.  This is why ultimately as we continue to sit without knowing how to sit eventually the act of sitting begins to cause pain.  This pain can manifest in our low back, our neck, our shoulders, our hips, and even our knees and feet.    When someone talks to me about pain in sitting I look for a few things.  I wonder how long is the axis?  I look at each vertebra and see if one is “sticking out” more than others.  I look to see if the knees are even or below the hips, and I look to see if the pelvis is stacked and tall.   I look to see what compressive forces are acting on the spine.  I look for bones that are stacked.  Why do I look for these things?  Because it is in my experience that pain when sitting is often caused by compressive forces (gravity) acting on the spine.  And if these forces can be spread throughout the myofascial system, pain dissipates.

The following video is a series of exercises that I have found to help elongate the spine.  Try it.  See what you think.

Thanks to flickr and caseorganic on flickr

The first exercise in the video is simply adding length to your spine by balancing the tension in the myofascial system.  I have learned from Tom Myers to look at the body as a tensegrity structure.  What does that mean?  I see a body with bones that are suspended between different fascial tensions.  Very much like the picture to the right.   In it the sticks are suspended by the tension forces.  Which is the feeling that the first exercise is helping you find.  You want to imagine each vertebra suspended by balanced tension of the muscles and tendons.

Thanks to flickr and Rwike77

Then you want to start moving the vertebra.  When you keep the tension balanced, the rest of the body can now begin to move in both flexion and extension in the sagittal plane, and in lateral flexion in the coronal plane.  In these exercises, I like to think about the spine as taffy that is warming; that as you bend it back and forth, and side to side the spine is getting gooier and gooier. 

And then finally I like to replace the tension in the spine to keep the posture that the exercises just created.

Have fun!  And join us next week when we use Pilates to learn how to sit balanced front to back

Katrina Hawley C.M.A, PMA-CPT

Director of Instruction at The Pilates Studio