Comments

Base Thoughts — 10 Comments

  1. Robert, thank you for the article. You’ve worked with me on my sitting and I’ve shared some of my frustrations in the past. Sitz bones feeling too sharp; getting “vertical” feeling too tense & uncomfortable, etc.

    The breakthrough happened one day last summer as I was working on this problem with a nice firm chair in my living room, and I just decided, “Screw it. Trying to balance on my sit bones is unbelievably uncomfortable. I just feel like collapsing.” So I let my upper body just fold over and (more or less) collapse.

    And then something magical happened. When I gave myself the freedom to collapse, after a few seconds my body was like, “Wait a minute … I don’t feel like collapsing anymore.”

    My hip flexors had relaxed, my abdominal muscles had relaxed and released, and I felt myself very slowly rising up and getting more upright. As though my body were doing this entirely by itself, without any conscious prompting from me whatsoever. And before I knew it I was as free and upright as I had ever naturally found myself, with my sit bones firmly under me. And my whole upper body felt great doing it.

    Whenever I slip back into old unhelpful sitting habits, I take a few quick minutes to revisit this and get back to freedom again.

    I realized that this has always been your message anyway: When you give the body complete and total freedom to do its thing, without bossing it around or feeding it a bunch of shoulds and ought-tos, it will find natural, easy, beneficial use entirely on its own.

    It’s been a fun ride. Thank you again! Let’s do another session some time soon.

  2. Sitting is a skill, but from my experience squatting is more “natural”. I may be unsuited for either. The pelvis is meant to sway. Squatting permits that more than sitting does.

  3. Great blog, Robert! I also like Brian Todd’s discovery: I i have noticed that when some pupils start noticing the sitting bones, they are still doing their usual stuff of pulling themselves upright, and don’t let the sitting bones and the chair take the weight, fully. I then ask them to slump, which relaxes their ‘doing’ muscles, and then I ask them to rotate forward on their sitting bones without changing anything else. As they come more over the sitting bones, and because they are no longer tensing all their back and abdominal muscles, their torso is free to move into the upright – by itself (with the natural uprighters). As Brian experienced – the body is coming up by itself! It is always beautiful to witness this happening with a pupil.

  4. Hi Robert! What type of sofa or chair do you recommend for when I’m relaxing and watching tv? I’m having a hard time figuring that out. Thanks!

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