Ask a physio: The problem isn’t sitting, it’s stillness

Every September, the kids go back to school and a lot of us return to a desk we had happily forgotten. A week or two in, the emails start. My back is stiff again. My neck aches by three o’clock. I must be sitting wrong.

It is one of the most common worries I hear, and I think one of the most misunderstood because most of us have been handed a story about posture.

Sit up straight. Shoulders back. Find the one correct position, hold it, and the pain stays away. It is a tidy idea, and a more recent one than you might think.

The upright, chin-up posture we treat as “correct” seems to owe a good deal to the early 1900s, when military fitness drives and a wave of posture campaigns made an erect spine a mark of health, and medicine took it up as the right way to hold a body.

The evidence that it actually prevents pain, though, turns out to be surprisingly thin.
Physiotherapy researchers who took a hard look at the “sit up straight” advice a few years ago gently suggested it may be time to rethink it.

So if you feel a bit guilty about your posture, catching yourself slumped and thinking you are doing something wrong, I would love to take that off your plate. Slouching is not a bad habit to fix, and a slouch on its own is not harming your back.

What the body objects to often has less to do with the shape you are in, and more with holding one shape too long.

A couple of hours in one position, however good, and the body often starts to complain. Not because you were sitting wrong, but because you were sitting still.

And being generally fit may not help you out of it. An evening walk helps, but it might not undo a whole day held in one shape. The body seems to respond to the hours it just spent, more than to last night’s run.

So here is how I think about it. Slumped forward all day could create an issue. Bolt upright all day could create one too. So the good move is to keep it variable. Slouch for a while, and enjoy it. Sit up from time to time. If you can stand now and then, even better. The spine seems to like being moved through its whole range, not held at one end of it.

And if something does start to hurt, one position might feel easier for a little while. That is fine. It just does not mean you have to stay parked there all day.

None of this needs a standing desk or a special cushion. Small changes, spread through the day, may do more than any single perfect setup.

A few worth trying this month. When you finish a call, or send an email, stand and take ten seconds to roll your shoulders. Fill your water glass at the far tap, or walk to a colleague instead of messaging.

And once a day, if you can, get outside. Working from home, the Coquitlam River trail and the PoCo dyke are minutes away. At the office, keep it simple: one block, two blocks, three, then come on back. Either way, a ten-minute walk at lunch can reset a body that has been still all morning.

That stiffness is better read as feedback than as damage. A bit like hunger. Hunger is not a sign your stomach is failing, just a signal, a nudge to eat. Stiffness after a long sit is much the same: not a warning that something is wearing out, but the body asking to move.

Backs and necks tend to be strong and adaptable, and quite good at telling you what they need. The goal was probably never to sit still, beautifully. It was to move a little, often.

Your next posture is your best one.

Sean Overin is a registered physiotherapist who coordinates the Chronic Pain Program at Tall Tree Health, which has a clinic in Port Coquitlam. This column is general information, not a substitute for individual medical advice.