Supported sitting is something that I teach to almost everyone who comes into my clinic for a Rolfing® session. It's also one of the most powerful techniques that clients take home and into their lives.
Clients who work supported sitting into their everyday movement diet report that even small doses of supported sitting can transform the way their bodies feel after a day of working, commuting, or even resting.
In this post, I'll introduce you to the structural and biomechanical considerations that contribute to the quality of your seat, I'll provide instruction to help you find and feel a supported seat in your body, and I'll make a distinction between a supported seat and an ergonomic seat. I've also provided a video tutorial for those of you benefit from seeing and hearing concepts. Let's do it!
First, what's happening in our bodies when we sit down?
Let's consider some of the structural implications of moving your body from a standing to a seated position:
Your torso remains upright in gravity, with the head stacked over the ribs and the ribs stacked over the pelvis.
Your body's foundational support shifts from the bony architecture of your feet and legs (which are your primary support when standing) to the bony architecture of your pelvis.
Next, lets look at what these structural shifts mean for your body from a biomechanical perspective:
Your body's access to the ground reaction force, the upright vector of energy that the earth provides in response to the downward vector of gravity and the mass of your body, shifts from your feet to your pelvis.
The tonic muscles that stabilize the spine and help to keep you upright in gravity must maintain their engaged state, but they must reorganize without the support of the legs.
This means that our goals when looking for a supported seat are to:
Organize the pelvis in such a way that it can serve as a supportive base for the torso AND engage productively with the ground reaction force.
Work with our nervous system in a way that recruits a healthy, functional tone in our tonic stabilizing muscles so that they are able to perform their primary purpose of keeping us upright in gravity.
So, what is a supported seat?
There are, of course, a variety of ways to sit. And your decision about which type of seat to take can be circumstantial, cultural, or informed by how your body is feeling in a given moment. But because so many of us, especially in the Western world, are typically sitting in a chair, elevated off the ground, I wanted to offer a tutorial for how to find a supported seat in a chair.
The video above provides all of the context and direction that you need to find your supported seat. But, if you're a reader (I see you, friend!) then I've typed up the majority of the instruction for you below:
Find a chair that has a firm seat. Especially when you're just learning supported sitting, working with a firm material under your butt is really helpful for feeling the bones of your pelvis and activating some of your tonic, postural muscles.
Make sure the seat of your chair is tall enough so that when you sit down with your butt in the chair and feet on the floor, your hips are slightly higher than your knees. In the video I modify my chair by adding yoga blocks to make the seat higher, therefore elevating my hips above my knees. This height difference doesn't need to be dramatic (this is a low drama zone). The idea is that if you were to place a marble at the front of your hip that it would gently roll down towards your knee (not go careening off the edge of your knee cliff). If the seat was too high I could have used those same yoga blocks under my feet to raise the height of my knees relative to my hips.
If it's not already there, scoot your butt towards the front edge of the seat so that you feel like you're "perched" there. Also, check in with your knees, shins, and ankles. The most important thing is to be comfortable and at ease, but if you need more guidance then think about stacking your knees over your heels (so your shins are vertical in space), and have your knees and heels about hip joint distance apart from each other (stack your two fists side by side and that's a good estimate of hip-width distance).
Slowly begin to tuck your tailbone forward and underneath your pelvis. This might feel like rounding the low back. For those of you who practice yoga you could also think of this as taking "cat pose" but just with your pelvis. Notice where you feel your butt contacting the firm seat. Do you feel like you are rocking back on the bones at the base of your pelvis?
Now reach and lift your tailbone behind you. This might feel like arcing the low back (like "cow pose" with the pelvis). Notice where you feel your butt contacting the firm seat. Do you feel like you are rocking forward on the bones at the base of your pelvis?
Continue moving your pelvis in this way - alternating between tucking the tail forward and underneath then reaching it up and back. Make sure you can feel the bones at the base of the pelvis. It should feel like you are rolling forward and backward on these bones, which are named your "ischial tuberosities" but are more colloquially called your "sitz bones." As you tuck the tail forward and under, you are rolling onto the back of your sitz bones. As you reach the tail up and back, you are rolling forward on your sits bones.
If you can't feel the bones at the base of the pelvis making contact with your firm seat, pause, then use one hand to move some of your gluteal tissue out of the way on one side, then do the same thing on the other side (that's right, use your hands to spread your butt cheeks). Now recommence with the pelvic tucks and reach-backs.
As you roll forward and backward on your sitz bones, use your mind's eye to feel where "center" is on the length of those bones. Find your way to being perched at the center of your sitz bones, and come to a still seat. If you're not exactly sure where center is, that's okay! Cheat a little bit forward if you're not sure (which means cheat the tail back and up a little bit). This is the basic alignment for a supported seat! If you take away just one skill from this blog post, knowing how to map your sitz bones and perch yourself on the center of them is hugely helpful to the rest of your body and nervous system.
Now, see if you can bring your mind's eye to your two sitz bones. Imagine that you could feel roots growing out of the base of these two bones, like the base of your pelvis were rooting itself more firmly to the chair.
Keep rooting down with the pelvis, then bring your awareness to the crown of the head. Imagine that the crown of the head could float skyward, as though it were a sunflower growing out of the roots of your pelvis towards the sunshine.
Invite the tops of the shoulders to soften away from the ears.
You did it! You found a supported seat!
The last few steps of the process, where you're using your imagination and felt sense to change the tone of the body, are the ways that you are able to tap into the portion of your nervous system that speaks to your tonic muscles. Chances are, your spine really did lengthen when you imagined the crown of the head floating away from the base of the pelvis (which you imagined rooting down into the chair).
This invitation to decompress and find length (without jutting the ribs forward or wrenching the shoulders back) is one of the most commonly overlooked aspects of building resilient and sustainable postural habits. When it's all said and done, it's critical that you are able to build a sense of feeling subtle changes to the tone within your body, and imagining different scenarios and the way that vectors of energy can move between your body and the earth.
Ergonomics, but without the expensive chair
My favorite thing about this method of finding a supported seat is that the anatomical benefits that supported sitting introduce to your body are what a lot of expensive ergonomic chairs are trying to mimic.
I don't have anything against ergonomic chairs (just make sure you do plenty of research before spending the money), but I know that I, personally, feel empowered knowing that I have access to those benefits without the expense.
Potentially even more impressive, is that when you are able to access your own inner resources to find a supported seat, you're building muscle tone and nervous system familiarity with the effort and alignment that's required to be there (rather than passively relying on a chair)—making it more likely that you'll find your way there when you inevitably sit somewhere that's not an ergonomic chair.
There is so much more to say about posture, the engagement of your deep stabilizing muscles, and how to use your inner felt sense to inform your movement throughout the day. But, for now, I hope that you have plenty to noodle on and experiment with in your own body and your seated posture! If you have visited me in the clinic, this is may be review for you as I teach supported sitting to many of my clients. But if you find yourself with questions, please don't hesitate to reach out!