stretchsit cushion

I frequently get questions about what makes a good office chair. Of course, some office chairs are primarily fashioned for style and aesthetic appeal. In general, I would say these may be easy on the eye, but, over time, hard on the body!

 This office chair sparkles with 1960s retro-chic. However, its markedly concave seat will internally rotate your legs, encouraging malalignment in the hips and knees, and flat feet. Its straight backrest leaves no space for your behind, encouraging you to sit on your tail and tuck your pelvis. lakeland-furniture.co.uk

Ergonomic chairs

People often ask my opinion on how various ergonomic chairs on the market might help them. This makes sense given the rising prevalence of back pain¹. “Ergonomic” means that something is designed primarily for the health, comfort, and protection of users, and among the specific chairs people ask me about, the Herman Miller Aeron Chair tops the list. To answer efficiently, I like to compare and contrast it with the chair I designed, the Gokhale Method Pain-Free™ chair, as this embodies the posture principles confirmed by my research and experience. 

The Herman Miller Aeron Chair. hermanmiller.com

The Gokhale Method Pain-Free chair.

Even though they are both designed to be “ergonomic,” they are clearly very different. The Gokhale Method Pain-Free chair reflects the paradigm shift that underlies the Gokhale Method® philosophy. This makes the chair quite different from every other office chair on the market.

How chairs shape your spine

The Aeron chair has been designed following the conventional wisdom of the S-shaped spine, the “S” being formed by alternating lumbar, thoracic, and cervical curves. Over the last 100 years or so, this shape has become the received knowledge learned by physical therapists, medics, and designers, resulting in chairs whose contours support a significant curve in the lumbar area, and accommodate a thoracic curve in the upper back. From a Gokhale Method perspective this excessive curvature is the primary cause of disc bulges and herniations, nerve impingements, muscular spasms, and the degenerative conditions that cause back pain. 

The Aeron chair is based on the concept of significant lumbar and thoracic curvature being desirable.  hermanmiller.com

The Gokhale Method advocates a J-shaped spine, which is the shape we see in infants and young children, in historical artifacts and photographs, and which still persists in non-industrial societies across the world. The J-spine is especially relevant when sitting upright, where, due to an anteverted pelvis, the behind is behind and the vertebrae of the spine can stack more vertically. We call this stacksitting.

No tensing the back muscles to get upright, no collapsing into a slump—and no alternating between these two problematic positions, which is a common strategy to try and relieve the discomfort they cause. Just comfortable, healthy sitting. You can read more about spine shape here.

Sitting upright at your desk

Both the Herman Miller Aeron Chair and the Gokhale Method Pain-Free chair have a waterfall front (where the seat pan front angles downward), which is ideal for upright sitting. If you know how to arrange your legs and trunk well, this will facilitate pelvic anteversion and all the good things for your spine and general health that come with it. Pelvic anteversion is central to the Gokhale Method and is taught in our in-person Foundations Course, Pop-up courses, or online Elements Course. 

The seat pan of the Aeron chair features a waterfall front in a mesh fabric. Some users may find the adjustment lever under the seat is too close for easy operation when the seat is tilted forward for stacksitting.  hermanmiller.com

I designed the seat pan of my chair using a combination of materials that give optimal support for sitting. The sitz bones need to experience a firm foundation for the pelvis and spine above, but they also need to be padded for comfort. In my experience this combination cannot be equalled or improved on by a single material or mesh fabric.

The seat pan of the Gokhale chair combines materials for optimal support and comfort.

Note that the metal backrest support is curved to accommodate the behind behind, another feature that helps in anteversion of the pelvis. 

To further aid stacksitting the Gokhale Method Pain-Free chair seat pan also has four soft, textured, rubbery nubs sewn into its front edge. These provide grip which help keep your pelvic position, and prevent any slipping off the chair. 

The Gokhale chair seat pan features four nubs which help you to stacksit for upright working at your desk.

Our seat pan is also slightly convex to facilitate external rotation of the legs and feet—that is, it encourages them to gently turn outward. This brings healthy alignment of the hip, knee, and ankle joints, and also the foot arches. A mesh fabric, pulled taut, cannot support external rotation in this way. 

Stacksitting with healthy external rotation of the legs. 

Armrests

Many office chairs come with armrests. It is healthier for the shoulders, which are very mobile joints, not to be continually fixed in position by armrests, however adjustable. Far better to learn to shoulder roll, which encourages range of motion and optimal arrangement in the joint. Shoulder rolls also help adjacent problem areas such as the trapezius muscle, neck, and upper back, and improve circulation to the area. A well-connected shoulder can support the weight of the arm effortlessly as you do your tasks.

Arm rests also create the significant problem of not being able to come close in to the keyboard, thus encouraging rounding of the shoulders. The absence of arm rests allows an almost cockpit like feeling of being surrounded by the desk and keyboard with no temptation to migrate the shoulders forward.

Backrests—traction trumps lumbar support

The Y-shaped feature at the back of the recent models of the Aeron chair has a support for the base of the spine which can be used to support the sacrum in mild anteversion. It also has a lumbar support which is less aggressively curved than that of earlier models. While these are considerable improvements, the mesh back of the Aeron chair is still not able to provide therapeutic length to the spine through traction, as the Gokhale chair does, or space for posterior shoulder placement. Nor does the backrest easily accommodate our trusty Stretchsit® Cushion. 

A contemporary Aeron chair features support for the base of the spine (sacrum) and lumbar area.  hermanmiller.com

The Gokhale chair backrest provides therapeutic length to the lumbar spine with soft, built-in nubs for traction.

Beyond supporting a healthy J-shape in your spine, ideally a backrest would also help tease out any tension in the lumbar area. The Stretchsit Cushion success in improving back shape and reducing back tension has inspired the same successful features in our Pain-Free chair. With a little know-how, these soft textured nubs in the backrest can give you hours of therapeutic traction at your desk, reducing pressure on your spinal discs and nerves, and improving circulation in the surrounding tissues. We call this stretchsitting. 

Are adjustable chairs better?

As consumers we have become increasingly familiar with hi-tech products that we can adjust and customize to meet our individual needs and preferences, and the Aeron chair reflects this throughout its design. 

The Gokhale Method Pain-Free chair requires just one adjustment, and that is the gas lift height adjuster. This is key to the use of the chair, which is designed to be raised for stacksitting so the thighs and pelvis can angle downward, and lowered a little for stretchsitting against the backrest so that the feet can still meet the floor well. The lifting mechanism comes in three different heights, and there is also our Petite Gokhale Method Pain-Free™ Chair, ideal for both smaller people and smaller spaces. 

The Petite Gokhale Method Pain-Free chair gives a range of working heights, and a foot ring. 

Foot rings

One additional feature on our Petite Gokhale chair is a foot ring, which gives more options for foot and leg placement, and prevents legs from dangling and pulling the pelvis into a tuck. It also avoids the constriction to circulation which may occur if the thighs hang over a seat edge.

A foot ring helps take care of the lower body—an area often overlooked in conventional office chairs. 

From a Gokhale Method perspective, adjustments for spinal curves or arm rests are simply not required once the basics of healthy posture are understood. Better to address these fundamentals before going all out on the bells and whistles. This means there’s less to go wrong—with your chair, and your body!

Sitting well is a partnership 

Almost every employer who wants to demonstrate care for their executives finds themselves purchasing a Herman Miller chair. Yet within the budget of an Aeron chair they can buy a Gokhale chair and treat their employee to a one day Pop-up Course or six-lesson Group Foundations Course in the Gokhale Method where they will learn postural skills that last a lifetime.

Healthy sitting is a partnership. It takes a good chair on the one hand, and good posture on the other. With the Gokhale Method Pain-Free™ chair and the Gokhale Method you have the perfect combination.

References:

¹Janet K. Freburger et al., “The Rising Prevalence of Chronic Low Back Pain,” Archives of Internal Medicine 169, no. 3 (Feb. 2009), 251–58, doi: 10.1001/archinternmed.2008.543

If you would like to find out more about how the Gokhale Method can help support you, sign up to join one of our upcoming FREE Online Workshops…

Pop-up Courses ensure an excellent teacher:student ratio for lots of direct attention.

Our newly-crafted Pop-up Course fills a gap in our group class offerings. After many years of experimentation, we are excited about this format as it enables more people to benefit from the Gokhale Method.

Why a Pop-up Course?

• Our highly successful Foundations Course typically takes place over 2-3 days, or longer. Some students struggle to fit its 6 lessons into their schedule. The Pop-up Course takes just one day (plus a 30-minute online private follow-up appointment), thus reducing the time required and keeping scheduling simple.

• It’s easier to work in with travel plans, family demands, or taking time out from work.

• Corporations, universities, and other hosting organizations favor one-day offerings, because of their simplicity and because their workers are busy!

You cover a lot of material in your courses. How do you keep students from feeling overwhelmed in the Pop-up Course?

One of the reasons it took so long to craft this course is precisely the challenge of how to teach all the basics needed to make a big impact (imprint new posture habits, reduce / eliminate aches and pains, etc.) without exhausting and overwhelming our students. The solution includes the following:

• Layers: we vary the topic frequently, switching easily from sitting to standing to walking to sitting to walking and so on…. We don’t belabor any one technique to a point of mental or physical fatigue. Students revisit these everyday positions with ever-widening context and layers of experience.

• Variety: we frequently change the “channel” or teaching mode: we go back and forth using images, explanation, technology, and hands-on cues, while weaving in snippets of research, anthropology, and historical data to back up the practical endeavor. In this way we engage all types of learners and give students many ways to get inspired, enjoy themselves, and recall the principles.

• SpineTracker™: after lunch the class gets a fresh energy boost — all students use SpineTracker, our unique 5-sensor wearable with an iDevice. We first record baseline readings of the student’s sitting, standing, and bending postures. Later, we record their learned stacksitting, tallstanding, and hip-hinging postures. Students can then practice to match, master, and even surpass these improved targets. SpineTracker is really pretty cool. Students get inspired by seeing their spinal shapes improve as they implement their newly learned posture techniques. The technology also enables students to track future progress.

• Fun! We weave in active exercises to make the endeavor more fun and energizing. These Posture Pauses also serve as practical suggestions on how to break up a long work day.

Students enjoy seeing their progress with the help of SpineTracker, our proprietary wearable technology.

There’s only so much anyone can learn in a day. Is there student support after the Pop-up Course?

• Absolutely! We’ve discovered that the 30-minute, one-on-one online follow-up session — a private video call, using either a computer or a smartphone, between the student and one of our qualified Gokhale Method teachers — is an important part of the Pop-up Course. It encourages people to read or re-read 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back (included with the course), watch the DVD (also included), gather their questions, and generally keep the techniques on their radar. Having had hands-on guidance in class and experienced the techniques, the book and DVD are so much more meaningful than otherwise. Against this backdrop, it’s striking how much can be covered / refined / revisited in a 30-minute, one-on-one Zoom video consultation.

• For all students, no matter which Gokhale Method training they have had, we encourage a maintenance program. We offer a subscription-based Online University program for alumni of our Pop-up Courses and Foundations Courses that includes regular online group instruction and Q&As with me, as well as an extensive collection of videos on all sorts of topics including workouts, yoga, dance, daily activities, parts of the body, general posture education, and more — all with a Gokhale Method filter. I’m currently leading a live, daily Exercise Challenge for the New Year, which is included with Online University membership. Our local teachers also offer affordable classes for small groups of alumni as well as private follow-up sessions.

A glimpse into our well-developed Online University offerings.

• In addition to the book and DVD becoming especially good resources after the course, the Stretchsit® Cushion (provided to each registered participant of the Pop-up Course) enables stretchsitting while also serving as a reminder to do the technique. Some students buy our Gokhale™ Head Cushion and/or Gokhale Pain-Free™ Chair to serve the same dual role of reminding and enabling students to use good posture.

The Stretchsit cushion, included in the price of the Pop-up Course, serves the dual role of reminding and enabling healthy stretchsitting posture.

• Students often find Posture Buddies in the Pop-up Course to practice with after the course is over. Sometimes students bring a good friend / colleague / family member to the course with them. We encourage this because these students have shared experience and posture reminders built into their lives, which is a great help.

• Our Institute sends our Positive Stance newsletter every 2 weeks to teach or remind all subscribers, including our alumni, of different aspects of posture. Each newsletter includes a new blog post on a posture topic, as well as a special promotion. Subscribers are also invited to free online teleseminars, as well as special video discussions I have from time to time with other thought leaders. Until the day when we are all surrounded by healthy posture and implements, as is the case for the model populations we derive inspiration from, we do our best to remind our subscribers and students to improve the way they move in the world.

The group format of the Pop-up Course builds camaraderie and is perfect for bringing a Posture Buddy to learn with.

What is the cost of the Pop-up Course?

The Pop-up Course costs $495 per person and includes 6 hours of group instruction, a lunch hour with posture discussion, a 30-minute online 1:1 Zoom video follow-up session, a PDF of 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, our DVD program Back Pain: The Primal Posture Solution (streaming), and a Stretchsit Cushion.

How can I bring the Pop-up Course to my city?

It takes a largish room and some eager students for a Pop-up Course to be successful. The course is delivered by two expert teachers; at present I am the lead teacher for all Pop-up Courses. If you already have 10 or more committed people, or can spread the word effectively, that makes it easier for us to schedule a course. If you would like a Pop-up Course in your company or city, please let us know here.

We look forward to hearing from you!

One regular challenge you are likely to face in your posture journey is the battle against the oversized sofa. Here are some tips to help you maintain good form and stay pain-free when relaxing on a sofa.

Want to avoid the habitual curled, tucked position that most couches seem to encourage? Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash.

Stretchsitting

Your first line of defense against a deep, soft couch should be stretchsitting. This will make your seated time therapeutic as well as relaxing. Some couches, made of fabric with some degree of friction and having seats that aren’t too deep, may not be difficult to stretchsit on. If you’re lucky, you can simply hook yourself up against the back of the sofa. However, many couches are too deep to allow you to get your bottom up against the backrest while keeping your legs bent and feet on the ground. In this case, you will need to fill in the space behind your back with one or more pillows or cushions. For very soft pillows, you can squish them down behind you until they are compressed enough to provide some resistance to lengthen your back against. If the couch or the cushion you use behind your back is made of a slippery material, such as leather, and provides no friction for hooking your back, add a Stretchsit® cushion behind you. Even without anchoring the Stretchsit cushion, the rubber nubs will allow you to get a little length in your spine. If the back of the couch tilts you significantly backward and there is no support behind your head, it may be a strain to support your head and neck. You may need to build up some extra padding toward your shoulder blades so your spine is closer to vertical. If the seat angles back or is soft enough to rotate your legs inward, you may also want another cushion beneath your pelvis.

You don’t need to get a strong stretch while lounging on the sofa, the way you might want to while working at a desk. Even a subtle lengthening that prevents you from sinking into the couch and “melting,” as many of us tend to do, will be beneficial.

Place as many cushions behind your back as you need to prevent a rounded spine and create a firm enough surface to stretchsit against. Photo by Jacalyn Beales on Unsplash.

Stacksit on the edge

If you find it challenging to stretchsit on your couch, perhaps because the couch sucks you in and you can’t find cushions that give you firm support to stretch against, try perching on the edge of the couch and stacksitting instead. Although slightly less relaxing and somewhat more formal, stacksitting is an option on almost any sofa or surface. Simply scoot to the edge of the couch, make sure to antevert your pelvis, and find that perfectly balanced stack! Anchor your ribs as necessary to prevent a sway, and roll your shoulders back.

The man on the right has his bottom behind him and maintains an elongated spine while sitting on the front edge of the sofa. Photo by Aaron Thomas on Unsplash.

If you find your knees are up rather high and causing an uncomfortable stretch, you can extend them in front of you, or cross them at the ankles and let your knees roll open to each side. Crossing the legs at the ankle and letting the knees fall open is an elegant, comfortable way to slant the thighs downward and promote pelvic anteversion, rather than having the knees up above the hip joint. The softer the couch and the more the seat tilts back, the closer to the edge you will want to be. In the end, you may end up with only an inch or two of support against the very backs of your thighs. To get a little extra length in your spine while stacksitting, push your elbows against your knees to elongate your back.

This man lengthens his spine by pressing with his elbows against his thighs. Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash.

Reclining

Another great way to enjoy your couch time is to use the full length of the couch (if you don’t have to share) and recline up against an armrest. On most couches, however, the armrest creates too vertical of a support to lay directly against, and will round your spine.

Without filling in the corner of the couch with cushions, the armrest will force you to round your spine and provide little support. Photo from startupstockphotos.com.

Instead, you will need to create a gentle slope of cushions, filling in the corner of the couch and the space underneath your J-spine. This will create a nice soft spot for you to recline halfway on. To get the shape right, make sure there is a sufficient ledge to allow your bottom behind you, preserving the J, and that the slope you create supports your shoulders as well as your head so you aren’t rounded with your head pushed too far forward by the armrest.

In the classic painting (The Venus of Urbino, by Titian), Venus has enough cushions beneath her to maintain a neutral, supported spine, and could even relax her head back against the pillow. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

You can also recline on your side, as long as you have enough support under your waist, shoulder, and head to keep your spine straight and relaxed.

What's your favorite lounge position on couches? Let us know in the comments!

Most of us spend a good deal of time in our cars, commuting, chauffeuring kids around, doing errands, or if we’re lucky, heading out to an adventure spot. Much of this time is spent being physically uncomfortable, especially if the car was manufactured in the last decade. There seems to be a downward spiral of poor posture and design that reflects poor posture - which in turn worsens posture. How can we break this cycle?

The industry standard for human form reflects the average in society: shoulders forward, S-shaped spine, and forward head. Car seats are designed to fit these features.

A checklist for healthy posture when driving includes:

1. Shoulders:  back and down
2. Neck: elongated and stacked over the spine
3. Bottom: well back in the seat
4. Spine: elongated and well-stacked

Modern car seats often make these simple posture practices challenging or impossible. The good news is that it’s relatively easy to fix almost any kind of carseat to make it conducive to good posture. 

1. Shoulder positioning. You may find that the “bolsters” in your carseat get in the way of placing your shoulders back.
   

   The bolsters add considerable horizontal curve to this seat upright, and prevent the arms and shoulders from resting back beside the torso.

   
   The origin of bolsters lies in the racing car industry - bolsters keep racing car drivers in their seats as they whizz around corners at high speeds. For those of us not compelled to turn corners at 100 mph, the bolsters are an annoyance that make it impossible to set the shoulders in a comfortable and healthy place. Solution: Build up the backrest area between the bolsters, so your torso is no longer sunk between the bolsters with your shoulders forced forward. Depending on how much your car’s bolsters protrude, a towel folded over a couple of times may suffice, or you may need a much thicker support. When I travel, I use rental cars. With each rental car, my first action is to profile it: will a single Stretchsit cushion suffice or will it need additional thickness? Technique: After adding some thickness to the mid-portion of the chair upright, move one shoulder at a time a little forward, a little up, and then significantly back and down. Once you have your shoulders back in place, you may discover you need to move your seat closer to the steering wheel to comfortably hold the steering wheel. Be sure to keep a safe distance from the airbag. 
    
2. Neck support. Have you noticed that many car headrests push your head forward uncomfortably? The degree seems to get worse with the years. Headrests now have a new official name, which is “head restraint.” They are shaped to stick far enough out that the head is resting against the headrest and would not have any space in which to whip backward in the event of a collision. 
   
   
   The head restraint, as headrests are now named, reflect, and perpetuate, forward head posture.
   
   The standard that determines the extent to which the head restraint juts forward is the Crash Test Dummy. The Crash Test Dummy was modeled on a person with typical Forward Head Posture, and therein lies the rub.
   
   
   
   The Crash Test Dummy has forward head posture
   
   When I taught a workshop to the designers at Johnson Controls in Ann Arbor, they pointed to my Stretchsit cushion and remarked “the reason your products are popular is that we’re legally obliged to design seats the way we do.” It is sad when designers become constrained by deterioration in people's posture. 
   
   
   Forward head posture is now so common it negatively influences car headrest design.
   
   Solution: Very similar to the solution for bolsters, but the extent of how much you build up the central portion of the backrest now depends on how much the head restraint juts forward. DO NOT turn the headrest around 180 degrees or remove it or sit forward in your seat - in case of an accident, this would put you at risk of severe damage from whiplash. Technique: Determine the best posture you are able to assume in your neck. Now pad the central portion of the backrest so that the headrest works to rest your head against. Elongate your neck in any of the five ways described in 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, and “hook” the back of your head against the headrest so your neck is getting a gentle stretch. 
    
3. Setting the bottom back in the seat. This is not a problem in most cars. Some notable exceptions are: 

• very old cars whose seats have worn down so your bottom sinks into a “cave.” 
  
  
  Some carseats wear out in ways that create a "cave" for your bottom to sink into. 
  
  Solution: build up the cave to horizontal or near horizontal. Do not build it up to be a wedge - wedges are helpful for stacksitting, but not for stretchsitting, and in a car you want to stretchsit, not stacksit.  
   
• Bucket seats: Ouch. Solution: It’s very difficult to fix these. I recommend starting from scratch - go to Relax the Back, buy a seat to place in your bucket seat, and modify as needed.
  
  
  Bucket seats are very difficult to modify so they support healthy posture
   

4. Spine support. Does your car seat have lumbar support? This is based on conventional wisdom about an S-shaped spine being normal and healthy.
   
   
   An unhealthy amount of built-in lumbar support in a carseat.
   
   My experience is that it causes extra curvature in the spine, tight back muscles, degenerated discs, and arthritic changes in the vertebrae. Solution: What you really need is a thoracic support that you can stretch your back against. Technique: Use a Stretchsit cushion (if you have a fabric seat, a folded towel can also provide the grip you need) suspended behind your mid-back. Follow the instructions in 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back to stretchsit and put your lower back into a gentle, comfortable amount of traction. 

So what can you do to set your car up for healthy posture?

• If you're in the market for buying a car, examine the carseat. Some brands are better than average in the design of their seats. The Fiat 500, for example, has a head rest that works with healthy neck posture, and has bolsters that do not extend all the way up shoulder level. 
  
  
  The Fiat 500 is an example of car model that has a relatively well-designed carseat.
   
• The Stretchsit cushion is remarkably effective in mitigating a lot of flaws in carseat design. It can neutralize the effects of exaggerated lumbar support, deep bolsters, and head restraints that jut forward too far. In addition, it facilitates stretchsitting, which is healthful in itself, but also dampens the effect of bumps and jolts in driving, especially on bumpy roads.  
  
  
  The Stretchsit cushion helps transform poor carseats into healthy carseats.
   
• Set yourself up with good posture. No matter how good your carseat is, there is no substitute for knowing what to do in your own body. Stretchsitting, which is one of the easiest Gokhale Method techniques, is well suited to driving. Lengthen your spine against a support at the level of your mid-back, roll your shoulders back, elongate your neck against the head rest, and enjoy the ride!

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What kind of car do you drive and how well do the seats work to support you? How have you improved your carseat?