Babies

My passion for researching posture has taken me far and wide. I was in a village in Burkina Faso in western Africa when I first noticed how people there would track the conversation from speaker to speaker mainly by using their eyes, rather than by turning their heads. Along with their excellent body posture it contributed to a strikingly well-centered, dignified bearing.

This young man in Burkina Faso demonstrates the dignified bearing that comes with an appropriate amount of eye tracking.

Comparing what I saw in Burkina Faso with what I was used to seeing back home, I realized that in the US, and the wider industrialized world, we move our eyes a good deal less and our necks a good deal more. Why such a difference, I wondered, and what is its significance for our well-being?

In Paul Gauguin’s 1893 painting from one of his Tahiti trips, Woman Holding a Fruit, the unnamed subject shifts her gaze with her eyes, rather than by turning or twisting her neck. Public domain image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Babies and infants in all cultures track actively with their eyes, both when they are still, and when they turn or reach. One possibility why this changes for children of school age in the industrialized world is due to the amount of reading, writing, and screen time they experience. It seems we grow into a more restrictive, “ahead only” habit.

Infants in all cultures track very actively with their eyes, as my daughter Maya demonstrates here.

My son Nathan tracks with his eyes while reaching for a toy.

As adults, this trend can continue with desk jobs and other prolonged, forward-oriented activities, such as driving. Perhaps this is why, as we age, we develop a more fixed “tunnel vision,” which results in moving our necks rather than our eyes.

Computer and desk work are possible factors in reducing our range of eye movement. Original image courtesy Studio Republic on Unsplash.

Excessive dependence upon neck movement to reorient our visual field often contributes to soft tissue strain and wear and tear on the delicate discs and joints of the cervical vertebrae. Far better, then, to try to reduce this dependence and reintroduce eye tracking now and then.

Time spent in nature provides us a chance to practice our eye tracking. Follow that movement! Photo courtesy Nathan Anderson on Unsplash.

How can we reintroduce this ancient technique into our industrialized-world lives? I am a great advocate for getting out into nature whenever possible to literally expand our horizons. Time spent with young children, especially babies and toddlers, can give us an opportunity to mimic and mirror them — to their frequent delight!

This dancer in San Diego demonstrates beautiful eye tracking. Image courtesy Avnish Choudhary on Unsplash.

Many dance forms, including, but certainly not limited to, classical Indian Bharatnatyam and Kathak, also offer us ample opportunities to practice eye tracking, which lends our dance gestures and movements a depth of emotion. By allowing our eyes to track while on a walk or hike — perhaps while watching a darting squirrel or rabbit cross our path — or while watching a sports game from the stands, or while trying out a new dance style, we can provide ourselves a chance to relearn this method of respecting the neck and maintaining an especially dignified composure.

These elegant dancers in Trinidad and Tobago show the gravitas and depth that can come from skillfully-employed eye tracking. Image courtesy Isaiah McClean on Unsplash.

This is the first post in our multi-part series on floor sitting. For Part 2 on squatting, click here.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor is common in many cultures around the world, and has become popular in some segments of modern Western societies.

This Druze woman who I met in Israel has sat cross-legged all her life. She runs a hospitality business — all the food is laid out on the floor and the guests sit along the periphery of the room. She is at ease in this position for extended periods with her back remaining upright and relaxed.
 

In this temple in Bhubaneswar, devotees sit cross-legged for extended periods in performing rituals.
 

These Buddha figures in Thailand show relaxed, healthy, upright cross-legged sitting posture.

For those who grew up sitting on the floor (thus maintaining their original muscle flexibility and joint mobility), sitting on the floor is comfortable and healthy.

Babies in any culture have the capacity to sit cross-legged with healthy upright posture. This is Monisha White, Esther Gokhale’s youngest child.

It comes in handy at sporting events, in working with young children or with objects on the floor, or in a minimalist context. For people who did not grow up sitting on the floor, though, it can cause a host of problems.

When we are born, our hip, knee, and ankle joints are not yet made of bone, but rather of cartilage. The cartilage ossifies with a timeline that is specific for each joint. The hip socket, for example, is made of three cartilaginous plates at birth. The first pair of these plates ossifies at age 2; the last pair ossifies at age 16. We know that ossification patterns are influenced by mechanical stresses, so it is a commonsensical argument that the habitual positions a person assumes during the ossification period in childhood will dictate how the hip joints (and other lower body joints) set. Someone who has not sat on the floor since being a baby will have a different hip architecture than someone who sat on the floor to eat and squatted to use the toilet growing up. The shape of the joint will be different, as will its range of motion. Some joints have a “use it or lose it” mentality! Additionally, the muscles around these joints will have resting lengths that are adapted to the habitual positions. With muscles, it is simply a matter of stretching to get them to cooperate and be comfortable in new poses. For the bones and joints in an adult, however, things are more fixed. It is unlikely that any amount of practice could find us comfortable and sitting healthily in the lotus position for the first time as an adult.

In this first post of our multi-part series on floor sitting, we will teach you how to modify cross-legged sitting so it is more accessible and healthy for your modern body.

How the “pros” do it

Having grown up with this position since early childhood, people like the Thai woman below are able to preserve a healthy base anteverted pelvis and a well-stacked, relaxed, and upright torso.

This Thai woman sits through a prayer ceremony sitting cross-legged. Notice her upright and relaxed torso atop an anteverted pelvis.
 

In a tribal market in Orissa, this woman sells pots and roots while sitting cross-legged for hours comfortably.

The problem in modern cross-legged sitting

This position tends to tuck the pelvis in people who did not grow up sitting cross-legged. The pelvis is limited by the external hip rotators as well as by the shape of the hip socket itself. Without an optimal alignment of the pelvis, you will be stuck between two poor choices: relaxed and slumped, or upright and tense, each of which causes different kinds of damage.

Cross-legged sitting on the floor for modern urban people usually involves a tucked pelvis.

     
A retroverted (tucked) pelvis often results in a relaxed and slumped torso (left). Being upright on a tucked pelvis requires tension in the long back muscles (right). This is not a sustainable or healthy position for long periods.

The fix: use implements (pillows, wedge, blankets) under your bottom to help facilitate rotation of the pelvis. Allow the legs to be lower than the hips to accommodate tight external rotators and the shape of the hip socket.

A support under the sitz bones facilitates sitting cross-legged in a healthy way — upright and relaxed.

Do you use any of these techniques? Do you have props that help you sit on the floor more comfortably?