Over the years, I have often shown students with recliners that they can get a compression-relieving stretch in their lower back as the backrest slides away from the seat (assuming the mechanism is designed advantageously). This is something you might like to try out for yourself.
The benefits of gentle back traction
We developed our Stretchsit® Cushion and our Gokhale® Pain-Free Chair with incorporated “sticky” nubs that give the same advantages of gentle traction to the back. The unique design of the nubs teases apart all the lumbar vertebrae, easing compression in the lower spine, and taking the pressure off the spinal nerves, discs, and bones. Stretchsitting can now be done virtually anywhere, and has provided a healing breakthrough for thousands of back pain sufferers, making comfortable, therapeutic sitting available in the car, the office, and the home. You can watch our free introductory video on stretchsitting here.
Our Stretchsit Cushion has made travel comfortable again for thousands of people.
A natural advantage of reclining over upright sitting is that the change in angle reduces weight on the spinal discs, nerves, and bones, especially at the “bottom of the heap.” No wonder so many people of all ages find it so comfortable. And it is super relaxing!
We instinctively recline to relax more completely. Image from Pexels
An executive chair with three healthy sitting options
We wanted our recently launched Gokhale® Executive Chair to offer all the benefits of the healthy sitting positions that we teach in our Gokhale® Foundations course, one-day Gokhale® Immersion course, and our online Gokhale® Elements course. Its comprehensive design enables you to stretchsit against its adjustable backrest, to perch perfectly to stacksit at your keyboard, or to recline and reset your entire spine. In the photographs below you can see these three healthy sitting positions in action in the office.
Not only can you stretchsit perfectly against the adjustable backrest, but it also has shoulder cutaways to allow you to posteriorly align your shoulders.
The downward slope at the front of the seat tips your pelvis gently forward, allowing your vertebrae to stack easily and your back muscles to relax. The resulting freedom allows a gentle spinal massage with every breath.
The multi-adjustable headrest can give precise cervical alignment and support. Recline and reset your spine to take calls, think outside the box, or simply enjoy the feeling.
Materials and craftsmanship
This chair is handcrafted to order from the highest quality Italian leather, chosen for both durability and breathability. It is upholstered with high-resilience foam to remain as comfortable and supportive over the years as on day one.
We think you’ll agree that our executive chair is altogether the perfect package!
On receiving her chair, Gokhale Elements alumna Katie Stringer wrote:
Thank you all so much. I received my Gokhale Method chair today. I want you to know that this is by far the most comfortable chair I’ve ever sat in. I am beyond thankful to have found you and your wonderful method.
A special opportunity to learn healthy sitting
Learning our well-honed Gokhale Method techniques for healthy sitting will give you optimal results from your Gokhale Executive Chair. We are delighted to offer, with each chair purchased between December 1 and December 26, a complimentary 25-minute personal consultation (worth $99) with one of our expert teachers.
During this session, you or the happy recipient of the chair will learn:
How to use the chair's features for effective stretchsitting at your desk
Optimal settings for restorative stretchreclining
How to lengthen your neck
Custom adjustments for your body and needs
This video demonstrates how the chair’s features improve your alignment.
People at their desks the world over need our executive chair! It is currently available with free shipping within the US and Canada. If you live elsewhere, please contact Customer Support at [email protected], +1 844 777 0440 (8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mon–Sat, US PST), who will be pleased to help you.
Best next action steps
If you would like help with your stretchsitting and stretchreclining, get started by booking a consultation, online or in person, with one of our teachers.
You are also invited to sign up below to join any one of our upcoming FREE Online Workshops…
In Spring last year we launched the Gokhale® Wedge. For years, our students have been requesting a convenient, ready-made wedge for upright sitting without a backrest, one that doesn’t require folding blankets and other makeshift (pun intended) measures. The requests also specified an attractive item to enjoy around the home or office, and that it be of durable quality, keeping its shape and good looks with daily use.
Many sitting wedges on the market provide a shallow, even slope that simply does not help you antevert your pelvis—at no place do they offer the steep incline that it takes to tip the pelvis forward “over a cliff,” so to speak. Worse, they are often too soft, allowing the bottom, which after all transmits most of the body’s weight to the wedge, to sink in too deeply, sometimes resulting in a reverse wedge! Some commercial wedges are simply too hard to be comfortable, and at best provide only one choice of angle for tipping the pelvis forward.
As infants we all sat easily with our behinds behind us, and our pelvis anteverted. A wedge helps us to regain this healthy angle. Image from Pexels
To implement the Gokhale Method technique of stacksitting, students require a firm but comfortable wedge with a choice of angles to tip the pelvis just the right amount for their particular body. This is required to be able to sit upright and relaxed, rather than the common back and forth between upright and tense, and relaxed but slumped. Stacksitting enables you to avoid compression on delicate spinal nerves, discs, and tissues, and encourages healthy breathing and organ function.
Your pelvis is the foundation for your spine and upper body. With the pelvis anteverted and a J-spine arising from a healthy L5-S1 angle and well-stacked vertebrae, the upper body can be upright and relaxed (a). Without a wedge, most people sit either relaxed but slumped (b), or upright but tense (c).
Simplicity can take longer
It’s astonishing to me how long it took to pare a design for a Gokhale wedge down to its essential elements. We’ve been working on this for over a decade. We’ve hired professional design consultants, graduate students in Product Design at Stanford, and discussed the matter amongst our teachers. After discarding dozens of designs that included sophisticated mechanisms for adjusting the slope of the wedge, or replicated the front edge of chairs from the period of Louis XIV, we finally came to a wedge that is beyond simple by comparison.
Our wedge, which only saw the light of day in March last year, is the simplest of all the designs we came up with—it’s a simple piece of foam, with a simple covering, and a simple zipper to close it up. Admittedly, the foam has a special shape—though that is not immediately obvious—and is of a high quality, resilient spec. It has just the right amount of give to be comfortable yet firm.
Meeting needs and expectations
Above all, our students need a wedge designed to translate healthy posture principles into action. And rather than being a one-size-fits-all, this posture-friendly wedge works even as the user’s J-spine and L5-S1 angle progresses.
Based on eighteen months of user feedback, we can say that the Gokhale® Wedge is serving people extremely well. It has been a great inclusion with the online Elements course bundles, ensuring students are always best equipped to efficiently learn to stacksit. Our students don’t hesitate to let us know what is working well for them…
…and what can still be improved. We have listened to user suggestions and recently applied a few innovations that we hope will make you like our wedge even more.
New features of the Gokhale Wedge 2.0
The original wedge (left) and its updated version (right) perform the same functions, assisting your pelvis and spine to be optimally positioned in sitting. The new Gokhale® Wedge has some innovations that we think you will like even better.
Sitting on the flat side: Our wedge has both a flat and a convex, rounded side. Using it flat side up, as shown below, it behaves like a teeter totter and gives varied options for the angle of its slope. This enables lighter people, and people with less L5-S1 angle, to tilt the wedge forward only as much as they want, and to sit on it higher or lower down, to find just the right amount of angle for them. It can give a gentle introduction to pelvic anteversion for those with sciatic pain, sacroiliac joint issues, or stiffness at the L5-S1 junction. As I already have a good bit of built in wedge in my third decade of stacksitting, glidewalking, etc.), this way around also suits me just fine.
Sitting on the flat side of your wedge gives you a wide choice of height and angle.
To make sitting on the flat side smoother and even more comfortable, we have moved the zip of the washable cover from the center of the flat side to the edge of the new wedge.
Sitting on the convex side: We have introduced a new non-slip PU leather on the flat side, giving users a non-slip base on slippery surfaces such as some wooden chairs and benches. As before, one of its rounded edges is slightly lower and less steep than the other, giving you nuanced choices of angle whichever way around you choose to use your wedge.
This wedge is positioned ready for stacksitting, rounded side up. This way around can give the most anteversion by encouraging the pelvis to drop forward. The front edge as it is positioned here is slightly lower and has a gentler curve than the back edge.
A change of fabric: The wedge is now in the same, slightly darker burgundy fabric that we use for our Gokhale® Head Cushion. It’s not only a nice aesthetic match, but its slightly coarser weave fabric also gives a better grip.
A well-designed wedge helps you to rediscover sitting comfort. It helps create healthy J-spine muscle memory for standing and walking too.
Here I am demonstrating how to sit on the Gokhale Wedge. Several postural principles combine to make stacksitting especially beneficial for our structure.
Your Gokhale® Wedge is backed up with know-how
No matter how well-designed, a wedge for sitting is best supported by training. This is true of all our products, but perhaps especially so for our wedge, because stacksitting is a big departure from most people’s sitting form. You can learn about stacksitting in our in-person Foundations course, one-day Pop-up course, our online Elements course, plus our Gokhale Exercise program. These offerings, along with our DVD Secrets to Pain-Free Sitting, all teach the skills that enable you to enjoy your wedge optimally in daily life.
Our students also appreciate being able to integrate using the wedge with our wearable PostureTracker™, which has settings that can track the degree of your L5-S1 angle, and the stack of your spine. Consider the Gokhale® Wedge a part of your toolkit as you improve your posture, and musculoskeletal health.
Best next action steps for newcomers
If you would like insight on your sitting posture, consider scheduling an Initial Consultation, online, or in person.
You can sign up below to join any one of our upcoming FREE Online Workshops…
Open, Grounded, Energized: An Exciting New Chapter in My Posture Journey
Emily Agnew
Date
Hi, I’m Emily Agnew, and excited to share my posture journey.
I first attended a weekend Gokhale Foundations course in 2016, to address a painfully stiff neck. I loved it. I also found it intense. To incorporate all I was learning about body mechanics, I had to concentrate so hard that I'd emerge from class feeling like my brain had overheated. On top of that, I was rather sore in unexpected places, from using my muscles in new ways.
Long story short, I was happy knowing I was doing the right thing for my body. But I hardly had the bandwidth to notice any unexpected mood changes that might have been happening. This fall—eight years later—I had a notably different experience. I took the next step in my posture journey by completing the Alumni PostureTracker™ and Advanced Glidewalking courses. This time, I knew the basics, so I had much more attention available to notice the effect the work was having on how I felt. Wow! It has been dramatic.
For one thing, I notice that my moods are better, but the change is even deeper than that. I feel more grounded. I experience an abiding sense of well-being. I see now that all this is the “affect effect” of graceful, open, and erect posture.
20162023
Before I began studying the Gokhale Method, my concept of erect posture was actually tipped forward. This created tension in my legs, lower back, and neck (left). As I’ve refined my tallstanding, I feel more balanced, tall, and relaxed.
What’s more, these positive results have set in motion a virtuous spiral. To my amazement, this grounded, open state of well-being has become my “default setting,” and it is naturally self-correcting. The moment I compress, scrunch, squinch, or tighten up, my body says, “No thanks!” It wants that great open feeling, and it lets me know instantly if I’m doing anything to compromise that.
No doubt, pain is an effective “stick.” Pain motivates us, and many of us come to the Gokhale Method because we are in pain. Now I’m seeing how powerful carrots are, too. The “affect effect” functions as a carrot, to complement the “stick” of pain or discomfort. I can feel my posture progress speeding up as I become more and more aware of this seamless feedback loop between discomfort and positive feelings. Any pain acts as a guardrail, and the positive results motivate me to keep my eyes on the road.
I’ve seen and felt this synergy at work in several areas recently, leading to spontaneous and wonderful changes in four areas of my life:
1. A happy neck and back while reading and journaling
I’ve always been a bookworm. Unfortunately, even a short reading session would leave me feeling like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, with a tight neck and sore back. After completing these recent courses, my body said, “No more.” I fashioned a couch setup that allows me to stretchsit properly and I pile pillows on my lap to hold my heavy hardback novel. I can read pain-free. Most importantly, that feedback loop is working: my neck lets me know instantly if I’m hunching.
A small investment of effort in arranging my body well with cushions brings huge dividends of comfort for reading.
I came up with a similar supportive setup for my office couch, where I sit when I want to write in my journal. I’ve struggled to maintain healthy posture while writing and would end up bent over like Quasimodo. Now I use supports to stretchsit, and once again, my neck and back give me continuous feedback so I can adjust as needed.
2. Deeper peace and stillness in meditation
I’ve meditated for over 30 years. Sitting cross-legged on my zafu cushion, I’d fight to stay erect. My back would get tired and sore as I tried not to give in to the urge to bend forward. Once again, I’ve felt the “affect effect” at work. My newly aligned body flatly refused to give up that wonderful open feeling. That was the carrot, and the discomfort of forward scrunching was the stick.
In this case, I simply added a support cushion on my zafu to ensure my pelvis stayed anteverted. Now, I can comfortably stacksit in that position for over an hour. This has transformed my meditation practice. I’m able to access a new level of depth, groundedness, and stillness.
This Buddha statue lives in my office. I feel myself embodying its stillness and centeredness more and more as I relax into my increasingly grounded posture.
3. More vitality and groundedness walking around the house
My partner and I each lived in Hawaii in the past, where it's a sign of respect to leave your shoes at the door. We don't wear shoes in the house. I had no idea how much this was affecting my walking until I submitted a pair of videos for our glidewalking class. In the first one, which got a thumbs up from teachers Esther and Doreen, I’m striding along outside in my hiking shoes.
However, in my second video, Esther and Doreen were puzzled by my apparent backsliding. Then it hit them: I was walking around on our polished wood floor, wearing socks. You can see how much more tentatively I’m moving, not being able to push off against the floor:
My improvised indoor traction solution? Swim shoes. Again, I was amazed by the effect this had on me. Not only was I not slipping any more: I felt different in myself. I felt more energetic, more confident, and more grounded—another example of the “affect effect” of good posture and body use. My outside walking feels confident and strong too.
In the Advanced Glidewalking classes, I learned how to activate my feet to grip the floor and push back. As soon as I switched from wearing socks to swim shoes, I could push back without my feet sliding out from under me.
4. More stillness and presence working with clients
With my refreshed and upgraded understanding of what it means to “keep my behind behind,” I adjusted my office chair seat upwards so I could comfortably stacksit with my knees lower than my hips. I have a Gokhale® Pain-Free Chair, so this was easy to achieve with its waterfall front and built-in grip.
I’m much more comfortable sitting for an hour at a time with Zoom clients. To my surprise, I’m also more present. It’s similar to the feeling I described above when I meditate: a greater sense of groundedness, stillness, and openness. This, for me, is the “affect effect” of sitting well. When I’m moving, the groundedness is there too, but with added energy and vitality.
I can now sit comfortably at the computer for extended periods, typing emails and articles or working with clients on Zoom.
The “affect effect” as a learning tool
I had an epiphany in the Advanced Glidewalking class this fall. I realized that affect and effect—that is, in this instance, my mood and my posture—are a two-way street. Each powerfully influences the other. I’ve always known that better, open posture makes me feel lighter, happier, and more energetic. Even so, as I’ve continued my posture journey, I’ve been amazed how much better I feel.
However, I hadn’t realized until now how much I could influence my posture by exposing myself to positive affects—that is, to images, music, and role models that inspire good posture. For example, we walked to different music each week in class, and everyone in the class could sense the varying effects on our walking of each style and tempo.
I also found myself absorbing in a whole new way the beautiful images Esther shared of women carrying baskets on their heads or bending to pick things up. It was as if I could experience their posture just by seeing it. Then I realized I’ve had posture models in my past. The most spectacular one was the principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony, Ray Still, my oboe professor in graduate school.
Distinguished oboist Ray Still (1920–2014). I was fortunate to study with him when he was performing in the Chicago Symphony, which is considered one of the greatest orchestras in the world. Image from Wikipedia
Mr. Still inspired me as a musician, with his intensely expressive sound and style ranging from lyrical to electric. He demonstrated for me how to invoke a grounded, erect, open posture by sitting with my feet quite far apart, then positioning myself so I could slowly, smoothly stand up and sit back down—all while playing. I was struggling with a lot of anxiety at the time, and this postural intervention had a dramatic effect on my affect. I became a different, more confident person.
I didn’t have the understanding or the practices then that my Gokhale study has given me, so I didn’t know how to generalize this “affect effect” into the rest of my life. But experiences like the one with Mr. Still launched me on my posture journey, showing me how powerfully my posture and my mood influenced each other. I’m grateful that my journey is still unfolding.
Best next action steps
If you are new to the Gokhale Method, or are resuming your posture journey after a little while, book a consultation, online, or in person with one of our teachers, who will be happy to help.
You can sign up below to join one of our upcoming FREE Online Workshops. . .
The much-loved Gokhale® Pain-Free Chairwas launched in 2012, celebrating the philosophy that sitting is a natural, healthy activity. This office chair was designed to facilitate stretchsitting and stacksitting, two key techniques of the Gokhale Method® that transform sitting into a comfortable activity that heals you rather than hurts you.
The Gokhale® Pain-Free Chair has many features that facilitate the therapeutic techniques of stretchsitting and stacksitting once their principles are understood.
The need for an executive chair design breakthrough
But some of our students, alumni, and members of the public asked us for recommendations for an equally comfortable executive chair—one that allows for leaning back with neck support. We gave our best guidance on what features to look for, and which to avoid. I also offered Live Chats on sitting and written blog posts about seating options—two examples being How to Choose a Backrest, and Comparing and Contrasting the Herman Miller Aeron Chair and the Gokhale Pain-Free™ Chair.
The features we consider healthy in an executive chair are rarely all available in one package. Many common features, like lumbar curves which distort the spine, bolsters that round the shoulders forward, and head rests that crane the head forward, are problematic and difficult to work around.
Our regular Gokhale Pain-Free chair works well as a home or office chair, but for a professional working long hours, a well-designed executive chair offers additional, relevant features. For example, it isn’t always practical for a busy executive to take a walk outdoors, lie down on the floor, or relax in a nearby cafe. But they still need to reflect, reset, and refresh.
The Gokhale® Executive Chair provides this. At the pull of a lever, the backrest smoothly angles back and even rocks a little for a profoundly relaxing pause or deep-thinking time.
The reclining function of our chair combines particularly well with cutaways which allow your shoulders to rest back, the stretchsit nubs on the backrest that enable you to gently traction your back, and a headrest that helps to elongate your neck.
We decided to make the Gokhale® Executive Chair a high-end offering. It is crafted in luxurious Italian leather (also available in high-quality fabric) and quality materials for comfort and durability. It has an adjustable headrest, adjustable back height, cutaways in the shoulder area, and my favorite recline function.
The guiding principles of Gokhale Method design
This chair blends form and function attentively. Its contemporary look belies the fact that its design is based on the timeless principles of healthy human posture. Its purpose is to not only allow you to sit elegantly and comfortably for as long as you wish, but also to bestow all the therapeutic benefits of time spent sitting well.
Most of the executive chairs on the market are designed to appeal primarily to the dictates of fashion. There is a parallel situation with shoe design; fashion does not always respect what is compatible with our structure. Additionally, from a Gokhale Method perspective, chair design often reflects conventional ideas on how to sit, which is also at odds with our natural structure.
Many designers—and consumers—are constrained by well-intentioned but misguided ergonomic principles like the S-spine paradigm. This is why almost all adjustable chairs come with excessive lumbar and neck curvature. Our chair is different because it is shaped by our knowledge of the body’s natural J-spine architecture to provide exceptional comfort and healing. No other executive chair that we know of has a J-spine paradigm informing its design. The Gokhale® Executive Chair is also uniquely compatible with all the posture principles and techniques taught in our comprehensive Gokhale Method courses (thein-person Foundations course, or one-day Pop-up course, or our online Elements course).
Let’s take a close-up look at the posture-enhancing features that enableusers to sit in ways that are comfortable and therapeutic.
The Gokhale® Executive Chair works for you so that you can work in comfort.
In this blog post I am excited to introduce a wedge for stacksitting to our students and readers. It’s possible to experience and take pleasure in sitting as you work at your desk, eat at your table, or play an instrument. If this is not the case for you, the Gokhale Wedge could make it so.
Upright sitting is necessary for many activities. The people shown above are sitting well with ease; most people in our culture no longer know how to do this.
How a suitable wedge can transform your sitting
Does your back get tired and tense from trying to sit upright? To sit upright without tension in your back muscles, and without slumping to let tired muscles rest, your pelvis needs to be anteverted (tipped forward). A lot of people assume that tipping the pelvis forward will result in a sway, but are pleasantly surprised to find that this isn’t the case. Using a wedge enables you to tip your pelvis forward and find the natural position for your sacrum which allows an angled L5-S1 disc space that is a better fit for the wedge-shaped L5-S1 disc. From this base your vertebrae can stack vertically, giving you a healthy J-spine. Now your back muscles can relax, and your nerves, discs, muscles, and circulation can function well.
The pelvis is the foundation for the upper body. With the pelvis well positioned, the upper body can be upright and relaxed (a). With the pelvis poorly positioned, the upper body is either relaxed but slumped (b), or upright but tense (c).
A well-designed wedge helps you to rediscover sitting comfort. It helps create healthy muscle memory for standing and walking too.
Designing posture-friendly products
In general, we have chosen to be somewhat slow to market with products. We set a high bar for effectiveness and quality of design and manufacture, and don’t want to add to the glut of products that end up in landfill.
But creating a wedge has been on my to do list for several years. One reason is that people often arrive at our courses having bought available wedges that don’t actually antevert the pelvis—and sometimes do the opposite in tucking the pelvis.
In the past I hired professional designers to address this problem, but was not satisfied with the outcome. So until now we taught students how to make their own wedges by folding towels and blankets. However, we recognized that this isn’t always easy to get right, and rolled fabric does not keep its shape when transferred from place to place.
A rolled towel or blanket can make a suitable wedge for stacksitting but it loses its shape easily if moved and takes frequent remodeling.
Determined to provide our students with a truly good wedge, we recently set about trialing a number of prototypes and getting extensive feedback from students and teachers. The result is a unique, simple design which finally ticks all the boxes.
The Gokhale Wedge took some time to get right.
What makes the Gokhale Wedge different
Most wedges are not informed by the J-spine philosophy that is at the core of the Gokhale Method®. Though commercial wedges are trying to respond to the discomfort that most people feel when sitting, and the observation that many seat pans slant backwards, they don’t go far enough in helping the pelvis antevert and supporting a J-spine.
The majority of wedges on the market have an even, shallow slope, and are made of soft foam. Soft foam allows the sitz-bones to sink into the wedge, further reducing the angle of a slope which is already insufficient to help tip the pelvis.
An example of a widely available, evenly-sloped shallow wedge.
Gokhale Method teacher Julie Johnson shows how a soft, shallow wedge allows users to sit in a tucked pelvic position—not what you want, and not how Julie likes to sit!
The design of the Gokhale Wedge
The Gokhale Wedge is made from a durable foam that offers both sturdy support and enough cushioning to be comfortable for longer periods. We tested materials such as buckwheat and discovered them to be too hard for most people’s comfort. Topping the buckwheat with foam still left a loose filling that needed remodeling with each use.
The Gokhale™Pain-Free Chair, which has a steep drop built into the front edge of the seat pan, encourages the pelvis to tip for stacksitting, and was one of the inspirations for our wedge.
Our wedge is able to accommodate all shapes and sizes and works well on a variety of surfaces. It also accommodates changes in your L5-S1 angle as you progress on your posture journey. One side is slightly steeper than the other, allowing you to choose which slope you prefer. Its cover is washable and durable, so it stays looking elegant.
Top view
Base view The Gokhale Wedge is distinct from the triangular wedges on the market.
Backing up the Gokhale Wedge with education
No matter how well-designed, a posture product is best supported by training. This is true of all of our products, but perhaps especially so for our wedge because stacksitting is a big departure from most people’s sitting form. You can learn about stacksitting in our in-person Foundations course, one-day Pop-up course, our online Elements course, plus our Gokhale Exercise program. These offerings, along with our DVD Secrets to Pain-Free Sitting, all teach the skills that enable you to integrate your wedge optimally into daily life.
You can also integrate using the wedge with our wearable PostureTracker™, which has settings that can track the degree of your L5-S1 angle, and the stack of your spine. Consider the Gokhale Wedge a part of your toolkit as you improve your posture and musculoskeletal health.
Best next action steps for newcomers
If you would like insight on your posture, consider scheduling an Initial Consultation, online, or in person.
You can sign up below to join one of our upcoming FREE Online Workshops.
Comparing and Contrasting the Herman Miller Aeron Chair and the Gokhale Pain-Free™ Chair
Esther Gokhale
Date
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.
Even though they are both designed to be “ergonomic,” they are clearly very different. The Gokhale Method Pain-Free chairreflects 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…
It has been 14 years since my book 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back came out in hard copy. For years I had wished I had a book to send to those people who called me from the East Coast or Midwest. These were often relatives or friends of people I had worked with in California, who were suffering terrible back pain and needed help. And so I got writing.
A book to solve back pain
Although there was clearly a huge need for a book to solve back pain, I was still surprised to find I had written a bestseller. It reached number two on Amazon.com following our American Public Television program in 2011, and number three following the New York Times article (paywall) naming me “The Posture Guru of Silicon Valley” in 2013. It has now been published in 12 languages (Croatian later this year), and sold over 250,000 copies.
8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back is available in many languages: Spanish, Croatian, English, Polish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, German, Korean, Arabic, Russian, Hungarian, Slovenian, and Italian editions.
Digital download or hard copy?
In recent times digital books have revolutionized publishing. It is perhaps surprising that figures from the US publishing industry show that, in 2020, hard copy was still outselling downloads by 2 to 1¹. 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Backis available as a digital download, but the paperback version continues to be in high demand. I have come to realize that there are numerous and perhaps unusual virtues for having a paperback edition of this book, some of which I would like to share to inspire you!
Every digital book has the primary advantages of price and portability, but can remain out of sight and out of mind. Encountering a physical book invites you to engage with it, to pick it up and thumb through it. You don’t have to sign into wifi or wait for it to load—you just start reading.
Visual cues help pattern healthy posture
One factor which works against us developing and maintaining healthy posture in our society is that we don’t have good examples and reminders around us. In fact, we are continually exposed to a norm of bad posture, while our culture’s idea of good posture, the S-shaped spine, is deeply problematic. What we want is to be surrounded by healthy visual examples on which to model ourselves.
8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back has over 1,100 images, mostly photographs, showing healthy posture from all over the world, from history, and in infants. Students find these images a motivating and practical reminder on their posture journey. Many a person has fallen in love with the African carpenter on the frontispiece, who insisted I take his picture, or marveled at the babies stacksitting with ease.
This African carpenter stands tall and relaxed by his bench. This is also excellent form for preparing food in the kitchen, or any work at a counter. 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, pg 3.
My youngest child stacksitting next to her “sitting tub.” 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, pg 69.
You can of course collect your own posture pinups, and I encourage you to do so. But selecting your favorites from 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back is convenient, plus you will know the posture shown passes muster. The quality of the prints means that they look completely at home popped into a frame, or even laminated and placed around the garden or garage or in your shower stall (true story about the tallstanding image leading Lesson 6). The key thing is to place them exactly where you need the reminders. For example:
Here I am reaching up to engage my inner corset. Use this reminder near a high shelf or cupboard that you regularly reach up to. 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, pg 127.
This African woman is hip-hinging as she harvests water chestnuts—a perfect picture reminder for your vegetable garden. 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, pg 151.
Here I am stretchsitting. Place this reminder by your easy chair or sofa, where you may otherwise tuck and slouch.8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, pg 47.
If you are of a technical bent you may be drawn to the many diagrams. Students find the mechanism of a shoulder roll drawing helpful in executing this technique. The shoulder roll helps your shoulder joint to return home to a healthy posterior position.
The mechanism of a shoulder roll diagram is especially useful at any desk or computer. 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, pg 42.
Lastly, the recaps at the end of each chapter make a handy cheat sheet while you are revising a new technique. For example, the recap of stretchlying on the side may be beneficial pinned onto your bedside table.
Starting a conversation about healthy posture
Your book can take pride of place on the coffee table, where, unlike a download, it will always be there to catch the eye. This is a nice organic way of keeping posture on your radar and introducing it as a talking point with family and visitors. We certainly know of parents who leave 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back strategically placed for their children to discover!
The coffee table is a great place for browsing a book.
Introducing your wider circle to healthy posture
If you are part of a wellness group, then 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back is a natural fit for study. If you are a book club member, then this may be the book you are looking for to invite discussion beyond back pain extending into anthropology, history, health, and lifestyle.
Given that 80% of people in the US will experience back pain², not to mention the many other musculoskeletal problems addressed in its pages, this book has broad relevance. Many of our students are grateful to have discovered 8 Steps while visiting their physician or other healthcare professional.
To help you spread the word among your family and social networks we have created “clan packs." The launch price has an additional discount: 4 books for $79 (instead of $99), or 8 books for $119 (instead of $159), and is valid until March 13, 2022.
Sometimes when I speak at conferences or wellness events (e.g., Google, Mimosa Systems, TiE Silicon Valley, Global Fund for Women), the company offers their employees/members/donors a gift copy of my book. To encourage this, we offer special bulk discounts. For information please contact [email protected]. For speaking engagements please contact[email protected].
References:
¹Felix Richter, “Infographic: E-Books Still No Match for Printed Books,” Statista Infographics, August 9, 2021, https://www.statista.com/chart/24709/e-book-and-printed-book-penetration/.
²Janet K. Freburger et al., “The Rising Prevalence of Chronic Low Back Pain,” Arch Intern Med 169, no. 3 (2009): 251-258, doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2008.543
Free Online Workshops
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.
Maintaining healthy posture during the activities you are passionate about is SO important. Good form will allow your body to partake in your favorite activities pain-free now and into the future. It often gives the additional benefit of performing better (because of a steadier hand, improved blood flow,...or just increased comfort and relaxation). We've seen a lot of musicians have to stop playing their instrument due to pain, and able to return to playing after learning the Gokhale Method.
A few months ago, I noticed that Nolan was playing guitar with a tucked pelvis and neck forward and I snapped this photo:
Forward head position puts strain on the neck muscles and threatens the cervical discs, ligaments, and nerves.
He asked how to play with good posture, so I put him in a stacksitting position and had him hold the guitar so it was slightly tilted towards him. He was able to keep his J-spine and have his neck in a much better alignment:
Sitting well and keeping the neck in good alignment makes playing for long periods of time more comfortable.
Esther’s note:
I like how Nolan and Monisha recognize the value of posture improvements without getting overly preoccupied with perfection. Incremental improvements is the best way to make bigger improvements anyway — insisting on perfection overnight comes with its own set of problems. Go, younger generation!!
There’s been a lot of nice music around our home lately. Here is a bonus photo of Nolan singing along to guitar played by a Foundations Course alumnus at our recent South Bay alumni potluck!
Here’s one more, in which Nolan is sporting a nice J-spine by using a pillow as a sitting wedge:
Nolan’s brothers Bryce and Conner have come to join my household for the summer, while also interning with our company. The Walsh brothers love to play music together as can be seen in the short clips below. We in the family and in the company are excited about the musical evenings and events ahead of us this summer! We’ll also be working on each other’s posture.
Do you play music? Have you found comfortable and healthy ways to play your instrument?
Fredrik Prost's Journey to Tuva: Posture, Shamanism, and Traditional Life Far Away and Close to Home
Esther Gokhale
Date
Esther's note: Fredrik Prost, the Saami craftsman and posture student I wrote about in these past blogs: Fredrik's Journey to a Pain-Free Back, Sleeping on Birch Branches in Samiland, Beauty, Art, and Posture, and Better Posture, Better Sleep, recently journeyed to Tuva. Here is an account he wrote for us about Tuvan posture, culture, and shamanism, including photos he took. It is a rare treat to hear about indigenous people from an indigenous person - one who speaks English well and knows our posture language too!
Tuva is an autonomous republic of Russia that lies northwest of Mongolia in the south of Siberia.
This summer I went there to explore the Tuvan traditions, in particular their spirituality.
Tuva is about half the size of France with only 300,000 inhabitants, most of them ethnic Tuvans. The Tuvans have traditionally lived as nomadic herders of sheep, camels, horses and even reindeer.
A group of children herding goats and sheep. The kids start to help out with the herding early - the youngest one here was just seven.
The culture is somewhat similar to that of Mongolia - for example, yurt dwellings, which are traditional in Mongolia, are also part of Tuvan culture.
I was interested in the Tuvan culture because I come from a similar culture myself, the Saami of Sweden. Traditionally we are a nomadic people mostly involved with reindeer herding and our traditional dwelling is a teepee. Our spiritual traditions are also similar to that of the Tuvans—generally known as shamanism. The shamanic tradition is surprisingly similar throughout Siberia all the way to Sápmi, which is the Saami area of northern Scandinavia and the Russian Kola Peninsula. For centuries, shamanism in both Siberia and in Sápmi have been under attack from the state governments and other religions. Soviet rule sought to completely eradicate religion in Tuva, and shamanism was driven underground. Despite this, shamanism flourishes once again and is practised openly in both Siberia and Sápmi. In Tuva it even has the status of state religion along with Buddhism.
The stunning landscape of the Tuvan steppe.
As a traditional Saami handicrafter, I have made many drums for Saami shamans. I am also a practitioner of this spirituality, so Tuva, with shamanism as a state religion, was very intriguing to me. Luck would have it that I have a friend in Tuva, a shaman working in their traditions. He invited me there, and naturally I accepted.
I am also familiar with the Gokhale Method, since I suffered from very severe back pain in 2014, and attended one of Esther’s workshops in Germany. So part of the plan for my visit was to also explore the Tuvans’ posture.
My girlfriend Inga-Wiktoria stacksitting on the edge of the boat while fishing on the mighty Jenisej river.
For almost two weeks we traveled around Tuva on dusty roads and in the wilderness. We met a lot of different people, both Russians and Tuvans. As we expected, a lot of people there have quite good posture, since they are involved in a lot of traditional work.
One of our new friends with shoulders back and rib anchor firmly in place.
What struck both my girlfriend and me was that almost all the Tuvans had good posture but the Russians did not. The Russians are a minority in Tuva these days, but historically they have made up as much as 30 percent of the population. So despite living alongside each other they have very different posture traditions—although it has to be said that it seems like the Russians in general have better posture than the average American or Swede.
A Tuvan carrying a heavy load with good back and posterior shoulder posture.
A group of Tuvans in a small village we visited was digging a new latrine; this man worked with really good form, and displayed excellent walking form with feet pointing slightly out and pushing with the back leg and toes.
They took turns digging and the resting position was of course squatting.
In the first week we went to a holy spring not far from the Mongolian border. There are a lot of springs where Tuvans go, which they find healing for various types of illnesses. There are many different springs for heart disease, rashes, and even back pain! These springs are also popular places to visit during summer, and whole families go to camp and relax together. At the spring we visited, there were a lot of Tuvans there and it was immediately clear that Tuvans in general have pretty good posture.
A visitor at the holy spring, stacksitting with thighs angled down and legs slightly open to receive the anteverted pelvis.
We went to a lot of places all across Tuva, which easily could be described as a land of extremes. There are mountains with pine trees, glaciers, as well as deserts where camels live. In summer it can get as hot as 105˚F and in winter minus 60˚F. Back home we rarely experience 85˚F in summer so we really did suffer the summer heat!
Endless roads through the mountains (Esther’s note: Fredrik has made great progress with his posture. When I first met him, he had been doing his carving round-shouldered; he took the instruction of the course to heart and here you see him with very nice posture indeed).
In the mountains we felt more at home both with the temperature and the terrain, and we even met some fellow reindeer herders! There is actually a minority in Tuva working with reindeer in the mountains. They speak a different dialect than the other Tuvans and just like us Saami they live in teepees not yurts.
Our new friends, the reindeer herders of Tuva, and our guide on the right.
Nadeshda showing us one of their skins; the conversation naturally was about reindeers! Shoulders back and good glidewalking.
The connection was instant despite several thousand miles between our two peoples. It really felt like meeting our long lost cousins. We received an invitation to visit them and their main camp, which we unfortunately did not have time to visit on this trip since it was four days away on horseback.
One of the many nomads of Tuva, with really good riding form - straight back and chin angled slightly down.
In the capital of Tuva, Kyzyl, there are shaman clinics where people go to find remedies for all sorts of ailments. At the clinics, which are run by different shaman organizations, shamans work on a daily basis with patients much like an MD in a hospital in the US. At one of the clinics we met Hurugay, a shamaness working for Dungur, the largest and oldest of the Tuvan shaman organizations. She was very welcoming and open about her work and the Tuvan traditions.
Inga-Wiktoria and I with shamaness Hurugay at the clinic in Kyzyl; Hurugay had really good posture, here tallstanding with shoulders back.
We camped for the two weeks of our trip and slept on the ground for most of the time. This was something I did a lot when I was younger but later on learned to fear because of my back issues. Since regaining the posture health I had lost, my back is really a non-issue and two weeks sleeping on the ground was no problem. Tuva gave us a lot, both spiritually and posturally.
Esther's note: A huge thank you to Fredrik for sharing these marvelous experiences and observations with us! Please feel free to comment and ask questions here.
There are several more weeks of summer vacation before school starts again: plenty of time to squeeze a family camping trip or two out of the sunshiny drops of Summer! Here are a few tips to promote healthy posture while you’re on the road, by the campfire, and in your tent.
Are We There Yet?
During the long haul to your nearest national park, it’s easy to strain your cervical spine (the vertebrae in your neck) by craning your neck forward to see the road.
Justin Bieber, in this photo, is demonstrating forward head—his ear is forward of his collar bones, and his chin is far in front of his sternum
If you notice your head drifting out of alignment with the rest of your spine, a quick fix is to gently pull your chin in so it aligns above your sternum, and stretch the crown of your head—the part of the head that’s home to many a cowlick--up towards the roof of the car.
You can give your neck a little manual lengthening by pressing up on your occipital bones, behind your ears
Once you’ve lengthened your neck, relax your head into alignment with the rest of your spine. It should be a smoother drive from here on out! (For further specifics on setting up your car for comfort, see this blog post on modifying your seat for Stretchsitting.)
Relaxing Fireside
Collapsible fabric and steel chairs are popular with campers, but these seats are often draped in a way that promotes slumping and slouching.
Fabric that hangs without any support induces a curved body position, and will force you into tucking your pelvis and slumping
A better option is to bring along a collapsible stool instead. With a stool, you’re better equipped to “leave your behind behind you” while you roast your s’mores.
A tri-pod style fabric stool can be used to help antevert the pelvis, because although the fabric hangs, you can tip your pelvis forward using the elevated corners in the same way as a wedge; a firm-topped stool may be even better for stacksitting, and will allow more flexibility in how open your hips are while sitting
Lights Out
Except for encountering a bear, sleeping in your tent can be the most uncomfortable part of camping. In the Gokhale Method Foundations Course, we teach our clients a technique called “Stretchlying” that decompresses the spine and can help sleepers tolerate a wide range of bed firmness. Here are two tips borrowed from the Stretchlying technique that may help prevent an achy back the next morning:
When sleeping on your back, check the position of your pillow (or if you don’t traditionally pack pillows on your camping trips, whatever you stuff under your head). Your head, neck and shoulders should be slightly raised on the pillow.
If you are too low on the pillow, it can cause your neck to curve forward. If you are too high, it can cause your neck to sway and compress your cervical vertebrae.
Your pillow should be able to support your head, neck, and shoulders without your head tilting back as if slipping off the top end of the pillow, which can cause a sway; a pillow that is too full can cause you to round your neck and/or back. Your pillow should provide just enough padding to support your current cervical curvature and encourage a very gentle lengthening stretch
I also recommend positioning a pillow underneath your knees when you sleep. Many people have tight psoas muscles, which can cause an unhealthy sway in your back if you lie down with outstretched legs. A pillow beneath your knees keeps them in a slightly bent position, which relieves the stress on your low back. Again, if you didn’t pack a pillow, you can always use a folded up fleece or other extra clothes you brought on the trip.
Stretchlying with a pillow supporting the head, neck, and shoulders, and a second pillow providing gentle support under the knees, can greatly improve your night’s sleep on a thin camping pad
An outstanding technique to use for sleep when camping, is the way most of the world sleeps—one leg is straight, one leg is bent, the body is ¾ -turned toward toward the ground.
This is an assisted version of sleeping ¾ turning toward the ground, using extra pillows under the knee and arm to help support the rotation and avoid a sway and a slumped shoulder
The challenges here are to not sway the lumbar spine, not tuck the pelvis, not force the head to turn more than it easily can, and not slump the upper shoulder forward. Easier said than done! We teach these techniques in our advanced technique classes after people have learned the basics of healthy sitting, lying on the back and side, standing, bending, lifting, and walking.
In the meantime, take along a thicker sleeping pad and extra pillows to make sleeping on the back comfortable for you.
Hopefully these tricks, along with supportive hiking shoes and plenty of bug spray, will keep your whole family in good spirits during your next excursion. And if you capture any good pictures that show these techniques in use, post them in the comments below!
