Samiland

This is the third post in our multi-part series on floor-sitting. Read Part 1 on floor sitting and Part 2 on squatting!

It’s very common for women in Africa to sit with their legs outstretched. I’ve seen rows of women use this position to spin yarn, engage in idle chatter, sort items, and more. I’ve seen babies massaged by women using this position both in Burkina Faso and in the U.S. by a visiting Indian masseuse who does traditional baby massage in Surat, India. In Samiland I saw this position used to bake bread in a lavoo (a Sami structure very similar to a teepee).

The Sami, who I visited in July 2015 (see my post Sleeping on Birch Branches in Samiland), bake with outstretched legs in their traditional lavoos (teepees). This is my friend Fredrik’s family.

Sitting with legs outstretched is useful when you need an extended flattish lap and your hamstring flexibility allows it. The ground needs to be dry and clean to make this an inviting position. It’s a particularly useful position for childcare. In addition to the aforementioned baby massage, our team member Angela Häkkilä has observed Anatolian women using their outstretched legs as a cradle for babies and toddlers, who are rocked to sleep with a sideways motion of the legs and a gentle lullaby.

 
In this case, the Burkinabé woman at the left is leaning against a wall for extra comfort while carding wool. With her degree of hamstring and gluteus maximus flexibility, she’d be fine without a wall, too!

The problem
Many people don’t have the hamstring and gluteus maximus flexibility to sit on the floor with outstretched legs and not round the spine. Tight hamstrings and gluteal muscles cause the pelvis to tuck under, preventing upright and relaxed stacking. Over time this can lead to a rounded back, degenerated discs, and pain. 

The fix
Place something under the bottom to encourage the pelvis to antevert, and/or consider sitting against a wall, tree trunk, or other surface to counteract the tendency to round the spine. 

With the modification of adding a support under or behind you, you will not only have expanded your repertoire of healthy sitting positions and possible activities, you will also be elongating your hamstrings to better garden, clean, and hip-hinge in general.

Though this Orissa woman would probably be just fine sitting on the ground, her technique of elevating the seat is very helpful for people in modern societies.

 
This Burkinabé massage therapist is testing the temperature of the water she will use to massage a newborn baby. Note her outstretched legs, sitting stool, and seated hip-hinge, all of which support the baby, the action, and the massage therapist to be healthy.

If this way of sitting would be helpful in your life, or if you’d benefit from increased hamstring and gluteus maximus flexibility, we recommend beginning by sitting on a support that will help antevert your pelvis, or with your behind against a wall for support. Since it’s only an issue of muscle flexibility, it’s certainly possible to work up to sitting with your legs outstretched without other support.

I came home from my visit with the Sami with a treasured possession, my new Sami knife and sheath. I had commissioned my student and friend, Fredrik Prost, a Sami handicraftsman, to make a knife for me and he had it ready for me on my arrival in Sweden. 

My traditional Sami knife and sheath created by Fredrik Prost

Fredrik encouraged me to put it into use right away when we cut birch branches to make our “mattresses" in the lavoo (traditional tepee). I would have balked at using a thing so fine and beautiful for an activity so rough and pedestrian, but he insisted - the knife was made to be a working knife. Since my return to California, the knife has harvested okra and zucchini from my garden, trimmed apples from our tree, and cut thin slices of the dried reindeer meat Fredrik sent me home with. 

In addition to being useful, the knife uplifts me in other ways. It is easy to be present in the moment when I work with it because its beauty is so compelling. I experience the specialness of cutting a vegetable, of caring for its blade, of putting it back in its sheath. 

Cutting homegrown tomatoes and mushrooms with my Sami knife

I’ve always believed in celebrating the sacredness of everyday life, but using a beautiful object makes this easy. The knife also helps me feel connected to its maker, to the culture that created it, and to hunter gatherers, past and present. Because it is exquisite, because it has such great design (down to a little hole in the sheath for liquids to escape from), and because it represents the cultures I have learnt posture from, it inspires me to up my posture game when I handle it.

Hiphinging to cut okra with shoulders back and neck elongated

It reminds me to roll my shoulders back, to anchor my rib cage, to lengthen my neck and back, to put just a little extra muscle into my movements. It has become my teacher.  

Posture and beauty are deeply intertwined. Maintaining healthy posture is one of the surest ways to retain the natural dignity, elegance, and beauty that is our heritage. I teach my students to think of their bodies as their most important art project - this “art project” is shared every day with those around us.

Young Woman Before a Mirror, William Merritt Chase, circa 1900

Not only do people around us see us constantly, but also - whether they know it or not, whether they want it or not - they are mimicking us on a second to second basis in small, almost imperceptible ways. Sometimes I quip with my students that vanity is underrated.

Baby showing no hesitation in checking himself out in the mirror

Celebrate your beauty - beam it out! And if beautiful objects lift you, then include them in your life. Do you have a beautiful object that gives you a boost? Please tell us about it...

Warmly,
Esther

Join us in an upcoming Free Workshop (online or in person).  

Find a Foundations Course in your area to get the full training on the Gokhale Method!  

We also offer in person or online Initial Consultations with any of our qualified Gokhale Method teachers.

This month I traveled to Northern Sweden and joined my friend Fredrik Prost's community for the annual marking of their reindeer calves. It was an amazing experience I will never forget.

Annual marking of reindeer calves in Samiland, July 2015

Though the Sami have given up many of their traditional ways, many persist and in the coming months, I will share aspects I found inspiring or educational.

Fredrik finishing working on his new knife. More of his work here.
Notice the inclusion of our Stretchsit cushion alongside some other basics from the modern world!

Traditional Sami housing is a tepee or lavoo, with long birch poles forming the main structure (these used to be transported from place to place by domesticated reindeer), and stitched reindeer skin providing the cover. The top of the lavoo is open to let smoke from a fire escape.

A Sami family in Norway around 1900

Today most Sami live in regular houses or cabins with varying degrees of modern facilities. Fredrik owns a summer cabin in a village inhabited by his paternal relatives; we visited a village inhabited by his maternal relatives where he does not own a cabin. We stayed in a traditional lavoo though we still had many modern conveniences with us.

Soon after arriving at the village (after a five-hour trek that was a good reminder for me to up my game in fitness and strength!), we cut young birch branches to create a floor. I used my newly acquired knife that I had commissioned Fredrik to make for me.

Fredrik (and I, not visible) cutting small birch branches to create a traditional mattress.
Notice the great hip-hinging (that pre-dates my teaching him good posture)

The birch branches help elevate you off the cold ground (this is the Arctic, where the ground remains cold all year round) and away from the gap at the lower border of the tepee. They are also supposed to soften the surface you are sleeping on but I can’t say I noticed that effect very much! 

The birch branches arranged in the traditional fashion on either side
of the central area which includes the kitchen, fireplace, and entryway (not visible)

We had carried in thin foam pads that went on top of the birch branches which were then topped off with reindeer hides from one of Fredrik’s cousins. His cousin Monica also lent me a rakas (this means “love” referring to the privacy it affords you in a communal tepee).

The rakas, suspended from the tepee poles, provides protection from mosquitoes and 24-hour daylight.
It also offers privacy in a communal tepee.

This is so much better than the miserable mosquito net I had brought along from REI - it blocks out mosquitoes very effectively (thank goodness!) and light (foreigners who stay in the Arctic longterm report having much more trouble with 24 hours of daylight than 24 hours of dark in the winter). My cocoon's space under my rakas served as refuge and a place where I could read Alexander Hamilton (highly recommended and a wonderful balance for my otherworldly experience).

The view from inside my cocoon under the rakas.
It was good to discover that mosquitoes are not good at navigating gaps
at the bottom of the cover though they'll find any hole higher up. 

It can be challenging to sleep on the ground, especially when some parts of you stick out (like my hips or some mens’ shoulders), or when your joints have been recently challenged (as mine were from carrying a heavier backpack than I ever have and trekking through swampland with heavy knee-high rubber boots). There’s not much give in reindeer hide and birch branches, and your spine and other joints are forced into some degree of distortion. This need not cause problems if your baseline spinal length is long and your joints are calm, but this July I was much happier to sleep the way much of the world sleeps - with a three quarter turn in my torso, one knee bent and the other straight, one forearm providing for a second pillow and the other helping keep my shoulder from collapsing forward. Ahhh - I had some comfortable long sleeps in Samiland...

Turning the torso as one unit, as shown above,
allows for comfortable sleep on hard surfaces

I’ve known theoretically that it’s important to periodically check out from one’s usual scene, but it’s only when I actually do it that I fully realize just how important it is. For the first week of July, I had nothing much firing between my ears - no thoughts of things to do, no urgent insights, no place I needed to go or people I needed to see. I just experienced life similarly to how the Sami do.

Fredrik's cousin Ulf, a full time reindeer herder, checking the weather
and resting between stints of reindeer herding

I visited neighboring cabins, went to the sauna and the ice cold lake after, joined the community in the reindeer marking (more about that later), made fires and cooked food, lay around a lot, went for a walk...

Warmly,
Esther

Join us in an upcoming Free Workshop (online or in person).  

Find a Foundations Course in your area to get the full training on the Gokhale Method!  

We also offer in person or online Initial Consultations with any of our qualified Gokhale Method teachers.