Since last November I have been doing a course for my business. It involved a lot of homework – in other words lots of sitting at the computer, researching, concentrating and staring at the screen.
This made me notice a few things that I had never realised would happen with so much time in the one position. I felt myself getting quite restless after sitting still for only reasonably short periods of time. My short periods were half an hour to one hour, much less than the average person sits still at their desk for. My sitz bones were starting to feel pressure, the front of my hips were wanting to be straightened out and I started feeling the weight of my head pulling on my neck as it sat forward. The occasional numbness in my hands crept into the mix of effects. I don’t know if this only happens to me (because I am not ‘conditioned’ for this kind of {in}activity) or if this is a general phenomenon. One thing is certain – I don’t like how it leaves me feel.
As it is I am still struggling with balancing the effects of all this. This then makes me think what so much more time on the computer or in other sitting occupations is doing to almost everyone of us.
So, my question is: Do we just condition ourselves to ignore the symptoms and soldier on?
I really think that everyone working in this capacity – which is most of us- need to start paying more attention to how we feel and refuse to accept something that is not optimal as the new ‘normal’. I certainly don’t. At this stage I am working like crazy to figure out which muscles are the ones causing the issues. Even more so which activities, postures or motions am I doing too much of that compromise my total physical well being.
Then there is the mental aspect of physical discomfort. I am sure that everyone knows how much not feeling 100% impacts our mental state. Oops, I found myself crossing and tucking my feet under my chair again…. the cause of gout-like pain in my big toe and the feeling of bruising on the top of my foot.
And I find myself holding my phone in a particular position which compromises the muscles in my forearm and upper arm around my elbow. The result? A swollen and quite painful base of the thumb.
My lessons learnt from this are to be more mindful of:
1. the amount of time spent looking at my phone while holding it with my thumb around one side and my hand turned up – this stuff creeps up on you if not careful…
2. making sure that my chair is not too high so I can’t very comfortably place my whole foot on the ground flat – I have since put something under my feet to get a better position
3. taking more care with my head position by placing it on top of my spine in good alignment instead of shifting it slightly forward to eliminate the strain on the scalene (side of the neck) muscles which causes way too many symptoms of pain and discomfort from finger tips to shoulder, chest and back.
A little while ago I went through the Mount Morgan Mine General Manager’s office as part of the tour of the Mt Morgan Mine. One of the rooms in the office had a whole lot of typewriters of different ages where even some of the very early ones were featured. What really stood out to me though, weren’t the machines, but an old sign dating back to some 50 years ago warning of the dangers of spending so much time in front of these machines. The sign had instructions on it for every secretary to be stretching and getting up from their work stations at regular intervals to move around.. There were even pictures showing the secretaries how to stretch.
It looks to me that they were well aware of the effects of this kind of work even that many years ago.
It just appears that we haven’t learnt….. Or we have chosen to ignore in the quest of getting more done, meanwhile neglecting our own wellbeing.