The Art of Sitting
While we may have perfected the Zoom call over these past few months (sweatpants and a button-down shirt, right?) we don’t often consider how we are sitting for said calls. And whether you are working remotely these days or not, most of us are sitting for a large portion of our day anyway—for meals, driving, working at our desks, and perhaps playing our instruments. How we sit, and how we embody ourselves while we are sitting, is a crucial part of our lives that is often overlooked, and even misunderstood.
This week, we have prepared a short, guided exercise on embodied sitting. You will notice that the skills we have practiced in constructive rest will come into play: directing your body in space, inhibiting excess holding or tension, and receiving support from the ground. Like learning anything new, it is important to understand that there is no “getting it right” when it comes to sitting. Instead, we are looking to improve how we use ourselves (how we think, how we move, how we act, everything we do) so that we improve our overall functioning. If we are going to spend much of our day in sitting, it would be nice to do it in a way that makes us feel better!
Sitting briefly on your hands will help you to locate your "sitz bones" (aka the "Ischial tuberosity") large swellings of bone at the base of your pelvis on which you sit.
We hope this exercise will be useful to you as you practice conscious awareness in an upright position. You may find yourself thinking, “but there is no way I can pay this much attention to how I sit all the time!” That is ok. Think about all the things that you’ve learned up to this point in your life. Driving a car probably felt overwhelming at one point, and now you do it with little effort! Allow yourself the time and patience it takes to build this new skill. Think of it as an exploration, not something you need to “get right.”
Kateri & Alexandra
As part of the exercise, we extend one leg while we are sitting. Make sure to sit close enough to the front of the chair so that your leg has enough space to clear the edge of the seat when it is extended!
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