Sitting in a chair all day to work harms our health. It gives us pain, reduces our focus, limits our problem solving and sets us up for higher chances of diabetes, cancer, heart disease and obesity down the track.

We spend 6-10 hours a day working at a computer, sitting still. In our lifetime that adds up to ~80,000 hours, or 12 years, just sitting still. We then do our best to get out and get active around work to keep our health on track and counteract the harm of sitting all day. But research shows that although exercising is great for us it doesn't counteract the harm of sitting all day. Like eating veges in the evening after having chocolate all day (a crude analogy but you get the point).

We need to find ways to move more during the day. Not a lot more, just a little bit and often to keep our metabolism going, blood pumping to our brain, joints and muscles.

This is why we have created the movement movement. To teach you how to set up your workspace to move more while you work and teach you about Active Resting Floor Postures. We can go from two postures a day, sitting and standing, to 10+ when we bring active resting floor postures into the mix and completely change the game at work. Transforming a workday from something that harms us into something that help us.

The floor provides the most movement rich environment we have to work from a computer. On the floor we have access to 10+ postural variations that we can circulate through each day. These are called Active Resting Floor Postures.

Circulating through these postures throughout the day keeps the muscles in our legs and around our pelvis active (the biggest muscles in our body), maintaining our metabolism, keeping blood flowing to our joints, muscles and brain.

Getting to and from the floor is a predictor of longevity and is a movement that requires balance, flexability and strength, helping us maintain and even strengthen our body. Each time we get to or off the ground we give our nervous system a wake up, sending a jolt of blood to our brain and to our joints and muscles. Between getting down to and up off the floor and ciculating through all the postural varitations on the floor we create a space where more movement and more diversity of movement happens by default, without us even having to think about it.

This makes changing our behaviour much easier than relying on our willpower, setting reminders to move, downloading apps to shut your computer off every 30 minutes and interupt your flow. You can just shift positions and move every time you feel the need without even thinking about it. Just like our bodies like to. It is behaviour change for the best reasons made incredibly simple.

No, but let me explain. Chairs with supports for our back, support for our elbows, cushioning for our butt make moving incredibly harder. Yes they may be advertising a new tilt function that lets you 'lean backwards more' and they might feel comfortable to sit in because they hold us in one place but all this support requires nothing from our body, so our body slows down and prepares for sleep.

Our muscles don't need energy, our nervous system is not stimulated so our metabolism slows down. This creates a lot of challenges for our body when processing stress, sugar and inflammation and when we are trying to stay focussed and have energy to get work done.

In the moment we experience fatigue, foggy brain, and challenges with focus, problem solving and alertness.

In the medium term we experience pain in our low back, neck, shoulders, wrists and a feeling of vulnerability in our body as we loose our movement freedom. Getting stiff through our shoulders, hips and ankles, and weak through our back and neck.

In the long term we increase our risk of getting heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and obesity, to name a few that you probably already know all about. Sitting is the new smoking... I bet you have heard that before.

Chairs are a health hazard. There is no such thing as an ergonmic chair. Strong statements I know, but from a purely physiotherapy and movement perspective, physically they get in the way of movement and they make forming daily movement habits very difficult.

I know giving up chairs and jumping into active resting floor postures can be hard to imagine, which is why we created the movement movement.

With the movement movement we aim to make active resting floor postures more accesible, teaching you how to do them safely, effectively and inspiring you to give them a go. Over time your confidence and ability will build and you will find yourself using a chair less and less while you work.

At Limber we are on a mission to end back pain, halving it globally by 2050. Back pain is currently the #1 cause of disability in the world and there are simple ways we can reduce this. Moving more at work being a big one.

Founded by a physio wanting to prevent unneccesary back pain by getting people moving more, Limber started by designing what are now called "the world's healthiest desks" by Professors at UC Berkeley where they are being researched. Now also providing courses, back pain resources and new products, we is working hard to make increasing movement in everyday life easy for those joining the movement movement.

They are short, visual and to the point emails. We send you through a posture of the month with an outline on why it is good, how to do it and what to look out for. Plus a relaxed, non-hyped video where Physio Bart dives into the full details.