Today’s post comes from therapist, personal coach and mass communicator B. Marty Barry. He’s an online relationship manager, a bottomless well of wellness, and although he’s never met you, he cares about you very, very, very much.
Dear Reader,
I was thinking about you yesterday when word came from the experts that sitting too much is a serious problem for public health.
I know sitting has a bad reputation. And of course I’m concerned, because in my day-to-day work as a therapist, I sit quite a lot. My clients are in even worse shape – they’re completely horizontal for hours and hours while I listen to them talk about their problems and neuroses – many of which have to do with not getting enough exercise and a chronic fear of fitness! So when researchers start to criticize sitting, it’s hard not to feel singled out.
But I wonder if there’s isn’t something else behind this – a smoke screen of sorts. Because I can’t help noticing that the world is essentially run by people who make their livings in the sitting professions – lawyers, bankers, politicians, etc.
Who stands all day? Laborers, cashiers, school teachers, and the greeter at Wal-Mart. Even baby-sitters sit less than the people who make the decisions that shape our lives, and “sit” is in the name of their profession! I rest my case.
I’m not saying the sitting professionals have it easy. Can you imagine how many years a politician has to perch on a folding chair in meetings and hearings and conferences before he or she can have a shot at becoming president? No wonder they campaign by standing on “stumps”. They’re desperate to get their heads up where they might smell a fresh breeze every so often.
Sitting down is hard, but if you do it right, it pays.
So I say sit as much as you like. And parents, teach your children to sit as well. If your goal for them is to be trim, healthy, athletic and poor, then by all means disparage sedentary work and roust them out into the sunshine. But if you want them to have power and influence, get them started early sitting at a conference table or a dais, and teach them to make the kind of deals that guarantee they will come out ahead. Then someday they’ll have the money to hire a financially impoverished personal trainer who never learned to sit.
That’s not an order, just a helpful suggestion – offered here because although I’ve never met you, I care about you very, very, very much.
B. Marty Barry
How much time do you spend sitting?
Trail Baboon 
WWWWAAAAYYYY too much. As a computer programmer since 1978, sitting-r-moi. It is a bit scary to read that sitting is so bad for a person. I’m not surprised though. I have just about developed a hump or spine curvature from being in the same position so much and I think I may have deformed my shoulder joints so that I can’t straighten them naturally anymore.
Why, at this very moment (up earlier than Clyde or Jim), I am at my computer for work because my night duties roused me from sleep due to a sluggish backup process.
That problem was solved (I had to call a cohort in South Carolina) and now it’s time for me to spend a few more horizontal hours before I start to sit again (sigh).
LikeLike
Good morning. I am afraid that when I don’t have something to do that requires me to get up, I am usually sitting, I should find more things to do that keep me moving. I think more activity would be good for me. I would come closer to getting a good nights sleep. My problem of not sleeping well leads to less activity during the day due to feeling tired and that leads to not sleeping as much as I would like to at night.
Today I will get a workout shoveling snow if my neighbor doesn’t get to it first with his snow blower. He likes helping me out. I would prefer to do it myself with a shovel. He would think I am kind of a crazy person if I told him that I don’t want him to do it for me.
LikeLike
This is not a fun topic for me. I have problems sleeping horizontally, so I often go days without bothering to even try. I sleep sitting. Which means I sit 98% of my day, allowing for a few healthy moments of walking between chairs. I obviously am doomed. But then, the good news I can’t afford to live long, so it all works out.
LikeLike
I’ve spent most of my working in jobs that kept me on my feet most of the day, so the last few years at a desk have been rough on me. Back hurts, legs hurt and let’s just not talk about the weight thing, ok?
Thankfully, the current desk job allows for plenty of opportunities to get up and walk a bit.
Can’t agree about the money and power aspect-I made more and had more power on my feet.
Time to go out and do some snow moving. No school and a later snow emergency woo hoo!!!
Of course, when you work at home (or walking distance from hour “we never close” job) there is no snow day.
LikeLike
Sure enough, got called in for the first hour of the shift this morning, so quickly out of shovelling clothes, brush off the car (drove because i was afraid of getting tagged and towed), got one of the back doors to pry open so I could climb over to the front seat.
Got to the cross-street just as 2 plows barrelled past, so backed up to get a good run up and over the plowage, drove to the next night plow route and turned the corner in time to pull over for 2 fire trucks. Worked for a bit over an hour and have left the car in the heated garage at work to thaw out while I have breakfast and try to remember what my day was supposed to accomplish.
LikeLike
Your new name is Intrepidgirl
LikeLike
I only do this stuff so I can tell the stories later 😉
LikeLike
You could drop the first step and just go to the second.
LikeLike
Alas, I am a “method” storyteller. Have to do it so it will be “authentic” //eyeroll//.
LikeLike
Way too much, like most who have posted. I am trying to get up and walk up and down my stairs every hour or two, or just stand if I don’t. Need to be sitting to do something like read.
Chris in owatonna
LikeLike
Stand up and Shine Baboons:
I sit too much, like all of us I guess, but I get up and walk between every sessions and stand up at a little standing computer station I fashioned to keep myself vertical more. I try to be up and around at home, but this winter it has been difficult to stay active. Walking outside is particularly treacherous.
Billy Marty is behind the psychotherapy times with a couch. I don’t even know a therapist who does therapy with their clients prone.
LikeLike
LikeLike
Like everyone else, way too much sitting. Looking back on my job history, my salary hasn’t gone up all that much, but the amount of sitting I do definitely has–I was walking and standing nearly all the time as a shelver and bookstore clerk, then was sitting half the time as a library paraprofessional, then went to essentially full-time sitting as an office worker. One of the things I do to maintain a little flexibility is either sit cross-legged (what they used to call “tailor-style”) in my office chair, or just fold up one leg at a time and switch off. At home I used to sit on the floor a lot, but it’s been way too cold for that lately. We need some area rugs!
LikeLike
The “news” isn’t a surprise to me. I engineered a job switch over a decade ago, partly in an effort to replace sitting hours with moving-around hours. I have an arthritic condition, and nothing freezes up your joints like having a job that keeps you in a chair eight hours a day.
I still sit quite a bit, especially in the wintertime, when the allure of hot cocoa and books and lap cats calls to me. But I am far less likely to put in long hours sitting now that there is no paycheck attached to it.
LikeLike
Obviously that a person should spend all day standing and eat only: gluten-free flours with nothing added to their cooked forms, a little fish now and then but avoid all other meats, only raw vegetables thoroughly washed, and drink only filtered boiled water. 🙂
LikeLike
Road reports for southern MN: closures or blockages on MN 5, MN 13, US 14, MN 15 (2 reports), MN 19 (2 reports), MN 21, MN 22 (4 reports), MN 30 (2 reports), I-35 (2 reports), MN 43, MN 57, MN 62, US 63, MN 66, MN 68, US 71, MN 74, MN 83, I-90, MN 93, MN 99, MN 112, US 169, MN 253, MN 254, MN 257
LikeLike
My drive way is open. i did it myself. My neighbor only had time to do his before heading back to his job. No problem with spending too much time sitting this morning.
LikeLike
Got this one from a friend. Seems apt.
hope this embed works…..
LikeLike
🙂
LikeLike
Morning all… just barely. 2+ hours digging out this morning, included clearing out the bottom of my driveway THREE times due to snow plows. Gotta love living on a county road!
Standing up at your desk is the new “cool” at my offices. Of course, you have to figure out your own work space if you do this — it’s not “supported” by management. And of course, when you work in a cube farm, all the folks standing up remind me of prairie dogs popping their heads up. I don’t know if I will succumb – I worked for years and years in retail on my feet, so I still enjoy the sitting!
LikeLike
those stand up desks a re kind of cool
LikeLike
I got my first real exercise in two weeks last night as I was determined to keep my steps and a path around my care accessible throughout the snow storm. I learned the hard way last week that not shoveling repeatedly could lead to a much bigger problem: having two feet of snow blocking me from even opening the door! Today, I trudged through three feet of snow out to the deepest mound in order to measure it’s depth – it was a startling FOUR feet (measured by a broom handle)! I could barely make it back to the cottage. I’m trapped here until my plow guy comes as my driveway is 200′ long, but oh my God is it beautiful to look at!!
As to sitting, I’d say it’s about 95% of the week. The only movement I get is dancing for five hours non-stop on Saturday or Friday nights. I tend to view this as a bi polar lifestyle, mostly “off”, then vigorously “on”. Like Jacque, I’ve not known or heard of clients lying on a couch in 30 years of practice, but it does fit the movie version of therapy. As does nearly every therapist having an affair with the client!
LikeLike
For a while I propped the computer and keyboard up on a little platform so I could stand while doing all this computer stuff. I liked it for a while, but then wanted the option to be able to sit at times, and now it’s back to normal. Should work on something flexible.
We shoveled a lot last night so there wouldn’t be so much today, and that helped. Then a neighbor snowblowed (snowblew?) the driveway for us this morning… The trees and bushes are all sagging under the weight, but it’s pretty now that the work is done.
OT: off to SNOPA later today, a weekend folk dance workshop over at WIlder Forest, north of Stillwater. Wish us luck that we get there easily… Have a good weekend, baboons.
LikeLike
Have fun!
LikeLike
I spent much of my wokrlife standing up to work and sitting down to exercise.
LikeLike
Clyde, was the sitting down exercise done on a bicycle?
LikeLike
Yes
LikeLike