Katy Bowman and the chair-free life

9 July 2023. After Mascha, Tobi, Mama, and Julien had driven away after the barbecue in Borsum, I had the peace and quiet to practice my final presentation for my master's thesis.

Today, I decided to try a rather unusual experiment. Recently, I had been reading the book "Move Your DNA" by Katy Bowman. In this book, the author described how she lived without chairs and tables and the enormous health benefits this lifestyle brought. She worked and ate with her family on the floor. Eating on the floor didn’t seem so astonishing to me, as it reminded me of Uzbekistan, where our Uzbek neighbors also dined on the floor.

I always thought that comfort equaled health. However, the problem with my comfortable chair was that I could sit on it for hours without moving. This was the health risk. I regularly spent half the day on the chair without changing my sitting position. The real problem wasn’t the sitting itself but the duration of immobility in the same position.

I decided to try Katy Bowman's lifestyle. My laptop, with the PowerPoint presentation open, was on the floor, and I sat cross-legged, looking at the screen. After a while, I had to change my sitting position because it became uncomfortable for my neck and too hard on my buttocks. I lay on my stomach in front of the laptop and worked for a while in this position. That also became uncomfortable eventually. I switched back to the cross-legged position or tried a completely new one. The Russian squat, side-lying with my elbow propped up, even standing with the laptop on the windowsill – I tried different positions.

After this dynamic and varied sitting style, I felt slight tension in my back, neck, and hips, similar to after a stretching workout. I could imagine that regularly adopting different sitting positions would significantly improve my flexibility and mobility.

Excited about this new, diverse way of sitting, I resolved to try it more often to get used to it. The best part, I thought, was: "If I’m no longer dependent on chairs and tables, I could make room for other activities. No more tedious dusting or dismantling the desk when moving, more space in the room for my karate exercises, and fewer resources consumed by forgoing tables and chairs."

While trying out sitting on the floor, I also noticed slight pain in my wrist, as it was difficult to work with the mouse on the floor. On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine working solely with the trackpad, especially when it came to video editing or drawing. Nevertheless, I wanted to be open and gave the trackpad a chance. I set it up accordingly and tried working with it.

During a break, I found a long stick while walking, which I could use for my presentation next week since I no longer had a laser pointer and wasn’t tall enough to reach every point on the screen with my finger. As I wandered through the fields, I thought about starting another experiment: sleeping without a pillow. If I could get used to sleeping without a pillow, I could eliminate three items: the pillow and two pillowcases.

That night, I slept on the sofa without a pillow. The next day, I had a stiff neck. It felt like I had broken my neck. Turning my head left and right was painful. Fortunately, the pain subsided throughout the day, so I subjected myself to this somewhat masochistic experiment once again.