In a world built for sitting, here’s how to stay active — even when stuck inside : NPR
It’s the season of “inside”. The kind of weather that turns your house into a little terrarium: warm light, hot drinks, a laptop, and lots of sitting.
We don’t think of this as a modern invention, but all the time we spend sitting is relatively new: for most of human history, chairs were relatively rare (usually a symbol of power), and daily life involved a lot more moving around, squatting, perching, and getting up and down.
Why do we sit so much
Then mass production made chairs cheap, plentiful and – most importantly – everywhere. Offices. Schools. Living rooms. Once chairs became the norm, quiet started to look like “appropriate” behavior. In the late 1800s, seats were designed to hold bodies in place during repetitive work. Later, school reinforced the lesson (“sit down to succeed”) and television reinforced it at home (“sit down to relax”). Today, phones and computers make it the default. We have built our world around sitting.
Where the movement fits
It can seem difficult to fit movement into your day, even when you want to. But movement breaks can help us feel more human, especially in winter.
So here’s your weatherproof challenge: pick two and do five minutes each today.
- Walk in place (or do arm circles) during a call. You don’t need to be filmed.
- Take laps around your dining room table — bonus points if you put on a song and dance
- Stair loop. Up and down for 2-3 minutes, then stretch, then repeat
- Journey down the corridor. Walk the length of your house as you scroll (slowly enough to be safe)
Forget working out: let’s just interrupt the spell of sitting and staring at a screen!
To learn more about the history of chairs and, of course, how to incorporate movement pauses into real life, check out the Electric body bookreleased in almost exactly four months.
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Send us a video of yourself or email us at BodyElectric@npr.org to share your thoughts on how to keep moving.
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This story was written by Manoush Zomorodi and edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour.
