What 5 Minutes Sitting Can Do For Your Health (Positively!)

Not all sitting is bad:

You have the floor!

We often talk about how sitting is very bad for the health, but that’s about sitting in chairs (in the manner in which people normally sit in normal chairs).

In contrast, sitting cross-legged moves the hips into bending and outward rotation, and switching legs introduces different positions that may be absent from everyday routines. Thus, regular practice of this helps build/maintain your available range of movement, rather than restricting it as sitting in chairs does.

Some things you can do if it’s not comfortable at first:

• Become more comfortable on the floor: practice getting down slowly, arranging your legs, and shifting your weight between positions; this helps make the floor more familiar and accessible for activities such as playing with grandchildren, gardening, and reaching underneath furniture.
• Practice getting up and down: moving between the floor and standing requires hip and knee mobility, leg strength, and balance; use a sturdy chair for support if needed, turning to face it, placing both hands on it, and pushing yourself up while bringing one leg through, then reversing the process to return to the floor.
• Sit on folded towels: elevate your hips with a couple of folded towels to make cross-legged sitting more comfortable and give your hips additional room to rotate outward.
• Support an uncomfortable leg: place a folded pillow beneath the leg that hurts when it falls outward, then gradually practice pressing the leg down into the pillow using your hip muscles.
• Reduce back discomfort: lean back onto your hands and allow your hips to relax toward the floor without forcing them down, transferring some weight through your arms.
• Change positions regularly: straighten your legs when sitting becomes uncomfortable, then try crossing them the opposite way to introduce different hip positions; keep a sturdy chair nearby to make getting back up safer.
• Practice hip rotation in a chair: sit in a sturdy chair and lift one leg into an externally rotated position, using your hands to support it if necessary; hold a comfortable stretch, then switch sides.
• Progress to unsupported leg lifts: once supported hip rotation becomes easier, lift your leg into position without using your hands, then practice rotating it up and down; progress by sitting away from the backrest and repeating the movement.

In short, start with the version that feels comfortable, change positions when you want/need to, avoid forcing painful movements, and make getting back up part of the practice. Five minutes a day is enough, but feel free to do more if you like, of course.

For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like:

Stand Up For Your Health (Or Don’t) ← our main feature on the perils of being overly sedentary, and also includes more things you can do if you must sit, to make sitting less bad (like sitting on the floor as described above!)

Take care!