Thoughts on ... Posture?
I could hear the loud music even before I saw the young man, perhaps 18 or 19 years old, sitting on the bench facing the river. Why one would drown out the sound of the flowing river and the geese with atrociously loud music is beyond me.
I kept walking along.
After a few minutes, I stepped off the path and headed towards the river. I stood on a dry boulder and took in the view and the sounds and the smell of everything fresh in spring. There’s very little to complain about life in that setting.
It was time to head back to the car. Now, approaching from the other direction, I could hear the cacophony that the young man was playing loudly as “music”. As I rounded the curve, I saw that he was now with two others—another young man and a young woman.
I got myself mentally ready for trouble.
Over the years, I have come to realize that two or more young men who are doing nothing but hanging around can cause a whole lot of problems. And they will be a lot more trouble if there is a woman that they are trying to impress.
I quickened my pace.
“Which store sells your orange jacket?” yelled out the newcomer young man.
Sure, it could be in appreciation. But, when a balding, brown man walks alone wearing a jacket that is not the usual colors, and when the guy yelling out the question is a white young man, well, odds are pretty darn good that he was mocking me.
“A local store. REI,” I replied without breaking my pace and without turning my head towards the group.
The “music” was now horrendously loud as I drew near.
“I like your outfit,” he continued. His jeans were hanging low and I could see his underwear. All the three were wearing black tops. My khaki trousers and orange jacket was quite a contrast. I figured that his “like” was in sarcasm.
I was itching to shout back, “might be time to change your underwear,” but I did not.
I passed them. I was sure that he was not done with me. I was correct.
“Good posture too” he yelled at me.
I put my right arm up and gave him a thumbs-up and continued on.
During the first few years of my childhood, we didn’t have a dining table at home. We sat on the floor when it was meal time. At grandma’s homes in Sengottai and Pattamadai, we always ate while sitting on the floor. The plates too were on the floor—not on a lightly raised dining table like what one might see in some Middle Eastern settings.
While seated on the floor, the good posture was when we bent down from the hip with the back continuing to remain straight. If we curved our backs, then the elders were ready to criticize our posture. Some of us, like me, wanted to always please the elders and we made sure not to slouch forward.
At the end of the meal, we were trained to get up while holding our plates in our right hands by generating the force at our feet and legs. We couldn’t rest the left hand on the floor for an assist.
Perhaps you have tried such a move in a yoga class, and failed. But, for us, it was a part of growing up, and the lessons learned as a child stay with one forever. Even now, I can sit cross-legged on the floor and get up without using my arms.
(Do not try this at home and get all twisted up. Some of you are lawyers; do not sue me because you attempted to do this and ended up in physical therapy!)
Though there were chairs in the front-portion of the home, my grandma and her people more often than not sat on the floor in the inner rooms. We kids too sat with them, especially when they said yes to us who nagged them to play kattam (கட்டம்) with us.
Even when playing, they commented on our posture if we slouched. If we leaned our backs against the wall, we were sure to draw comments like, “oh, are you an old man who needs support?”
In contrast to all those experiences, I, like many, now sit in chairs and sofas, and eat at dining tables. More often than not, these are rarely ergonomic. Muscles tense up weirdly because, well, we humans are not designed for these crazy postures.
Our anatomy works well when we are upright, walking, running, or even lying down. Sitting on chairs? Nah!
If we want to sit, then we need to sit like how it was done traditionally, like how people might do even now in India’s villages: Squat.
I recalled having come across a study that was done by a team at USC, the university where I earned my graduate degrees. I tracked it down:
To better understand the evolution of sedentary behaviors, the scientists studied inactivity in a group of Tanzanian hunter-gatherers, the Hadza, who have a lifestyle that is similar in some ways with how humans lived in the past. …
[The] Hadza are sedentary for about as much time — around 9 to 10 hours per day — as humans in more developed countries. However, they appear to lack the markers of chronic diseases that are associated, in industrialized societies, with long periods of sitting. The reason for this disconnect may lie in how they rest. …
[Because] the Hadza squat and kneel and have high levels of movement when not at rest, they may have more consistent muscle activity throughout the day. This could reduce the health risks associated with sedentary behavior.
“Being a couch potato — or even sitting in an office chair — requires less muscle activity than squatting or kneeling”
I am sure that a lot of research has been done on this topic of sitting. From experience, it makes a lot of intuitive sense to me that sitting cross-legged or squatting requires consistent muscle activity that sitting on a chair does not. Even now, when I visit the old country, I prefer sitting on the floor if the hosts are ok with that.
The latest issue of The New Yorker includes a book-review essay that is all about posture. I will read it while lying down in bed, maybe with jazz music in the background 😁