Danger - working at home
Lets talk about working in comfort of your own house. How could that be dangerous? It’s dangers because we become lazy, not with the work we do, but HOW we do it. If we are based in the office, there is no doubt about where you sit, usually on a chair. But it is not always the case while working from home.
We may lie on the sofa or sit on the bed and by doing this put our body through unnecessary stress. This stress gets written into our body through repetition. This will happen anyway but it does not need accelerated by bad habits. It gets written into the part of the body called CONNECTIVE TISSUE or fascia.
Connective tissue
This membrane, which wraps all of our muscles one by one, and it also connects all organs and all muscles together to create one system called the body. It is the filler and the bonding material, which connects our moving parts. What makes it really interesting is that because it connects everything you can release stress from one part of the body by working on it somewhere else.
Those sheaths of fascia also get stuck together so muscles cannot glide over each other and that’s how we lose range of movement. Or they thicken and that’s how we get postural problems.
Lets go through some of the most common changes of posture due to computer work.
Even in the right circumstances we have not been designed to sit for hours in front of the computer. The correct circumstances are:
- Appropriate height of chair and desk,
- The computer placed in front of you at eye height
- Hands resting on the keyboard not straining.
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Even then we will probably clench our teeth together and stick our head forward. Because our head is connected to the shoulder blades our shoulders will come up automatically.
We have all seen it around us. People will get up from the computer and do not retract their head. They just put their arms down and it looks like they are still on the computer!!!!
Another common postural problem from sitting on the chair is the positioning of our lower back and pelvis. Either we tip our pelvis forward and enhance the bend in the lower spine or we slouch. With slouching the back we straighten up the lower back and increase the bend in upper back (thorax).
When we are sitting correctly we can feel out sitting bone underneath us evenly spreading the body weight between the two buttocks. Crossing the knees will result in rotating the pelvis to one side and that is why it’s always more comfortable with one leg and not with the other.
You can beat all this stress and tension in one position by introducing movement, which is the opposite of what you do at work. So if most of you time is spend at the computer go and swim back stroke in the pool. Also regular stretching exercises are good for releasing the tension build up.
The basic rule is to always face straight on to what you are doing whether doing shopping, gardening, cleaning or other activities we do regularly.
Make sure you stand on two legs evenly. Gravity is an important factor. If we are well balanced then our skeleton and muscles will carry the weight in the way they have been designed to. Effortlessly supported by each other.
However if our body mechanics are under strain and have to compensate a lot, it becomes more difficult to work, stand sit and walk.
It is very useful not to do one-sided repetitive actions, which makes you think how few sports would qualify.
There is one exercise that is good for all of us, do a lot of walking.
