How can you sit more comfortably, without stiffness, soreness, or pain?

Are you comfortable, usually, when you sit down? Or, are there times – maybe all the time, for you – when you feel uncomfortable sat in a chair, in the seat of your car, or maybe at the cinema or out for coffee or dinner with friends?

Or maybe you feel uncomfortable when you sit down to relax – whether to watch TV or have a cuppa at home, or perhaps even in a meditation, yoga or mindfulness class, where you just can’t feel at ease – whether or not you have crossed legs, or prefer to use blocks or a chair.

Whether the problem comes from a suspected or diagnosed condition such as SI joint pain, sciatica, scoliosis or back pain, or if you just don’t know why it’s so uncomfortable to sit down, not being able to sit without pain or sorness is frustrating, inconvenient, upsetting and can be life-changing. It can affect your work, your ability to relax, and even your ability and desire to go out and about.

Feeling comfort when you’re sitting down is an incredibly important part of life – especially in our technology-filled life, and in a culture where sitting down is where many of us spend most of our time.

Enabling people to feel comfort and ease in sitting, standing, walking and lying down is central to Somatics. And in doing the movements, you learn to challenge unhelpful assumptions about sitting, as well as ways to move with more ease - and that all helps you sit more comfortably.

 So, what are the unhelpful assumptions that leave you stuck with pain when you’re sitting down, even if you’ve tried to deal with the problem?

ASSUMPTION # 1: There’s a widespread assumption that once you’re sitting down, you can make yourself comfortable. And this is perfectly “normal”. It may be how you feel about sitting!

But it’s also very common to not feel comfortable sitting down, and to find it causes stiffness, aches and even considerable pain – especially after a little while of being seated in one place.

It can also be more about difficulty (or pain) in getting back up, for some – especially if stiffness or pain has crept up on you when you’ve been seated.

ASSUMPTION # 2: Another assumption is that if you’re not comfortable when seated – especially in a car, or at your desk – the problem is with the chair, or the “set up” of your driving or workspace.

So, millions of people spend huge sums of money trying out different chairs, desks, back supports, cushions, cushions to alleviate pressure on the coccyx, and more. Usually - in my direct experience (of spending plenty money on these things, before I did Somatics), as well as my clients’ experiences - these “quick fixes” don’t really help. Sometimes they help in the short term, but then the problem comes back. And sometimes they can even make things worse, especially over time.

But the truth is that the problem is not usually with your desk, driving seat, or other aspects that can be “changed” in your environment. Nor is the real problem that you have to sit down a lot.

If you simply can’t find a good, long-term, effective way to sit comfortably, the issue is far more likely to be with your muscles being over-tight - and of getting into unhelpful habits that cause you to tighten up even more when you sit down, causing the pain, stiffness and soreness that is so awful. And THAT is what you need to address - not your chair, or your cushion, or the height of your seat, but the tension and tightness in your own muscles, that you probably don’t even realise is causing a problem. That is where Somatics can help.

ASSUMPTION # 3: A related, third unhelpful assumption is that you can’t sit comfortably because there’s something structurally “wrong” with you that makes it impossible for you to find a comfortable position.

I’m not saying this isn’t the case for a small but real proportion of people. It is.

But in my experience, when a structural problem is blamed for pain – so, when the blame is placed on something like an SI joint defect, a distorted pelvis, a leg-length discrepancy, and on ‘conditions’ like sciatica, a disc deformity, and even arthritis – the problem being blamed is very often not the cause of the pain, soreness or stiffness when seated.

Most often, the pain comes not from a(visible or invisible) problem in the structure of your body, but from a functional problem. That is, from a problem in the way your muscles have become habituated into patterns that cause you pain, soreness or stiffness when you sit down.

This was my experience. I’d been told for years I had a “birth defect” in my hip, that one leg was shorter than the other, and that all I could do was live with, or “manage”, the pain as I “aged” (I was in my 30s!). Given that I found it almost impossible to sit comfortably anywhere for more than 20 minutes at a time, that was deeply distressing, and effected my income as well as my social life.

Within weeks (literally!) of starting to do Somatics, though, this “defect” and the pain it caused, mysteriously went away. Doctors were flummoxed; my chiropractor was bewildered but delighted for me!

And this is what my clients experience, too: Somatics addresses chronically over-tight muscles that we don’t even know are too tight – and that don’t show up as a problem looked for on MRIs, X-rays, and physical exams. Somatics teaches you to be aware of these problems, and, through gentle movements, enables you to ease out of these over-tight patterns.

THIS is what gets rid of tightness, soreness, aches and pains. This is what enables you to sit comfortably. You teach (or, re-train) your brain that you are NOT relaxed, and that you WANT to be relaxed... so, you use movement to explore and show your brain – yourself – how to BE more relaxed.

In particular, when it comes to sitting, you learn that pulling or pushing yourself into a position you think - or have been told - is “correct”, or will help, is NOT the answer. Nor is “strengthening” your core, and nor is any form of stretching. Especially important to sitting without pain, and in comfort, is releasing tightness and tension at your centre - in your front and in your back - and “balancing out” uneven tightness from one side of your body to the other. This releasing and gentle, natural rebalancing is exactly what Somatics is designed to do, and can empower you to do.

Even releasing some tension from your shoulders (see my 2-minute video, here) can help you start to sit more easily… because it starts helping you be more at ease in your body, release tension, and settle into yourself.

Somatics is education – but it’s very practical education.

In Somatics, you have to DO something to make changes, and to BE in more ease. In particular, you have to MOVE gently and with more awareness, in order to move more easily and sit (and stand and sleep and walk) more comfortably.

When it comes to more comfortable sitting, Somatics helps by helping YOU release the tightness and tension creating pain in your body, when you sit down. It teaches you movements to address problem areas by freeing up your whole body. And it teaches you how to adapt the movements to your particular needs - to the unhelpful patterns stuck in your body that you want to let go.

Somatics enables you to be more adaptable. To be better able to handle the movements you need to make – comfortably – to get on with working, driving, watching TV and other screens, eating, socialising and more, sitting comfortably.

It enables you to deal with the amount of sitting we often are expected to do in today’s society, and with the challenges your body has to handle as a result.

But Somatics doesn’t teach you to ‘align’ yourself a certain way, nor to use different ‘props’ and devices to help. It enables you to find ease in your own body, and to find the best, more relaxed and comfy way for you to sit down – wherever you are, and whatever the seating is like.

Just imagine how that could be!