the CRAIG VAN cast
Hey, I’m Craig. I've dedicated more than a decade to understanding the human spine. Now I’m sharing what I’ve learnt. Get started with my SPINE STRENGTH project - Part 1 is free. Subscribe and you’ll receive my work as I release it.
the CRAIG VAN cast
48 | You've sat more than you can imagine
Did you know that sitting is one of the most anti-developmental activities of our time? It's a shocking reality, but we're here to uncover the alarming effects of this destructive force on our bodies and lives. We're revealing how this sedentary behavior, that starts from an early age, is shaping our development in ways we don't even realize. Tune in as we discuss the stark contrast between active, mobile elderly individuals and those who've lost their independence due to excessive sitting. Get ready to be part of a necessary conversation about rekindling our ability to move.
We also discuss the transformative course, Kanedi Keystone, designed to help us reconnect with our bodies and reverse the damaging effects of sitting. The toll of sitting on our bodies leading to back pain is an issue we can't afford to ignore. Whether you're grappling with back pain or know someone who is, this episode is a beacon of hope. We're emphasizing the importance of wellness and inviting you to join us on this journey of rediscovery, understanding, and action. Don't miss out on this opportunity to reclaim your health and mobility.
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I'd like to think that in episode 46, I made it very clear that the most anti-developmental activity of our time, of our era, is sitting. Now I'm going to make the case that we have all sat much more than we believe, much more than we imagine, much more than we would like to think, and the reason I want to make this very clear is that this is an extremely deadly combination. I have tried my best to paint a very clear picture as to why sitting is such a detrimental, anti-activity, anti-life, anti-development. When you combine that with the fact that we engage with it almost ad infinitum, excessively, it starts to explain how we have become what we have become. It's especially evident in people who are in their middle to later years, who have spent the most time sitting. We believe it to be completely normal for elderly people to be completely broken, to be completely immobile, completely dependent, to have lost their independence ages ago, barely safe to walk across the road. They've lost their freedom and ability to experience life moons ago. And when we look at a series like the Blue Zones on Netflix and we see these old people who are the Centenarians 100 years old or more and they're active, moving around, independent, engaged with life, we think of it as a marvel. But the single difference, perhaps arguably the biggest difference in what maintains their mobility, their freedom of experience, the freedom of movement, their independence, is the fact that they have kept moving and they have not set sat nearly as much as the rest of us.
Speaker 1:And I want to make it extremely clear that sitting is, one, completely anti-developmental and, two, the most dominant force shaping our movement. And when you think of that closely, meditate on that fact that the dominant force shaping our movement development is anti-developmental inherently. And we have found ourselves in a pickle. And it's only by appreciating first hand what it's like to actually move again to reclaim some of our real movement. Not simple linear gym movements. Those are our first step and they're enough to keep people hooked and engaged for life. But when we really start to reconnect the nervous system with the body and explore what an integrated system feels like, without having to be a master of any kinds, just engaged, we very quickly appreciate how much we have lost. And not only how much we have lost, but how central to our human experience it is to move, to be able to move. So let me explain three reasons why I strongly believe that you have sat, that we all sit so much more than we like to think, and how sitting is then able to be the dominant force shaping our movement.
Speaker 1:Firstly, we started very early and very early. Think back to when your mother would have first put you in the high chair, the baby chair, at the dining room table to prop you up while she tried to feed you. That was a long time ago, I can assure you. From the first day you sat, but not chair, and you spent 30 minutes, 60 minutes, whatever it might be, every week. From then forward, we would have only found our way into chairs more and more each day adult chairs, car chairs, cars, even child seats in cars, every form of chair, or should I say every environment around us. We are being molded by chairs and we have been for almost as long as we have been alive.
Speaker 1:The force, the developmental or anti-developmental force, of sitting has been me, has been present, accumulating time, playing its role, sucking us of life. The second reason that we have sat so much more than we think is a compounded reason, an exponential reason, also an abstract and difficult reason to explain, and this is the fact that we sat from before, throughout and ever since our develop, our primary developmental years, our formative years, whether we think of it as from birth to the ages of 16, 18, 21, when our body is still essentially moving from stem cell to the final states of ourselves, to a fully differentiated tissue. And the thing with ourselves and our development, the epigenetic molding of what we become the earlier we are exposed to epigenetic forces, the more profound their impact and the more persistent their effects. And so sitting for five years, for example while we are at the peak of our development, let's say from the ages of 8 to 13, is a completely different five years in the magnitude of the impact than sitting from when we're 35 to 40. When we are traversing those younger years, let's say 18 to 13, our body is installing programs and building structures, developing habits on an extremely fundamental level, that's literally preparing for this human experience, and you can think of it on a structural level or on a neurological level, and we keep exposing our body to this anti-developmental force during these important years. The impact is orders of magnitude more significant than the equivalent amount of time later on in our life and the amount of work we have to do later on when we start to unravel the effects or the impact of the sitting we accumulate during those important years. The amount of work we have to do is much more than we think. It takes a lot of energy, a lot of very focused and intelligent effort to unravel, and I'm not even sure if we can completely unravel all of it. It's like a very deep trauma in our body and in our nervous system. We can learn to navigate it with much skill and we can learn to minimize its impact on us significantly, but to completely reverse it might even be impossible for many of us and require continuous effect, continuous effort. So the first reason was that we started very early, almost as early as we were born. And the second reason that this is so much bigger than we like to think or that we have assumed, is that it dominated our movement development through our primary developmental years. And in the third reason is that even today, your every day, today, I assure you, use it much more than you'd like to think.
Speaker 1:As a clinical exercise therapist, I would have many clients who would come in and in their initial assessment when I'm sassing out what their lifestyle is like and how much they've sat, even the people who would say I know I'm definitely I don't sit very much. Fortunately, my job is quite active. I spend a lot of the day on my feet, I don't have to drive too far and the conversation would look something like this so how do you have your meals? How many meals do you have a day? Do you have at least one or two business meetings? How do you take most of your phone calls? How do you travel to and from work or wherever else you need to travel during the day? How do you do your number two on the toilet? Do you watch any TV at night? Do you help your kids with homework, etc, etc, Etc.
Speaker 1:And even my clients who walked in quite convinced that they weren't sitting much every day, looking at about four to five hours on a good day, on an average day. And so on the other end of the spectrum, the people who would walk in and say, yes, I sit a lot, it's a problem. We're looking at 15 hours or more the lawyers, accountants, other hardworking, deskworking warriors. So even if we take that lower end of the spectrum, four to five hours a day on an average day, that is a lot of day after day, week after week, month after month every year, if we did anything else, that much we tell my clients we would be at a Olympic competitive level for any other activity that we've engaged with that many hours for the majority of our lives, consistently, without fail. And we need to acknowledge the fact that we are at the same level of development as an Olympic athlete, the gold level Olympic athlete, except as sitters, in the art of sitting. It's a fact.
Speaker 1:So how has our body been shaped to the most extreme degree by the most anti-developmental activity of our time? This is a fact we need to face. Not only are we doing it lots every day today point three we did it all throughout our critical developmental years. Point two we have also done it for almost our entire life. For a long time we have accumulated much time sitting, and these are the three reasons why I am convinced that most people have sat more than enough to demand that they spend a lot of time working on unraveling the effects of sitting. And because it's still inescapable in our daily lives, we need to be spending time un-sitting. As long as we sit, we need to unsit.
Speaker 1:We do everything we can to minimize and reduce our sitting, we do everything we can to be more intelligent about how we sit and then we do everything we can to reverse the impact that sitting has on our body, has had on our bodies. We have to do everything we can because of how dominant, pervasive and excessive this developmental anti-developmental forces. Now you combine these facts with what we have discussed already Just the profound impact of sitting and the nature of that impact this is a cocktail for compounded carnage on our system. And like the two fish swimming through water that have no idea what water is, so too do I strongly believe that we completely under appreciate how much life that sitting is sucking away from us Because it is so pervasive, it is so ubiquitous and omnipresent throughout our experience, throughout our development, from the beginning, in everyone without exception, that we really struggle to see what human development, what society would be like without this ever-present anti-developmental force. So we are all, collectively, much less than we could be because of this force and because of how little we are doing about.
Speaker 1:And the first step is awareness. With awareness we can empower some positive action. This information is moving you to take action. I have created, I've tried my best to create a course to guide you from the beginning, to guide anyone from the beginning, through the first chapters of truly reversing the impact of sitting, of developing awareness of the impact that sitting has had on their body. To develop, to reconnect with parts of their body that sitting has disconnected them from. To redevelop structures that sitting has deteriorated. This course is called Kanedi Keystone. Go check it out. But if this is not for you, I know you know someone with back pain, so please connect them with this. It's my mission to get this out. You can do your good deed for the day by sharing the message and until next time I wish you wellness.