Sitting is bad for your back.
And because these ideas are repeated by doctors, physical therapists, employers, insurance companies, friends, and virtually everyone else, they can start to feel like facts rather than assumptions.
But what if you question the assumption or belief that:
Here's a good question: Does your relationship to gravity and habitual organization of effort change when the position changes—or does the same pattern simply follow you into the new position?
ONE
What if the treatment you're relying on is addressing the symptom, not the cause?
You have back pain. You sit all day. Everyone tells you sitting is the problem.
So you buy a standing desk.
But what if you take the same unconscious pattern of muscular effort that you use sitting—and simply perform it standing?
You changed your position.
Did you change the pattern? Let's investigate.
There are no right answers. Choose the statements that sound familiar.
TWO
check off ones that resonate:
Notice what happens.
Each thought makes the next one feel reasonable.
That's a cluster.
Recognize where a cluster of familiar thoughts has made an alternative possibility invisible. That's a mental limitation that prevents you from regaining comfort and ease in your body.
THREE
What if the underlying premise is incorrect?
“The treatment must be addressing the real problem if it's"
Assuming there are no other possible considerations is a meta-belief (an idea so widely held) that it prevents you from investigating whether the conventional solution is actually solving the problem.
Think different. Think outside the box. Do your own thinking.
What if the solutions everybody knows about only alleviate low back pain rather than address the cause?
If you don't really know what causes low level, consistency low back pain, you can't address it. You can't address a cause if you don't know what it is.
Just to clarify: this is not about acute or sudden pain after an injury or accident. That may well be structural. We're talking about soft tissue pain, not bone pain. But there again is a grey area: many people experience joint pain that is caused by soft tissue issues, meaning muscles, tendons and ligaments.
FOUR
Let's investigate:
What do you know about muscular effort? What if changing your position doesn't change the habitual way you organize muscular effort?
FIVE
Let's test one tiny piece of the assumption that changing your position will make the pain go away.
Sit normally for a moment.
If you had to sit there in that position for 6-8 hours, where would it hurt? Where would you feel the muscular effort?
Now try another test: Stand normally for a moment.
If you had to stand there in that position for 6-8 hours, where would it hurt? Where would you feel the muscular effort?