Pregnancy Seating
The folks at Varier keep us updated with all sorts of wonderful ergonomic research. This time, they’ve posted a study regarding the benefits of using kneeling/rocking chairs while pregnant.
Healthy seating equals a healthy baby and mom!
Jean Sutton and Pauline scott, a midwife and antenatal teacher respectively, developed a theory known as Optimal Foetal Positioning, which states that the mother’s movement, posture and positioning can influence the baby’s position in the womb during the last weeks of pregnancy. This is particularly important if your baby is in a breech or posterior position as birth complications can result.
Enter Varier’s Balans Kneeling Chair. Already one of our favorite products and best-sellers, the Balans chair encourages proper spinal alignment and pelvic positioning. The rocking motion of the chair base encourages your baby to rotate and eases the intense back pain that can occur in the latter stages of pregnancy.
The benefits of innovative seating and motion don’t end with your trip to the hospital, however. Interested in alternative positioning during the birth process? Try sitting on an exercise ball or an immersion water birth. The days of stirrups and hospital beds are past us.
Er-go-nomics
Ergonomics is a word that gets tossed around in office culture all the time. It’s a prime concern of the 20th century: how do we, as workers, improve our body’s relationship with our workplace to promote alertness and health?
Based on the Alexander Technique, doctors and engineers have approached seating in new and exciting ways, experimenting with things like angles, cushioning, tilt mechanisms and back support (to name a few!) in the quest to build the perfectly supportive chair. Gone are the days of the overstuffed executive chairs and the painful plastic nightmares that greeted us at every workstation!
But what, exactly, does ergonomics mean to you?
Synchro-waterfall-back edge-ergo-what?!
It means a better awareness of your body. Pay attention to how you sit, how you breathe and how you shift and fidget throughout the day. Are your feet touching the floor? Do you lean forward or slouch back in your chair? Do your arms dangle or are your elbows up around your ears? Are you slumped to one side, or sitting up at rigid attention? Where does most of your weight land on the seat? All of these things influence our body’s muscle memory, and poor back support and improper body position can lead to serious, long-term spinal damage.
When you go to buy a chair, apply this knowledge to what you’re looking at. Not every person needs the massive task chair with imposing headrest and sixteen positioning levers. Similarly, not everyone can sit on a curved stick with a cushion on top. I’m exaggerating, but the point is clear: go with what your body needs.
And when in doubt, educate yourself. Ask for literature and definitions – don’t just buy something that says “synchro-tilt high back” without understanding what these terms mean. It may look cool, and everyone may be buying it, but it may not be right for you. We at Sit Correct are happy to answer questions, run side-by-side comparisons and educate you on your seating needs. Give us a call or email us your questions and we’ll make sure you can buy with confidence.
15% off ALL Humanscale products this week!
Yup, that’s right. Our friends over at Humanscale are having their Fall Sale this week, September 23-October 3, which means big savings for those of you who yearn for the amazing Liberty Task Chair or their exceptional Freedom Task Chair, which we reviewed recently at our sister site’s blog.
But that’s not all! Humanscale has all of their products available for this 15% discount, which include ergonomic footrests, CPU holders, keyboards, lamps, monitor arms and more. Take a look at the full selection on SitCorrect.com.
Humanscale is an industry pioneer in ergonomic seating, and it shows in the quality of their merchandise. Take advantage of this deal while it’s around – a week is a short time to save, but it’s definitely worth it.
Use coupon code HMSX15 at checkout to receive your 15% discount.
jill chair
This promotional video for the new Jill chair (by Albero Häberli for Vitra) reminds me uncannily of any number of Anton Corbijn music videos. I suppose that’s why I like it, although it seems like a pretty cool chair, too. It’s one of the many designs debuting at the Milan 2011 furniture fair, so don’t be surprised if you see more from there in the weeks to come!
cocoon chair
(hat tip to dornob)
This astoundingly warm-looking chair (created by Les M for French company super-ette) is next on my seating wish list. With a washable, removable duvet built right into a super-comfy armchair, this thing practically begs you to dive in, zip up, and start snuggling! I wonder if it’s as ergonomically sound as it is soft?
varier: a human idea
Varier, our favorite designers of kneeling chairs and other ergonomic goodies, has blown it out of the park lately with their new promotional video. Simple, elegant, functional, and beautiful – much like their chairs. You can also see the edited, product-specific videos for each of the Varier chairs we carry on their respective SitCorrect websites.
flippin’ great chairs
I recently came across a couple of chairs that like to bend, flip, fold, and contort themselves in a number of interesting ways. The first has made a splash on gadget blogs and other chair blogs around the web, the Lay Flat Chair by Thanko:
This extremely clever office chair is designed to turn into a flat surface so you can catch a few z’s! Unfortunately, as far as I can tell it’s only sold in Japan (hey, it’s on sale right now!) – which is a shame, because it’s totally up SitCorrect’s alley.
Next on the flippy chairs list: Gayolab’s ‘Sitness’ series of Yoga-inspired chairs.
Again, as far as I can tell these are not yet available in the US, but boy are they cool! The Sitness series flips into a number of poses so you may change your seating position frequently (always a hallmark of a good ergonomic chair), and it is highly adaptable to a number of genuine yoga poses to boot.
Perhaps we’ll see these unique seating options on our shores soon. Until then, there’s always our specialty seating and other great options on SitCorrect.com.
it’s a global world
We’ve overhauled our whole selection of Global office seating! From new chair styles to awesome updated fabrics – and fantastic prices all around – there’s never been a better time to mosey on over to Sitcorrect.com and peruse the entire Global line. And don’t worry, there are plenty of ergonomic actions to keep you spine-healthy folks happy.
Fitness ball in the workplace study
Ergoweb is a great source of information about anything ergonomic. Lively discussions often punctuate the comment sections of articles, so one really gets a wide variety of opinions. An ongoing controversy over ball chairs had one user, a Wellness Specialist in the Injury Reduction Program of the Dept. of Facilities Management at the University of California Santa Barbara, offering up a survey conducted by his department on the relative comfort felt by office users after they sat on fitness balls for a year. While not a scientific study, it does provide a very interesting look into personal preference surrounding ball chairs. You can find a link to the study here. And if it has you convinced, come back to SitCorrect for an Evolution Ball Chair!
