Sample Lesson
Sitting comfortably - from the Smart Sitting© program
 Once you have established the correct height of your seat to match the height of your knees, you will be ready to figure our how to get the best support from your pelvis and spine. Here's how:
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Sit forward on your chair and place your feet flat to the ground at a distance slightly wider than your pelvis. Do not rest your back against anything yet.
Now you will need to concentrate in a way that may be unfamiliar to you. You will need to may attention to all the parts of your body and how they feel as you move and how they connect.
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First, feel how your pelvis sits on the chair. The shape of the chair may determine how you angle your pelvis. You may wish to place your hands one at a time under your bottom to feel the base of your pelvis (your sit bones).
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Feel the shape of your lower back with the flat of the back of your hand. Is it rounded or arched?
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Make it more rounded - feel your back push your hand away a little. It may feel a bit like slumping. Notice you may become a little shorter when you do this.
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Now do the opposite - make your back more arched, but by rolling your pelvis forward. Notice how you become a little taller.
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Repeat 4 & 5. Feel how your pelvic sit bones shift across the chair as you round and arch your back. Notice it's as if there were a rolling motion. Notice if you can allow that to be smooth.
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Pause, and notice how you are breathing. When do you breath in and when out? What is the rhythm of your breath?
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Return to rolling your pelvis forwards and back and notice how you are breathing now. Can you synchronise the rolling movement with the rhythm of your breath as it was when you were resting?
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Now notice how you feel at the extremes of these movements - when you are most forward and most back, and then whether there is a place in between where you feel most comfortable.
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Can you find this and discover what it is like to remain in that position for a while? Notice how tall you are in this position.
Would this be a comfortable place to sit in?
If so, you will now need to choose a comfortable angle of back support, that supports the natural curvature of your spine.
Note that this position may vary slightly each day, and you may wish to rediscover how to sit comfortably day by day.
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"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing" George Bernard Shaw
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