Active sitting – deep breathing exercises a set of simple exercises you can do while in work

In our active sitting program we introduce deep breathing exercises into our working day.

What does active sitting mean? The active sitting program is an exercise program that will loosen our often tight and sore muscles. The exercises will make you joints work better again by lubricating them. As well as that they will strengthen and stretch our muscles. This helps us to maintain a good posture. All exercises are done sitting on the exercise ball. The ball on its own is a good way to keep the otherwise passive position of sitting relatively active.

deep breathing exercises, back strengthening exercises, good posture, good sitting posture

Many people sit for a long period of time each day. Many of us sit in work. We also sit while we take our meals. We sit when we travel. We sit while watching television or a movie. The list is long. When you add up all the hours you sit every day you might discover you sit for most of the day.

Unfortunately many people slouch while they sit. Combine that with the fact that most people sit so much we soon realise that their bad sitting posture can causes them back problems.

A good indicator of the state of our posture is our breathing. A posture which enables us to take a deep breath is naturally upright and straight. As we slouch our breathing becomes shallow. Our chest becomes restricted, depriving us of one of our main sources of energy. As the breathing is shallow the body accumulates high levels of carbon dioxide causing us to get tired. Internal organs can be compressed and blood flow to these organs can be restricted. As a result their functionality can be reduced.

Sitting upright enables us to breath more deeply allowing our body to work more efficiently. Likewise deep breathing exercises can improve our posture. Deep breathing exercises can therefore help people with back problems, too.

Deep Breathing Exercises:

deep breathing exercises, good posture

1. Slowly take a deep breath and as your chest rises, feel how your thoracic vertebrae start straightening up without the conscious use of any other musculature such as your back muscles.
2. Exhale and let the shoulders, torso and chin fall down and forward a little. Repeat the exercise a few times.
3. We can enhance this simple exercise when sitting on the ball by gently rolling backward when inhaling and forward when exhaling. By rolling back and forth on the ball we mobilize the entire spine during this exercise. By simply focusing on our breathing we can thereby achieve an improvement in our sitting posture. Try to correct your posture in this way as often as possible during your working day. Allow your spine to be more upright, assuring good breathing and thereby increasing your energy levels.

You can also try another variation of the above deep breathing exercise. Again make sure you sit upright before you commence the activity.

1. Place one hand on you chest. Place the other hand on your stomach.

2. Take a deep breath. Notice which of your hand rises as you breath in. Notice how your chest and/or stomach drop as you exhale.

3. On the next inhalation try to let your breath make your stomach rise.

4. On exhaling pull you stomach in and get a sense of squeezing the air out with your stomach muscles.

 

Are you looking for Back Strengthening Exercises?

On this site you will find a comprehensive back strengthening exercises program. Next to back strengthening exercises we include stretches and mobility exercises for the back in particular stretches for lower back pain and neck tension. We have been teaching this program for over fifteen years. Our back strengthening exercises have helped our program participants to reduce and eliminate their back problems.

We also have found in order to get rid of back pain and other back problems people need to know what causes them. When you know how your back problems are caused you can learn to prevent them. You will also know what kind of back strengthening exercises are good (see our movement and exercise guidelines). You quickly realise that some so called back exercises are not so good. Unfortunately there are a lot of back damaging activities and exercise programs out there claiming to be good for the back. Once you know how to avoid back damaging activities you can re-engage because you will know how to do these activities in a way that they don’t cause you problems.

Back strengthening exercises are a really good idea and a lifestyle choice if you have an otherwise sedentary lifestyle or are engaged in activities that caused your back problems. Sometimes it takes as little as 15 minutes of our back strengthening exercises every couple of days to balance out the acitivities of your life that might have caused you problems before.

All our participants have successfully got rid of their back problems. they are using our back strengthening exercise program. With it they have regained good core stability.

Core stability describes the correct functioning of those muscles, mainly the hips, stomach and back musculature, responsible for uprightness and stability of the upper body.

If muscles in your stomach are weak and/or your back muscles are tense and tight weakness in these areas can result in misalignment of the spine. This can cause discomfort and pain, often in the upper and lower back. It can also lead to increased wear and tear causing irreversible damage to the in the spine and nervous system.

Therefore a central part of the program we do is to provide exercises to re-establish and maintain a good muscle balance.

However, we strongly believe it is important to learn about good movement practices. That way we can ensure that not only is our exercise program is done correctly — but any other activity we engage in, too!

•information about the source of back problems and the structure and functionality of the spine

•simple guidelines on how to move in a back friendly way on a day-to-day basis and during exercising

•a comprehensive set of back strengthening exercises to re-establish a healthy musculature which supports the spine

Our back strengthening exercise program is for men and women of all ages. We use an exercise ball for many of the back strengthening exercises. Just sitting on a ball, much like you would sit on a chair is a back strengthening exercise.

active sitting - stomach exercises and back strengthening exercises for the ball

active sitting – stomach exercises and back strengthening exercises for the ball