One chair away from backpains

Are you sitting all day long? When the pandemic hit, our job finds its way into our homes, and it influences us to sit all day long. We can't deny that sitting in long hours has health repercussions. We can have back, neck, and shoulder pain. Some gain weight. My routine before will be doing some lab supervision, having lectures. Or, it can be attending to prospective clients for my side hustle. But pandemic trimmed down my routine, most of the day, I will be sitting in front of my computer. I get to have more back pains than before while continuing to work from home.

Our spines are very sensitive in straining during prolonged sitting. When we are slouching while sitting, we can have backaches, headaches, and impaired attention. Our posture can relatively affect the quality of our lives. Some researches prove that ill posture and prolonged sitting are detrimental to our health. Most chairs that we have don't have adequate support. When we use it for long hours of sitting down, we will have lower back pains and stiffness in our necks and shoulder than prolonged standing.

Ergonomics can't solve our backpains.

That is why ergonomics chairs are a hit. Ergonomic chairs have a headrest that supports our head and neck and lumbar support for our backs. People who designed ergonomic chairs tried to make us sit with our backs its natural curvature. A common feature with these chairs is lumbar and neck support. But some find it not the optimal solution for our back pains and ill posture while sitting. No matter how sophisticated the design of an ergonomic chair, it will not eliminate back pains but only alleviate a little.

We don't need to force our spine into adopting a position that an ergonomist believed would be beneficial. I think our bodies have a natural means of adapting that enables our spine to sustain itself in a good posture without needing a backrest or lumbar support. If we look closely at ergonomics, it exists to make the assembly line more efficient. In the first place, it doesn't aim to make our lives more comfortable and improve posture. If lumbar support was the answer, everyone does not have back pain now. The truth is most of us have back pains regardless of what chair we use.

Ergonomics chairs don't come cheap. Before we want to spend our hard-earned money on expensive ergonomics chairs, maybe we can look at how we improve our postures without having to splurge out cash. I guess it is our responsibility to correct our posture rather than solely be dependent on a more costly chair. Better comforts don't mean more cost. It is most likely that we trap ourselves in this ideology. We must keep in mind that our chairs are inanimate objects. We use it to have better comforts rather than the chair forcing us the comfort we want.

Don't get wrong with the statement earlier. Ergonomics chairs can help, but it is not everything we can do with our sitting and posture. I admit that a backrest can be handy at times, but even that requires us to know how to use it. It is the same with reclining from the hip joints, keeping our torso long and butt in contact with the chair.

Whether we use an ergonomic chair or the normal one, it comes down to what chair fits well. Our chairs should be simple to sit and stand. Hence sitting is not one fits all; our chair must allow us to have multiple positions without feeling rigid or loose. Even if we set our chair to provide us with an ergonomic advantage, our sitting behavior will work against it.

That one chair we neglect but is too popular.

Before the pandemic, I would spend my working hours in the lab or the shop. I don't often sit on ergonomic chairs that most people have in their work. Usually, I would have a Monobloc chair to sit on. Monobloc chairs are not aesthetically pleasing, but we can use them anywhere and anytime. It also has a lot of checkmarks on design. Monobloc chairs are plain, simple, and boring, but millions if not billions are using them across the world. We can find it anywhere and anytime in public.

We seldom give a damn care about the Monobloc chairs. They were inexpensive and plentiful, which we used for sitting in our homes. But it wasn't until we became adults to realize how customary the Monobloc chair is across each place we had been. It isn't hard to comprehend why we used the Monobloc chair. It is affordable to the masses and fits well with relatively all the design criteria. The monobloc chairs are lightweight but strong. It is comfy and adaptable. One reason we want these in public events is it is stackable. It focuses on function than aesthetics.

Monobloc chairs are too popular despite we are not paying attention to them. It does exist anywhere and anytime in public. It seemingly transcends time and space because it is one item that doesn't bound to any context. For example, a white plastic chair in a picture tells us nothing about where we are or when we are. I think a good design transcends beyond attachment to a context, and that is where Monobloc chairs fit. Although a handful of people despise the existence of Monobloc chairs, we can say it is a chair of the masses.

More than just a chair.

It is easy to look at the chair and say it is just a chair. But at the end of the day, it is so much more. A good chair can help us improve our posture, alleviate our backache and neckache, and substantially encourage us to have better setting habits. I asked myself: does good design needs both good form and good function? I guess it is not true all the time. We have chairs that we consider our favorites. Some chairs don't look like a celebrity, but it is a celebrity like the Monobloc chairs. It is better to have pleasing aesthetics and good functionality for our furniture, but the functionality is more desirable than aesthetics.

There are chairs that we love and adore. Some chairs have extra seats that we don't utilize or only sit down once and are uncomfortable. Perhaps we have a chair that sways due to unsteady legs and is too noisy when we shift our weight across its seat. We have encountered countless chairs throughout our lives. We ignore and accept some. There are chairs that we keep even though we rarely use them. Sometimes we get attached to anything that appears pleasing and of being useful. Some have good memories.

It doesn't boil down to whether we should use an ergonomic chair or a regular chair. Our chair should allow us to sit in a variety of postures without feeling stiff or loose. Again, even if we configure our chair to provide an ergonomic edge, our sitting habits will work against us. We need chairs that inspire us to have good posture and sitting habits despite being ugly or beautiful.

Check out my previous post on Architecture and Design Community