How to Find Your Natural Sitting Posture

Many of us spend hours every day in a sitting position, especially if you work a desk job. That’s why it’s vital to find your natural sitting posture, so you can sit comfortably instead of dealing with chronic back or neck pain down the road.

When you’re developing a healthy sitting position, the point is not to find the “right” position and hold yourself in a fixed spot all day. Instead, we’re trying to find your neutral idea posture where you are at ease, and your weight is distributed more evenly instead of putting extra pressure on certain areas of your spine.

You can use this position as a reference, and as you go throughout your day, you will easily be able to move back into this centered position.

Learning about proper alignment while sitting:

Before finding your natural sitting position, you need to understand how body your body alignment is affected when you sit. Watch the short video below for a brief introduction!

Finding your ideal sitting position:

Once you have an understanding of alignment, watch the video below for a walkthrough of how you can find the most natural and comfortable sitting position for your body.

This exercise will help you find your neutral position:

Find a hard, flat surface, such as a wooden chair, stool or bench. Have a seat, and feel the bottom of your pelvis. There are two knobs of bone there. You want to be sitting on those bones, which nature designed for that purpose, and which are called the “sit bones”.

If you can’t feel your bones on the chair, sit on your hands. You will probably feel the hardness of the bone on your hand.

Keeping your attention on the bones, slowly slump down. Don’t lean back. Just slump. Feel the weight shifting to the back of the bones. Now sit tall again, and then slowly arch your back. You should feel the weight shifting to the front of the bones.

If you move all the way to the back you can feel the weight of your body actually come off the sit bone and onto the muscle. The same thing will happen if you rock all the way forward.  

Continue slowly slumping and arching and notice that as you move towards the middle, there will be a point that feels like the center and it is the point where you feel that you are sitting highest. You will feel tall. This is the neutral position you are looking for.

This is the position you want to sit in, and then use the lumbar support to bring the chair back up to you so that you can maintain this position with ease and comfort.

Next, shift your weight from one side to the other. If you’re like most people, you have a habit of sitting more on one side or the other for most of the day. This exercise will make you more conscious of where you place your weight in sitting. In the neutral position your weight will be evenly distributed between the right and left sides of your hips, legs and feet.

Practice this exercise on a hard chair for a few minutes every day. Every time you do it, your awareness will drop into your body and you’ll find your neutral position. 

Best of all, once you figure out what works best for you, you’ll be able to access it easily, even in a softer chair or on a couch, where you most likely will not be able to feel your sit bones.