Episode 358: Sitting Like Our Ancestors: The Key to Musculoskeletal Well-Being

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins.

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You're sitting on the floor as we do this podcast?

Yeah, I'm sitting on the floor, which isn't, I don't think, is very strange.

It's like, welcome to the whole world.

Like,

that's true.

Most of the world/slash before

just complete transition to like becoming a chair-based culture,

you know, like spending time on the ground is just, is very, very normal.

Like, spending time on the ground actually is the normal thing.

You know, so as I'm, as I'm on the ground,

and normal is a dumb word, it's a subjective word, but as far as like normal, if my definition of normal would be like most conducive for

cellular health, you know, and like musculoskeletal well-being.

I said skeletal like a British person.

So if that, if we were just, we were just to put normal as something that's like, okay, like, what, just what makes your cells function best?

We'll just call that normal, just for lack of, you know, for just to find a definition.

And so that's very normal.

Like our body,

there's actually a book called Muscles and Meridians by Philip Beach that's been quite impactful for me.

And in that book, he refers to spending time on the ground, which again, most all healthy cultures around the world do that.

Cultures that have minimal incidence of ostearthritis in the hips and the knees have minimal issues around like you know incontinence like pelvic floor issues

you know just like

like spine pathologies, things of the sort.

Like just going through those ranges of motion, it heals the joints.

It brings new fluids to the joints.

And it's good for them.

Circulates lymphatic fluid, better for digestion because your legs are closer to your viscera, your heart, your organs, so you don't have all this blood pulling up in your lower compartments.

Think like cankles when you're in a plane.

It's gross.

It doesn't look good.

Doesn't feel good.

Makes you feel drained.

Standing in a museum for too long, you're just like, ugh.

So sitting on the floor, is there a position that we should be sitting in, or just our legs crossed, or what's the ideal position to be sitting on the floor?

There's no best position.

So, this, I mean, I have a whole chapter in the align method book about just spending time on the ground.

I mean, it feels so stupid to talk about it.

It feels like dumb because it's so, it's like childish.

But it actually is not because I think that people

it's the most basic things in life I feel and find that we just we don't kind of we don't think about, right?

And we just we just don't, we forget.

And now, what's our normal quote-unquote is sitting in a chair like I am.

But you're saying that there's so many more extra, there's so many benefits to actually being on the ground, which is why, and what I want to get to, like, I want you to talk about, like, you have been,

what are the, like, what are the benefits of sitting on the ground versus being in a chair?

Like, where I'm sitting right now in a chair, you're saying it's not great for my back, my hips.

It helps with it, like, you know, like, if I just sat on the floor, let's just put it this way.

If I sat on the floor versus sitting in a chair, what would the benefits be?

What would I kind of get from that?

Or not just me, but everybody?

So a bunch.

So, so, all right, so a few things.

One, there's been various different research around this, studying different cultures that happen to spend more time around.

So, like, northern Africa, southeastern Asia, eastern Mediterranean,

these places.

There's also other things, you know, at least Northern Africa and Eastern Mediterranean, they tend to drink like you know eat pretty good eat a lot of olive oil which is also good for the joints um but very low incidence of osteoarthritis in the hips and the knees and a part of their culture is they're just taking their hips and their knees through a full range of motion it's very simple um you know that would be one thing that's pretty interesting uh another thing is like i already mentioned digestion you know so if you're eating and you're In order for you to be able to digest food, you're going to pull why you get sleepy when you're eating food is you're pulling a bunch of blood from your periphery and it's going into your viscera and your organs and your stomach to break that stuff down and then recirculate it and carry those nutrients to the rest of the body.

So

when your legs are closer to your heart, like think if you ever injured your ankle, if you ever sprained an ankle, everybody's sprained an ankle at some point in their lives, your physical therapist, first thing they're going to say, you know, compression and elevation.

Right.

It used to be rice, rest, ice, compression, elevation.

Then Merkin, the doctor fellow that created that in like the late 70s, he recently recalled that, I think, in the early 2000s.

So it's like, oh, like my bad, ice is actually a bummer.

You know, you don't want to slow down the inflammatory response

and

stop that action.

You want to actually...

support it.

You just want to keep it circulating.

So actually warmth, elevation, movement, stay out of pain.

But elevation and compression.

It's essentially what you're doing when you're sitting in any of those childish positions when you're on the ground.

So if you're laying on your back, that's obviously it's going to be more advantageous for better circulation.

The way that you circulate lymphatic fluid is through muscular contraction.

If you are just sitting on a sofa, just kind of pulling your fluids, it's not bad.

It's not like a moralistic thing.

It's just disadvantageous.

for the circulation of the vital fluids throughout your body.

So if you are sitting on the ground like any any kid would do or person in culture that does this, you'll just naturally kind of move your body around.

Like that's a healthy body, a body that just kind of wiggles a little bit.

And

there's a fancy term for those wiggles called neat.

What is it called?

Non-exercise activity thermogenesis is the unnecessary

definition of the acronym.

And so what that is, is non-exercise.

So it's not like, like the idea of exercise, I think, is cute.

Like, like, you think you're going to like work yourself out into some new form.

It's like, what about, like, that's one hour, three or four days a week.

Like, what are you even talking about?

That is, it's like so minuscule.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.

So it's like the rest of the day, like, that's the align method.

Like, all I care about is like, what are you doing with the rest of it?

Like, you have so many coaches and magazines and muscle and fitness and everything to do the perfect tie bow workout or plyometrics or knees over toes or like whatever you do um the rest of the day is all i'm really interested in as far as like working with well i like both honestly because i do enjoy like nerding out about training but the rest of the daytime that neat that non-exercise activity thermogenesis time you'd be burning upwards of 2 000 extra in quotations calories just from living a little bit more of like a wiggly lifestyle.

And if you were to take yourself into, you know, so you'd say to go like northern Tanzania, where there's been a ton of research with like gut biome stuff, also with

movement, researchers from Southern California, from your part of the world,

my old part,

they went out there in the last few years and

they attached these sensory systems, bio, something, motor, whatever,

to the tribal folks' hips, hips and knees, to track the range of motion they're going through the day.

And what they found was that these hunter-gatherer, ancestral, like the romanticized people that the whole world is like, oh, whatever they're doing is the right thing.

They are in resting positions about as much as industrialized cultures.

So, on average, it was, it was like the exact number was 9.82 hours per day, if I remember correctly.

And so, that's like, okay, they're not, they're, they're not just like running all day or like climbing trees all day, you know, or doing like capuetta dancing and like playing drums.

Like they're resting a lot.

Like they're, they're trying to, they're trying to preserve energy.

So they're resting about as much as we are.

Like we, you know, representing like, you know, industrialized Western culture, whatever.

So the difference is how are they resting?

The way they're resting is, is they're in kneeling positions, they're in squatting positions, they're in

various different floor sitting positions, like pretty much outlined in the book slash, you know, everywhere.

Right.

You know, and it's, it's, they're actually, they're, they're actively

engaging in their resting positions.

It's not just outsourcing all of their mechanical efficiency to, you know, a device, in this case, the device being the chair.

When you outsource what your body would naturally do, then you begin to atrophy.

When you atrophy, you start to become trapped.

If you atrophy too much, then you're in a tight spot.

Right.

That's right.

That's right.

Does that mean, by the way, the wigglies, is it because, are you wiggling because you're uncomfortable on the floor?

And so therefore you're trying to get,

you're adjusting yourself constantly to find a comfortable position?

Because like right now,

if you're in an uncomfortable chair, you can wiggle a lot.

You know, I'm wiggling a ton right now.

That's great.

That's how a kid would sit in a chair

until they were advised that they're sick and they need medication.

That's how a healthy kid would sit in a chair.

They'd rock back on the chair, they'd go on the left side, they'd go on the right side, they're working their whole proprioceptive system.

That's neurology.

Like, that's education.

So, does that mean

I'm getting the same benefits in this chair as you are on the floor because I'm like

moving around?

But there's not a chair.

Chair's just a thing.

It doesn't matter.

It's just who are you in the chair?

Who are you?

Am I in the chair?

Right.

But can you sit on a cushion on the chair?

On the floor?

Oh, yeah, I'm on a cushion.

My whole setup.

Okay, let me look at your setup.

I'm just curious.

All right, so I was holding it.

So I got this cute little cushion situation about that wine.

Okay.

My hips are semi-flexible.

I would say they're more than semi.

They would poop very flexible.

But so that's, I'm just saying that that cushion is kind of small for a lot of folks.

For most people, I'd say make your cushion like at least.

I don't know, a foot high, 10 inches high or something like that.

The big thing, if you want to have biomechanical efficiency within your sacrum you know just your spine your hips you want to make sure your hips are up above the height of your knees if your hips are up above the height of your knees that will put your lower back particularly the l5s1 vertebra they are in a bit of a shape of a wedge with the wide angle of the wedge facing out towards your belly button and so what that what that suggests is that you want to kind of have the hips ever so slightly kind of like tilting forward and that's kind of like a ready position you know so if you roll your hips backward and you sit down on the ground without like having your hips up above the height of your knees then you're going to be in that like sad puppy dog kind of like

like rolled forward position it's there's nothing wrong with it but it's just putting a little like undue stress on the discs in your spine and such.

So you can really relax into the architecture of your spine when you set your hips up above the height of your knees.

That in and of itself, whether you're on a chair or on the floor or whatever, if you just take away that tip, you know, those of you still

engaged in this conversation

or monologue,

if you just take away that one tip, this whole thing was worth it.

You can stop listening.

Just do that, and it will make a massive difference in your life.

Wow, that's amazing.