New desks and chairs for the "seating too much" era 1

Special Interview
Considering new desks and chairs to overcome the "age of sitting too much"

Chairs have a variety of uses depending on the location. Chairs allow you to sit comfortably when you want to relax, and chairs allow you to concentrate on your work. However, due to the changes in work styles that have continued for nearly the last 30 years, people have been living in an "era of sitting too much," and it is said that the resulting physical inactivity can be the cause of various illnesses.

With this background in mind, we held a dialogue between Professor Satoshi Muraki of Kyushu University Graduate School, an expert in welfare ergonomics, and Hans Christian Menscholl, who has been developing balance chairs with a view to revitalizing the body for over 40 years, at the Aurora Hall of the Norwegian Embassy in Hiroo, Tokyo.

This project will encourage people to think about the future of desks and chairs.

How to overcome the "era of sitting too much"

--Long hours of office work have become the norm in today's society. Social issues, particularly in developed countries, include obesity and lack of exercise caused by sitting too long.

Muraki: To begin with, humans have always moved their bodies to live since ancient times. Even in the days when people walked through the forest to get food and lived by eating what they gathered, living meant moving their bodies. However, nowadays, both at work and in daily life, the time spent sitting is built into longer periods of the day, and opportunities to move the body have decreased.

Menshor: With the spread of PCs, the amount of time we spend sitting in front of a monitor has increased dramatically, and the balance between sitting, moving, and lying down and sleeping has changed significantly. I think we've reached a point where we need to think about what we can do ourselves.

──When thinking about how to compensate for the decreased amount of exercise, it seems worth incorporating a chair like a balance chair into your daily life. So, could you explain the balance theory advocated by Mr. Menshor once again?

Menshor: When you sit on the Balance Synergy, a pendulum motion occurs that deviates by 2-3 degrees from the vertical line of a perfectly straight spine. When the chair tilts back, your body moves forward, and when you lean forward, the axis shifts backward, and your body tries to keep itself vertical using your hips, shoulders, and back. It's a literal attempt to balance. The value of the balance chair lies in the fact that you perform these movements unconsciously, strengthening your core and even having health benefits such as preventing back pain.

There is a reason why there is no backrest. If you rest your weight on the backrest, the natural movement of "leaning and returning" is lost. This leads to a "deactivated state of the body" according to balance theory.

--By unconsciously balancing yourself front to back and side to side, your body becomes activated.

Muraki: Humans live by alternating between "stillness and movement" in a balanced way. Sleeping or waking? Rest or exercise. Sitting on a balance chair allows you to alternate between "stillness and movement" on a smaller scale. For people who sit too long, using a chair like this may be one solution.