Patient Education: Proper Sitting Guide II

Other Sitting Surfaces

Car (Driver) Seats

Since car seats aren’t designed to support sitting upright, your car’s driver’s seat will need to be worked with to minimize your posture collapsing while driving.  I say “minimize” because you are working with a seat design that wasn’t meant for structural health, but instead, a sleek look to the car.  And it lets people’s bodies slump into a posture which only supports most compensation patterns.  Think of that soft couch that you sink into – this is most people’s compensation patterns, so will appeal to most people.

Car Seat set up:

If your driver’s seat has lumbar support, turn it off so there is little to no support for your lumbar in preparation for the following steps:

1.     Is your driver’s seat capable of tilting down at the front? If yes, then tilt it down at the front a little bit, without causing you to feel like you are slipping forward.

2.     Move the entire driver’s seat closer to the dashboard then lean the chair back,..backwards.

There is a combination of these two adjustments that will result in the best driving posture possible at this stage of set up - forward chair movement, while leaning more backward.

Be sure to not have your knees crunched against the dashboard, and the chair leaned back AND still being able to hold the steering wheel with both hands with bends in the elbows.   

Another two limitations:  Head not hitting the car ceiling, and still being able to see out the windshield. Be sure to keep your head from hitting the car ceiling and ensure your vision of the road and stoplights is not inhibited for reasonable safety while driving.

Don’t worry, you’ll get it!  Just keep adjusting the above things until it feels right.

You know it’s perfect when you’re breathing comfortably and not collapsing forward on breath out at any part of your spine. 

3.     The headrest at the top of the seat is for neck whiplash protection. Sometimes it is responsible for pushing one’s head forward, which is bad for the bottom of the neck.  

This is another reason why you need to do Step 2 above - it will reduce and possibly eliminate your headrest from pushing your neck forward. 

4.     It may be necessary, after trying the above, to use a foam seat wedge (mentioned in the “Proper Sitting Guide (1)” to get into good car posture. 

5.     Lastly, having done the breathing test and passed, the very last step is to apply the lumbar support at a very light pressure against your lower back.  

(This is the last step and it is why you want to remove the lumbar support in preparation before doing the above steps.)

Airplane Seats

Airline seats used to slope down toward the back, so people often needed to sit on something like a seat wedge to ensure body comfort and alignment.

Now, at the time of this writing, most seats are now more level, ...but the Backing of the chair, has a lower back area section scooped out - which provides the opposite to supporting the low back!   This makes the passenger slump in an enormous C- curve.  And this newer design makes it surprisingly hard to breathe comfortably. Being so bad, it is a mystery as to why airlines made this change!

So for airline seats, you can skip the seat wedge and bring a thin, square pillow instead. A small throw pillow from your couch works great. Place it behind your lower back where the seat curves.

You'll be glad you did when you're breathing easily during flights. And unfortunately, while others are suffering in silence.  Bring a second pillow to be a Good Samaritan?

A Note on Recliner/Reclining Chairs

Patients often ask if it’s okay to recline in a La-Z-Boy chair. My answer is, if your recliner has a decent level of supportive material inside of it, then ‘yes!’. 

They are great for your structure and relaxation.   The only trouble one might have is if the material is not supportive, or the recliner is too small or too big for you.    

At the start of this sitting guide, I mention ‘(Driver’s) Seat’ - if you are a Passenger in the front seat, then reclining the backing is a great way to take the pressure off the back and neck, and to minimize the liability of shoving a vertebra forward.