Yesterday I read an article by Susan Orlean in The New Yorker about her new treadmill desk. It sounded a bit eccentric. But she directed me to an interesting researcher at the Mayo Clinic, James Levine, who believes that much of the obesity epidemic is rooted in what he calls "sitting disease."
We live in a society in which we are cued to sit all the time. We sit to work, to travel, to eat. As a writer, who has very few meetings, I'm especially sedentary in my life. As more and more people telecommute, as we use e-mail rather than face to face meetings, we quite simply move as little as possible. We are inactive, and our complex brains have less and less connection with gravity.
This research has hit meet like a lightening bolt. So much of my life has been about standing. But while I can get up every morning and maintain a standing practice, I actually do very little standing throughout my day. This makes it hard to maintain the energy I need to do the things I want to do: run a 10K with Ben, write a book, get our life into a place of financial stability.
So I've made a decision. In the way that Buddhists weave formal and informal practice throughout their lives, I will weave formal and informal standing. Standing is my mindfulness. Standing grounds me, gives me inner strength, vitality, clarity. When I am standing I feel differently about myself. I feel motivated and connected to the world. So I will now begin a practice of increasing the amount of informal standing I do throughout my day.
I tried it yesterday. Managed to spend most of the day standing, with a few exceptions for some sitting meditation. By the time I stopped, around 8:30 p.m. I was exhausted. It was like I'd run a marathon. It seems like a small adjustment in life, but it's something that could have a major impact on my life, and on the lives of more people, if standing were to become a more habitual practice.
I don't see myself getting a treadmill desk. But I do see myself writing while standing, or the very least thinking while standing. I see myself eating breakfast and reading the new york times while standing. I see myself doing my morning writing while standing, and maybe, eventually all my writing while standing. I see myself reading book while slowly walking around my apartment.
There's something about standing that biases us towards action. And something about sitting in a chair that biases, or can bias us towards inaction and isolation. A decision to stand, is a decision to act. I'm not sure yet where those actions are going to take me.
I'm excited to find out.
