When you don’t do much physical activity during work or study, and then start belly dancing, you are at a bigger risk of injury than someone who is more physical. Worse yet, Dr. James Levine did research showing that for every hour you sit down, your life expectancy decreases by two hours! (Mercola, J., 2017)
Ouch!
Now that seems like a bit of a high estimate to me but never-the-less, it is clear that excessive sitting is doing no favours to your body and by extension, your dance. Another study indicated ‘Sitting time was responsible for 3.8% of all-cause mortality (about 433,000 deaths/year) among those 54 countries’. (Rezende, L et al., 2016).
The majority of people these days have desk jobs or jobs that require a significant amount of sitting and a whole lot of belly dancers keep day jobs as well as their dancing. The fact you are dancing is more than likely helping you avoid many of the more serious issues faced by office work but what if making a few simple changes in your office job could help out your dance too?
It is reported that anything more than sitting for 3 hours per day is detrimental, however, sitting cross-legged (lotus position), squatting and standing are said to contribute to better outcomes. Outcomes such as weight loss, younger bodies and stronger joints for example. All common aspirations among belly dancers.
Even sitting on the ground is said to be better than sitting in a chair.
According to author Kelly Starrett, starting off by swapping 20 minutes sitting for standing at work, will help condition your muscles and reduce injury for activities you do outside of work. YAY! Easy done. After a week or 2 you can increase it. If you want to read more about his suggestions, he has written a whole book about it called “Deskbound: Standing Up to a Sitting World.” Which sounds like it would be very valuable for anyone doing a lot of desk work. I also thought his YouTube channel MobilityWOD looked pretty good as he has divided his videos into sections like Shoulder Pain, Exercises, and Stretches and Ankle Pain, Exercise, and Stretches.
So according to Dr Mercola (2017), stand up and … be younger and fitter and stronger. I was so impressed by what I read that I am seriously thinking about getting a sit-stand desk or maybe just doing more reading and researching on my iPad. I love that this simple change doesn’t involve some complicated routine or time out of my schedule, I just stand up whenever I can complete a task that way. It makes sense!
What do you think? If you have a desk job, will you try to stand up a bit more?
References
Mercola, J. (2017). Sitting Too Much Ages You by 8 Years. Retrieved from http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2017/02/03/too-much-sitting-makes-you-age-faster.aspx
Rezende, L et al. (2016). All-Cause Mortality Attributable to Sitting Time. American Journal of Preventive Medicine , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , 253 – 263
(This is post is not to be taken as medical advice. It is intended for discussion purposes only)
Jade Belly Dance 