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Theory that American Lifestyle has Changed the Shape of our Spines

Researcher says some cultures have the right shape for comfort. We don't

By Rain Noe - June 10, 2015

in Furniture Design

It's enough to make a furniture designer despair: What if you can't design a truly ergonomic chair, because the people sitting in it have hopeless posture on a spinal level?

According to NPR, acupuncturist Esther Gokhale—who previously suffered from back pain—began traveling the world twenty years ago to visit cultures that don't have back pain. She traveled to remote regions of Africa and South America—"villages where every kid under age 4 was crying because they were frightened to see somebody with white skin — they'd never seen a white person before"—and noticed something: It wasn't just that their posture was different, it's that the very shape of their spines was different.

"S" on the left, "J" on the right

If you look at an American's spine from the side, or profile, it's shaped like the letter S. It curves at the top and then back again at the bottom.

But Gokhale didn't see those two big curves in people who don't have back pain. "That S shape is actually not natural," she says. "It's a J-shaped spine that you want."

In fact, if you look at drawings from Leonardo da Vinci — or a Gray's Anatomy book from 1901 — the spine isn't shaped like a sharp, curvy S. It's much flatter, all the way down the back. Then at the bottom, it curves to stick the buttocks out. So the spine looks more like the letter J.

"The J-shaped spine is what you see in Greek statues. It's what you see in young children. It's good design," Gokhale says.

If her theory is correct, it looks like eating crappy food, sitting on the couch watching Netflix, taking elevators, and driving to the end of the driveway to pick up the mail have taken their toll on our bodies.

Gokhale has thus devised The Gokhale Method, the name under which she teaches classes and gives free workshops to teach people a series of spine-correcting exercises. Doctors refer patients to her. Tech industry executives hire her (she's based in Palo Alto) for consultations. She's even designed a chair that will reportedly help rectify the problem. Take a look at this and tell us what you think:

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Do you buy it? My kneejerk reaction is to assume that cultures that don't have back pain also don't have couches, Cadillacs and cookies in the numbers that we do. But I'm also open to the possibility that Gokhale is onto something that people have missed.

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Philippe Holthuizen

9 years ago

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I would guess chairs are only part of the problem, because it's everything to do with the working solution the western world has chosen, namely tables and chairs. We use the associated body position from the time we go to school until the time our physical ability prevents us from having dinner at the table. Add some standing desks and ground desks to the mix maybe? :)

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Arthur Hurley

9 years ago

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Another hunch is that these people in remote areas don't have to sit 8+ hours a day at a desk with a computer. Your average office worker is being contorted into the physiology of a 5'10" perfectly proportioned male. Even if it's "ergonomic," this archetypical person is being designed for and everyone else is just being occomodated. We need chair makers to be more like Ateliers!

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Silvia Diaz

9 years ago

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I need to read more about this, no arm rests? don't we have to have our elbows supported? And also wondering about what I was taught about the seat angle, it appears it was the opposite! Can you recommend me where to find more reliable information about all this? thank you!

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Giovanni Mellios

9 years ago

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Who would have thought that sedentary people have bad posture?

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Paulin Guéry

9 years ago

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I completely agree that our posture has evolved in a bad way, and that the shape of our spines is probably wrong, but the solution she proposes is clearly wrong.
Oh a chair that helps you sit!
Assisted sitting! Just what we needed.
If we want to improve the way we sit, stand and move, we have to work on ourselves, not let a chair "do the work".
That doesn't mean we can't help with product design of course, but for me good chairs are neutral chairs, not complicated devices with grippy pads everywhere.
And of course, diversity is key, so let's keep designing chairs, and exotic desks.

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