I’m not throwing away my squat!
I will soon be turning 63. It’s not lost on me as I observe my age cohorts that I’m nearing membership in the fall risk crowd. But hanging out with my granddaughter is giving me hope. She just started walking in the last few weeks. It’s been a delight to watch her newest complex skill that she’s taught herself. And, if there’s anyone who’s a fall risk, it’s her. She hasn’t let that slow her down, though. Mostly because when she does go down, she’ll often pivot to a full squat, making it look intentional.
Pack and his granddaughter
Remarkably, she didn’t launch herself into toddling until she could rise to standing in the middle of the floor, without a table or a parent’s leg within reach. The grace with which she moves from sitting to a full squat, to standing, to walking, then back to a full squat makes me wonder if she truly has the same skeleton as those of us teetering on aging stilts.
Here’s the thing, we oldsters become fall risks to the extent that we can’t easily move into full squat and back up. And that’s not a function of bone, it’s all soft tissue that we’ve allowed to grow short and rigid. If you’ve been following us over the years, you know a little about the Sit-Rise test, correlated with longevity. As I’m typing this, I’m comfortably in a full squat with my laptop atop one of our DIY Flow Desks. I can do just what my granddaughter does, rise right up into standing with little effort and no assistive device. It’s been a good 20-year project for me to regain what she’s been able to do for the last three months. Hopefully she’ll never have to give up this capacity by her teen years as happened to me.
Do what you need to do now to maintain, or claw back, the mobility you were born into. You’ll find throughout your life that you’ll spend less money on furniture and more time in the trusted company of young ones as you easily squat down to meet them at eye level. Your global travel won’t be limited to only those regions with throne toilets. You’ll never have to desperately hunt around for a comfortable place to sit when fatigued, and you’ll enjoy a party trick when you drop into a squat in your eighties and all gasp.