Where’s the back on that chair?

It was one of those deep winter Missouri days. I was still tuning pianos full time, the Soul Seat was still barely a dream. Sunbeams streamed through the windows, casting long shadows inside the Steinway Grand. I had my tools all laid out in preparation for tuning it. I reached over to turn on the laptop and fire up the tuning program. It was dead, the charger had been left at my shop. Months had passed since I’d last tuned a piano by ear. I panicked. Rummaging for a tuning fork, I searched my memory for the old sequences. Fortunately, years of tuning aurally had worn deep grooves in my memory. I soon had the piano sounding gorgeous and in less time than I had been getting with the tuning program. I had also forgotten how much I enjoyed the intellectual challenge that I had handed over to the software program. I decided to never feel that level of anxiety again, putting the digital aide away for good. Once again tuning pianos felt like getting paid to do crossword puzzles.

That was one of many moments life has forced me to acknowledge that what I thought was a support had turned into a crutch.

Imagine someone handing you a pair of crutches each time you stepped out of your home or exited a building to walk somewhere. The first couple of times you might decline the offer, but if this offer was as persistent as the chips and salsa, or breadsticks at a restaurant, peanuts at the bar, honestly, how long before you would be walking with crutches and asking for the cushier, more padded version? This is basically what a conventional chair is doing each time you sit down. Offering you a crutch to lean back into.

Next time you sit in a chair, notice how much the seat pan tilts back. Think about all the benches you've ever sat on, did they tilt back? Why not? Now think about how many chairs and benches with backs on them also have a seat pan that tilts you into them. Why is that? Have you noticed how chairs, benches, and even bar stools without backrests are level with the ground? Why does the back of a chair need a tilted base to help you find it? Could it be because you don’t really need it? Is it truly your decision to accept this crutch the chair is offering for your back? Why did the designers decide to have you sit this way?

I'm indebted to Katy Bowman of Nutritious Movement for coming up with the notion of “casts” in relation to our biomechanics. A cast on a broken limb is essential for its focused purpose. But a cast is not intended to be a long-term solution. Once it has served its purpose it should be discarded. Even the word crutch is more often used to refer to a harmful habit than a medical device.

Katy talks about how footwear, after facilitating specific benefits for elevation or protection, can soon become hobbling factors as their overuse can cause our bone, muscle, and connective tissue structure to change. Many men and women are familiar with the experience of high-heeled footwear causing their calves to shorten so much that they can’t comfortably squat. If left unaddressed, the shortened calf can lead to problems in the hips and low back as the muscles upstream are habitually accommodating too short calves.

I have found that leaning on the crutch of the lumbar support in office chairs had contributed to my own low back pain, neck pain, and chronically short hamstrings. It has taken me a good twenty years to reverse the effects of all my hours of conventional chair sitting. There certainly are situations where lumbar support is required, and there are many folks who have specific health needs that require back support while they work. Minimizing their situation is not what we’re about. Car seats, pilot seats in aircraft and spacecraft are also places where we should see habitual turning to lumbar support when sitting. These specific tasks require our bodies to be facing in one direction with our feet engaged. But why would a writer, photographer, or lawyer need to emulate the situation of a pilot?

Since the very early days when the Soul Seat was a clunky prototype, we’ve received comments like, “How can it be a proper chair if it doesn’t have a back?” We’ve also had many requests for a custom version that would include back support. Some folks are sure they would embrace the chair if it just had the usual lumbar support. We find it intriguing that these requests and comments are rare from folks who have bought a Soul Seat. Mostly what we hear from users is how their Soul Seat has made them even more intolerant of conventional chairs.

The very design of the Soul Seat is a challenge to conventional thinking about what a healthy spine needs when sitting. That is why, after all these years, we're still glad to hear these questions. Each one gives us a chance to educate folks about what we believe to be a contributing factor in the majority of visits to the doctors' office: chronic low back pain. We welcome the chance to enlighten folks about why they may have lower back pain. We believe that healthy spines need no additional support for sitting.

Low back pain is one of the major causes of over-prescribing of opioids. We hope that this “movement movement” Katy Bowman describes has helped decrease the frequency of chronic low back pain, and helped to stem the tide of the opioid scourge. At Ikaria Design Company we are committed to designing lumbar support right out of the furniture and services we produce. We have chosen to stake out a high leverage position well upstream of chronic back pain. Our hope is that each cross-legged chair and floor desk helps to undermine one of the major on-ramps to our opioid crisis.

One of the greatest satisfactions from redesigning furniture is to witness the global response to just learning that something like the Soul Seat exists. The permission our users have given many others around the world to sit “weird” or “creatively” is of immeasurable value. Whether someone owns a Soul Seat or not, folks the world over are finding they aren’t the only ones who prefer to sit on the floor, or fold their legs up under them, or remove the arms from their office chair. The Soul Seat has benefitted so many more than just those who are able to sit on one every day. The niche it has carved out among other active sitting options has validated the experience of untold numbers around the world.

At Ikaria Design Company, we also believe that good design is more than just a surface feature. We aren't interested in building throw-away furniture that can't be reupholstered or refurbished. There are more than enough big box stores filling that unsustainable niche. We build products that we are proud to buy back. A customer who recently took advantage of our new BuyBack program reported that, thanks to the Soul Seat, he was now sitting primarily on the floor. The Soul Seat was designed as a solution for bringing the floor up to standard desk height, so this is just the story we love to hear. Now his Soul Seat can help the next owner in their active sitting journey. As many have reported, all you may need to start that journey is permission to choose the floor or to choose folding your legs under you at your desk. If so, we applaud you and encourage you to share that permission by making those choices in public whenever possible. You’ll be pleased to find how many others are relieved to join you.