Can you sit on the floor with ease and stand up without support? You will live to be 100! – Times Now

Is sitting on the floor and getting up an easy job for you? Or do you avoid it because it is a strain?  |  Photo Credit: iStock Images

The human body is a lever system with muscles and joints of bones aiding ease of movement. For our well-being, mobility is key. Erin Bunch writes in WellAndGood.comthat sitting on the floor may not be that comfortable, especially when compared with the relative luxury of a chair, but the simple practice is great for your longevity, according to a study of the world's longest-living populations.

There is a Danish twin study that concluded that the average persons lifespan is 20 per cent determined by genetics and 80 per cent determined by environment and lifestyle. That means we are in control of our future and not at the mercy of our genes as we may have originally thought.

That is exactly what Blue Zones founder Dan Buettner says about people living in Okinawa, Japan, who keep furniture to a minimum in their homes, so they naturally do most of their sitting on the floor. These small changes to their environment have made positive changes to their health and it is for the entire world to see. People that live in the blue zones of the world move every 20 minutes because their environments are set up that way. Their environments literally move them.

"The longest-lived women in the history of the world lived in Okinawa, and I know from personal experience that they sat on the floor," he says. "I spent two days with a 103-year-old woman and saw her get up and down from the floor 30 or 40 times, so that's like 30 or 40 squats done daily."

According to StockBridgeOsteopathicPractice.com, the Okinawa residents sit and get up from the floor hundreds of times per day. This exercises their legs, back, and core in a natural way as they get up and down all day long. Sitting on the floor also improves posture and increases overall strength, flexibility, and mobility. The reportcites that studies correlate the ability to sit and rise from the floor without support with a longer life expectancy. Sitting on the floor also develops musculoskeletal fitness.

Dana Santas, a celebrated Breathing, Mobility & MindBody coach to professional sports teams who runs the Instagram handle @mobilitymaker posts, "This floor-sit-to-stand exercise is only possible with a combination of mobility, stability & strengthand how you breathe has a significant impact on your ability to access & integrate all three.

Santas writes that by exhaling to initiate the drive up, you enable better engagement of your pelvic floor integrated with your core (especially TVA) while optimally positioning your ribcage and pelvis to support the necessary hip and spine movement.

Not used to squatting on the floor?Santas offers some practical suggestions that will get you into the groove slowly. You can modify this exercise in a few ways:

What are the key elements that are necessary for this movement? Mobility coach Dana Santas advises that you need to understand and incorporate the following:

Your ability to stand up from a seated, cross-legged position without using any of your limbs (known as the sitting-rising test) is a good marker of your longevity. A study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology suggests that those least able to complete this movement were five or six times more likely to die than those who were best able to complete the task, claims the report in WellAndGood.com.

It is well known that aerobic fitness is strongly related to survival, but our study also shows that maintaining high levels of body flexibility, muscle strength, power-to-body weight ratio and coordination are not only good for performing daily activities but have a favourable influence on life expectancy, the study's lead researcher, Claudio Gil Arajo, said in a press release.

Why muscular-skeletal fitness matters:Having overall good muscular-skeletal fitness and mobility can help prevent you from falling down when you're older, which is one of the top causes of unintentional injury-related death for those over 65. Also, if you are able to sit down and stand back up from the floor with relative ease, its a wonderful sign of overall structural, skeletal health and muscular balance and alignment, body alignment specialist Lauren Roxburgh tells Erin Bunch writes in WellAndGood.com.

"The key to longevity, staying flexible, fluid, and maintaining a healthy body is to create continual postural shifts throughout the day (as you're able)," she says. "So sitting on the floor and periodically doing long, deep squats are a great way to boost circulation, blood flow, and energy, increase flexibility and range of motion, create space and build some deeper awareness of your body while helping you feel grounded."

It is quite likely that any of us who are able to repeatedly stand up from a seated position on the floor will live up to be 100.

Disclaimer: Tips and suggestions mentioned in the article are for general information purposes only and should not be construed as professional medical advice. Always consult your doctor or a professional healthcare provider if you have any specific questions about any medical matter.

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Can you sit on the floor with ease and stand up without support? You will live to be 100! - Times Now