That spinal pain we’re all feeling is from turning our back on our heritage!

Let me guess, you’re sitting down!

Okay, maybe you’re reclining as you read this. Perhaps you’re in bed, or by some small chance you might be standing up, killing time in a pizza place while you wait for them to prepare your doughy disc of culinary excellence!

But chances are, you’re sitting down. I know that because, as a culture, we are essentially addicted to sitting.

Almost every culturally significant aspect of our lives takes place with us sitting. Sharing meals, working, consuming entertainment, travelling from place to place. Even at our places of worship, we are largely seated.

We are the Sitting People.

And we have not always been that. Our defining characteristic as homo sapiens was once the fact that we were able to stand upright. It gave us the edge, on those ancient African plains, when hunting prey, or avoiding enemies.

Then, over the centuries, we became farmers, we built cities, and we became sedentary. Today, most of us spend our lives sitting on our asses.

That’s why your lower back gets so stiff.

As industrial engineer Pritam Poddar has pointed out, we are now addicted to sitting. And that sitting proclivity removes from the equation the very muscles that evolved to support our spines and keep us upright. Now, we simply rest our bodies on our buttocks, placing the entire weight of our upper torso on our vertebrae and stay like that. Six, seven, eight, 10 hours a day!

We peel ourselves out of bed, sit down to breakfast, drive to work, sit in front of our computers, then come home, sit at the dinner table, and then sit in front of TV for a couple of hours.

A few relentless decades of that, and the spinal discs between our vertebrae are stuffed. It hurts to walk. It hurts to sit, and we wobble between the two, in constant pain, and looking for excuses to have a general lie-down on the nearest bed or sofa.

Our gluteus muscles are falling into disuse. Or let’s be honest here, MY gluteus muscles are falling into disuse. This rant is mainly about me, and my sore lower back.

I have learned, fortunately, that there is a way to save my lower back. It lies in reviving for myself a forgotten part of human culture: the deep squat.

There are more postures than standing, sitting or lying. And squatting has long been one of our most natural positions. Young children instinctively use the position, but we seem to unlearn it as adults.

The squat – where our body weight is on the feet but the knees and hips are bent – offers multiple benefits. It is a propitious position for resting the spine, for exercise, for childbirth, for sex and for handling our ablutions.

The devolution of Westerners from a civilisation of squatters to one of sitters is emblematic of our fall from grace, of our decline from elegant, powerful apes to stiff, weak and lazy humans. At least as far as our lower backs are concerned.

As a young man, I was once schooled in the art of toilet squatting by a housemate of mine. I followed the practice for years, to the ultimate benefit of my alimentary canal, as well as my lower spine.

Then, I lost my way. Fortunately, I have been reminded.

I have rediscovered the relieving freedom, the liberation of squatting like the naked ape my ancient ancestors were.

Squat, square and solid upon the earth. In how many other ways, may the way of the ancients be our salvation for the future? And stop us having to wear one of those corsets that you blow up like a little flotation device.