Blog

health monitoring watch

Real-Time Feedback from Automated Sensors Improves Health

Real-time feedback is how humans learn. Babies babble, listen to themselves, and then modify their babbling to match the babbling of their parents, eventually becoming fluent speakers of whatever ...

minimal office chair and desk

Could Simply Changing Your Chair Add Years to Your Life?

The profound difference between sitting and ‘active resting’ Note: Although I’m an academic researcher, because I too suffered from back pain for quite some time, so I’m hardly a disinterested ...

exercise equipment

What Is an “Exercise Chair”?  (Besides an Oxymoron)

Why do we sit? On the face of it an “exercise chair” seems an odd juxtaposition of words: don’t we sit to avoid the exercise that would be involved in some other posture, such as, say, squa...

empty desks and chairs in an office

This Just in (again): Passive sitting is bad for us.

Exercise cannot undo the harms of passive sitting. Evidence has been accumulating for years that passive sitting presents a unique health risk, different from lack of exercise. Importantly,...

abstract representation of lower back pain

Can Active Sitting Help with Acute Low Back Pain?

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Richard P. Feynman I’ve been interested in the benefits of sitting actively for sometime now. N...

Two senior people in a Tai Chi practice

Active Sitting: Can it keep you young?

It is a personal failing of mine that I don’t monitor my phone very carefully, so I wasn’t surprised to find that I had missed another call, but this was a call I’m sorry to have missed. The messa...

man seated at desk with hands rubbing back and neck

Why does my office chair hurt my back?

If you’ve ever shopped for an office chair you’ve likely noticed that all the designs are startlingly similar. All have backrests and a lumbar support arrangement, and most have armrests. Addition...

frustrated woman sitting in ergonomic office chair

Unnecessary "ergonomic" chair parts

Why do office chairs have so many parts? People searching for the “best ergonomic office chair” are nonplussed when they land on our website and see a chair that's missing most of its "key" par...

Person running down a road

The inventor of the Barefoot Shoe loves our office chair

We recently connected with the inventor of the VivoBarefoot Shoe, and he loves our office chair. His idea for how minimal shoes help your body, parallels how active sitting in a minimalist chair su...

ButtOn chair to keep kids active while sitting

Best chair for people with ADHD?

Can active sitting help people with ADHD focus better? Research shows that alternative seating and being able to move or fidget, can improve attention.

hands on a person's back providing relief from back pain treatment

Can active sitting help people with scoliosis?

Can active sitting help people with scoliosis? Possibly. In the least, it helped relieve the pain of sitting for one young woman.

Elderly person walking along tree lined river in Japan

Effortless Fitness: Why there are no gyms in Japan

Japanese people embrace walking as regular exercise. As a result, few people use gyms, but experience life-long health benefits. Could active sitting provide the same benefits as regular walking?

woman demonstrates exercise using QOR360 chair

Active sitting - what's it for?

“What’s it for?” Or, occasionally, “What’s it good for?” I get this question about our chairs a lot, and I have to say, it’s a hard question for me. Which may seem a little odd, because I’m the...

Feldenkrais session with Uwe Mester

The Feldenkrais Approach to Healing Back Pain

Uwe Mester is a Certified Feldenkrais Teacher, and Member of the Feldenkrais Guild of America. In this second guest blog post, Uwe explains more about the Feldenkrais Method® approach to healing b...

feldenkrais with uwe mester in burlington vermont

Back Pain: The Feldenkrais Perspective

A Guest Blog by Uwe Mester, Certified Feldenkrais Teacher, Member of the Feldenkrais Guild of America I would like to introduce you to Uwe Mester, a body movement and posture expert who has been...

girl sitting in ergonomic chair

Somehow, Every Ergonomist Gets Sitting Wrong

The field of ergonomics hasn’t changed their approach and recommendations for chairs in many, many years, even while the rate of Americans with back pain stubbornly persists at 80%. With that sort...

three people working at a desk

Workplace Wellness Programs Don’t Work. Time for a Home Office Reboot?

We humans spent our first 3 million years as hunter-gatherers, and over that long period, we came to expect certain benefits: sunshine, fresh air, fresh food, and above all physical activity. And...

woman squatting on path in the woods

Squatting in the 21 Century

We force kids to abandon squatting so as adults, the position is nearly impossible and uncomfortable. Try this… drop a pencil on the floor and pick it up. Notice - did you bend over at the waist, ...

hands using laptop trackpad

You sit still, you get old

You sit still, you get old We often hear from folks who want to talk about our chair project; usually as emails but sometimes as phone calls. One of the most interesting comments lately was from...

diverging path in the forest

Disrupting the furniture landscape… or forging a new one?

One marker for a disruptive technology is that those pushing the old technology won’t “get it”. When we created an active sitting chair that improved posture and strengthened core muscles, we init...

6th Graders Take on the ButtOn Chair

6th Graders Take on the ButtOn Chair

“80% of Americans have back pain.” The sixth grade class had just been asked what information stood out to them from Dr. Osler’s TEDx talk, and this was the first student’s response. Apparently...

ergonomic office chair

Can active sitting relieve acute back pain

Can active sitting relieve acute back pain? This is a hot topic here at QOR360. We’re a science-based crowd, and our intention is to be as truthful, straightforward, and accurate as possible wh...

the problem with lumbar support

Lumbar Support

Sounds great, doesn’t it? A little scientific, even medical (“lumbar” from the Latin lumbus, meaning loin). And at the same time gently comforting; who doesn’t love “support”? If you’re going t...

movement guy running staying active healthy

Movement is Not Optional

Born to Move Sitting all day seems like a bad idea, but we are now learning just how bad sitting still is for us. Increased rates of heart disease, diabetes, even cancer have all been linked to...