Hi, I'm Natalie with Veritas Health, and today I'm going to give you guys some tips on how to sit comfortably with SI joint pain. If you have SI joint pain and you have a job or activity that makes you required to sit for extended amount of time, these are some tips you can use to help minimize discomfort, and also help keep yourself from getting too stiff. My first tip for you is try to sit with a neutral spine. So this means that your spine is not bent too far forward or arched an extreme amount back. To do this, ideally you have a chair that has the built in lumbar support, but if the built in support isn't quite enough, or if your chair lacks that, you can use some external lumbar support.
You can either roll off like a coat, a towel, or something into a roll here. Put it in your low back just to help fill in that gap and provide yourself a nice upright spine. You can also purchase a lumbar roll that works well for that as well. If you have to sit for a long time and you're unable to get up, you can do what we call dynamic sitting or use micro movements. This involves performing pelvic tilts. If you imagine your pelvis as a clock, you want to both roll that clock clockwise and counterclockwise. This provides a small amount of movement in the SI joint area to help promote blood flow and reduce pain. I’ll show you that from a side view it would look like this. Another tip you can use is using a support cushion. If you have to sit on a hard surface or something that's not comfortable to sit on, you can use a cushion underneath your chair. Ideally, you want to sit on something that is soft but supportive, something like memory foam or something that has contour to it to help provide support to your SI joint.
A really important thing if you're sitting for any amount of time, is that you use good posture. Some tips for good posture are you want to have your feet both firmly on the ground, you want to have a 90 degrees bend at your knees, hips a little bit higher than your knees. Back upright in neutral position and arms relaxed at your side in a 90 degree angle as well. You also want your head and neck upright with your eyes into the horizon. Finally, the most important thing to do when sitting to avoid SI joint pain is to take frequent breaks.
I tell all my patients to sit for no longer than 30 minutes at a time. At least every 30 minutes they should get up and walk around for about a minute. It doesn't have to be a long break, but this minute of walking is really important to help reduce stiffness, improve circulation and reduce SI joint pain. It can be helpful to use timers or some other frequent reminder, as it's very easy to forget and lose track of time. To learn more about joint pain, please visit us at Spine-health.com and be sure to subscribe to our channel for more videos like this one. Thanks for watching!
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