Episode 27 | Stop Sitting for Better Work/Life Wellness – Part 1

Dr. Laura welcomes Dr. Stefan Zavalin, a Doctor of Physical Therapy and author of the book “Sit Less: Evolve Your Work and Life Without Compromising Your Health”, to the show. Dr. Zavalin’s passion for movement and health inspired him to investigate what he could do to counter our culture of sitting, which led to his writing a book on the subject.

Dr. Laura explores the facts about how much we generally sit in a day and learns the physical and mental health impacts of all that sedentary behavior from Stefan Zavalin. They discuss how the idea of simply sitting less naturally inspires healthy movement, how to practically structure movement breaks and periods of standing into your work day, and the four levels of beneficial exercise. The enthusiasm Dr. Zavalin exudes is both energizing and motivational, and his advice is directly applicable to all our lives.

“I feel that we’re constantly hit over the head with this idea of you need to move more, you need to exercise more, do more of this, do more of this and more of this. And that felt like it would lead to a lot of burnout. … But we need to reduce the amount that we’re sitting. And I thought that perhaps we need to shift that mindset. And the mindset that I approach it with is, okay, what if we reduce the bad thing, in this case, the sitting? So instead of thinking about moving more, we think about how we can sit less, and thus naturally we end up moving.” Dr. Stefan Zavalin