Upright & Balanced

06/11/2025

SpinaliS Navigator - Tall One for Tall Ones

The Navigator is the perfect choice for taller people who prefer a high ergonomic backrest with added lumbar support. Premium microfibre fabric in the look of prestigious alcantara gives this chair an extra touch of luxury. The seat is of course padded and height-adjustable.

The active sitting springs under the seat base ensure that you are constantly using your spinal stabilising muscles to keep your body in balance. This makes it impossible to load your spine incorrectly through prolonged bad posture – which commonly occurs when sitting on a non-active sitting (normal) office chair.

• Gentle lower back support
• Microfiber fabric in the look of alcantara
• A higher backrest
• Patented spring technology

https://upright-balanced.co.uk/navigator

06/11/2025

SpinaliS Apollo - Elegance Meets Comfort

The Apollo combines the classy and elegant looks of a high-end office chair with superior comfort and the benefits of active sitting. Apollo’s seat is flexible and height-adjustable with addtional quilted padding on the seat base. The ergonomic backrest is shaped to match the natural curves of the spine and designed to follow the movement of your body, thus optimising support.

The active sitting springs under the seat base ensure that you are constantly using your spinal stabilising muscles to keep your body in balance. This makes it impossible to load your spine incorrectly through prolonged bad posture – which commonly occurs when sitting on a non-active sitting (normal) office chair.

• Additional lumbar support in the backrest
• Height adjustable backrest and armrests
• Generous cushioning for superior comfort
• Patented spring technology

https://upright-balanced.co.uk/apollo/

06/11/2025

SpinaliS Hacker - Our Bestseller

The Hacker has a flexible, height-adjustable seat. The backrest and armrests are also height-adjustable. The backrest is made of an air-permeable mesh material, which helps to prevent you from getting too warm or perspiring. It is shaped to match the natural curves of the spine and designed to follow the movement of your body. Padded elements for additional spinal support have been added to the centre of the backrest.

The active sitting springs under the seat base ensure that you are constantly using your spinal stabilising muscles to keep your body in balance. This makes it impossible to load your spine incorrectly through prolonged bad posture – which commonly occurs when sitting on a non-active sitting (normal) office chair.

https://upright-balanced.co.uk/hacker

04/11/2025

Time to upgrade your office?

02/11/2025

Ergonomic office chairs for dynamic sitting

29/09/2025

Benefits of active sitting for calorie expenditure and inflammation:

It has been shown (1) that active sitting on a balance ball or air-filled cushion burns significantly more calories than sitting on a firm flat surface. Although active sitting is not a substitute for regular exercise, it might help reduce the epidemic of obese sedentary office workers.

Long-term regular exercise causes certain immune system cells (e.g. macrophages, peripheral blood mononuclear cells and microglial cells) to release more anti-inflammatory than inflammatory chemicals (2). This helps to reduce the likelihood of suffering chronic pain, but it also helps you heal up more quickly if you do get injured. Reduced inflammatory levels in the body also help to prevent some chronic disease, such as heart disease, certain cancers, diabetes, chronic liver or kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease, depression, as well as cognitive decline / dementia (3). Active sitting is likely to have beneficial effects on inflammation levels in the body, but studies are needed to verify this.


(1) Dickin, D. C., Surowiec, R. K., & Wang, H. (2017). Energy expenditure and muscular activation patterns through active sitting on compliant surfaces. Journal of sport and health science, 6(2), 207–212. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jshs.2015.10.004

(2) Sluka, K. A., Frey-Law, L., & Hoeger Bement, M. (2018). Exercise-induced pain and analgesia? Underlying mechanisms and clinical translation. Pain, 159 Suppl 1(Suppl 1), S91–S97. https://doi.org/10.1097/j.pain.0000000000001235

(3) Pahwa, R., Goyal, A., Jialal, I. (2023). Chronic Inflammation. In: StatPearls. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493173

Inflammation is part of the body's defense mechanism. It is the process by which the immune system recognizes and removes harmful and foreign stimuli and begins the healing process. Inflammation can be either acute or chronic.[1][2][3]

29/09/2025

Active sitting for musculoskeletal injury prevention:

Increased muscle tone in the spinal muscles makes the proprioceptive nerve signals from muscles more sensitive, which, in turn, leads to better motor responsiveness for injury prevention. In other words, people who have good muscle tone and good motor responsiveness are less likely to pull their back during day-to-day activities.

Proper activation of stabilising muscles and motor responsiveness relies largely on subconscious motor programmes, which are mediated by a subcortical brain network involving the cerebellum, basal ganglia, thalamus and cingulate cortex (1). Active sitting while doing a brain-based task (e.g. office work) will train subconscious motor programmes for postural control, as you are not consciously thinking about controlling your posture; you are focusing on working. Conscious core stability exercises, on the other hand, mostly activate a cortical brain network for movement,19 which will provide less efficient spinal stabilisation and injury prevention.

(1) Kim, D. H., Lee, J. J., & You, S. J. H. (2018). Best core stabilization exercise to facilitate subcortical neuroplasticity: A functional MRI neuroimaging study. Technology and health care : official journal of the European Society for Engineering and Medicine, 26(3), 401–407.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of conscious (ADIM) and subconscious (DNS) core stabilization exercises on cortical changes in adults with core instabili...

29/09/2025

Stimulate the brain to relieve pain:

The benefits of active sitting are likely to go far beyond the activation and strengthening of core muscles. And it is likely that the reduction in chronic low back, neck and shoulder pain often experienced by office workers when they exchange their conventional office chair for a SpinaliS active sitting chair cannot simply be attributed to having greater core muscle activation and/or strength.

Chronic or long-term pain involves brain changes, not simply muscle weakness. The brain areas that process pain become more sensitive, and in many people with long-term pain have been shown to activate spontaneously; without any or with only minimal stimulation of pain nerves signalling injury or excessive biomechanical loading of muscles, tendons, joints or ligaments (1). In addition to this, brain areas that are meant to dampen pain perception and processing work less efficiently; this is known as poor endogenous pain modulation. Unfortunately, a major risk factor for developing such brain changes that can lead to chronic pain is having a sedentary lifestyle (2,3,4) Several recent studies (5,6,7,8) have shown exercise programmes involving core muscle strengthening, motor control and/or balance training to be effective in reducing chronic low back pain. Such exercises will not only strengthen muscles, but they will also activate brain areas associated with balance and coordination of movement (cerebellum, vestibular system, frontal lobe motor areas). This, in turn, can directly or indirectly stimulate brain areas involved in endogenous pain modulation, e.g. raphe nuclei, nucleus tractus solitarius, periaqueductal gray and hypothalamus (9,10,11,12,13).

Training the spinal muscles through active sitting will also improve what is known as pain-gating. A well-known example of pain-gating is when you accidently knock your elbow and instinctively rub it to make it hurt less. The basic principle is to activate nerve fibres that transmit a non-painful signal (rubbing) as this partially blocks the transmission and processing of pain nerve signals. Nerve signals from muscles, that signal muscle length and speed of stretch (proprioception), also powerfully activate the pain gates, and therefore help to reduce the transmission and processing of pain (14). Muscles that have better muscle tone and are activated regularly produce better pain-gating. So training the spinal muscles through active sitting is likely to produce better pain-gating for people with back pain.

(1) Nijs, J., Lahousse, A., Kapreli, E., Bilika, P., Saraçoğlu, İ., Malfliet, A., Coppieters, I., De Baets, L., Leysen, L., Roose, E., Clark, J., Voogt, L., & Huysmans, E. (2021). Nociplastic Pain Criteria or Recognition of Central Sensitization? Pain Phenotyping in the Past, Present and Future. Journal of clinical medicine, 10(15), 3203. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8347369/

(2) Årnes, A. P., Nielsen, C. S., Stubhaug, A., Fjeld, M. K., Johansen, A., Morseth, B., Strand, B. H., Wilsgaard, T., & Steingrímsdóttir, Ó. A. (2023). Longitudinal relationships between habitual physical activity and pain tolerance in the general population. PloS one, 18(5), e0285041. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285041

(3) Naugle, K. M., Ohlman, T., Naugle, K. E., Riley, Z. A., & Keith, N. R. (2017). Physical activity behavior predicts endogenous pain modulation in older adults. Pain, 158(3), 383–390. https://doi.org/10.1097/j.pain.0000000000000769

(4) Law, L. F., & Sluka, K. A. (2017). How does physical activity modulate pain?. Pain, 158(3), 369–370. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5303119/

(5) Mirshahi, M., Najafi, R., Golbakhsh, M., Mirshahi, A., & Pishkuhi, M. A. (2023). Effectiveness of a Core Stability Exercise Program on Pain and Function in Musicians with Chronic Low Back Pain: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Medical problems of performing artists, 38(4), 207–213. https://doi.org/10.21091/mppa.2023.4025

(6) Alqhtani, R. S., Ahmed, H., Alshahrani, A., Alyami, A. M., Khan, A. R., & Khan, A. (2023). Synergistic Benefits of Motor Control Exercises and Balance Training in Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Life (Basel, Switzerland), 13(12), 2258. https://doi.org/10.3390/life13122258

(7) Muthukrishnan, R., Mohammed Badr Ul Islam, F., Shanmugam, S., Arulsingh, W., Gopal, K., Kandakurti, P. K., Rajasekar, S., Shahzadi Malik, G., & Sg, G. (2023). Perturbation-based Balance Training in Adults Aged above 55 years with Chronic Low Back Pain: A Comparison of Effects of Water versus Land Medium – A Preliminary Randomized Trial. Current aging science, 10.2174/0118746098254991231125143735. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.2174/0118746098254991231125143735

(8) Babiloni-Lopez, C., Fritz, N., Ramirez-Campillo, R., & Colado, J. C. (2024). Water-Based Exercise in Patients With Nonspecific Chronic Low-Back Pain: A Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 38(1), 206–219. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000004635

(9) Cuccurazzu, B., & Halberstadt, A. L. (2008). Projections from the vestibular nuclei and nucleus prepositus hypoglossi to dorsal raphe nucleus in rats. Neuroscience letters, 439(1), 70–74. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18511198/

(10) Espinosa-Sanchez, J. M., & Lopez-Escamez, J. A. (2015). New insights into pathophysiology of vestibular migraine. Frontiers in neurology, 6, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2015.00012

(11) Balaban, C. D., Jacob, R. G., & Furman, J. M. (2011). Neurologic bases for comorbidity of balance disorders, anxiety disorders and migraine: neurotherapeutic implications. Expert review of neurotherapeutics, 11(3), 379–394. https://doi.org/10.1586/ern.11.19

(12) Stacheneder, R., Alt, L., Straube, A., & Ruscheweyh, R. (2023). Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (t-DCS) of the Cerebellum on Pain Perception and Endogenous Pain Modulation: a Randomized, Monocentric, Double-Blind, Sham-Controlled Crossover Study. Cerebellum (London, England), 22(6), 1234–1242. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12311-022-01498-x

(13) Giannoni-Luza, S., Pacheco-Barrios, K., Cardenas-Rojas, A., Mejia-Pando, P. F., Luna-Cuadros, M. A., Barouh, J. L., Gnoatto-Medeiros, M., Candido-Santos, L., Barra, A., Caumo, W., & Fregni, F. (2020). Noninvasive motor cortex stimulation effects on quantitative sensory testing in healthy and chronic pain subjects: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Pain, 161(9), 1955–1975. https://doi.org/10.1097/j.pain.0000000000001893

(14) Fuller, A. M., Luiz, A., Tian, N., Arcangeletti, M., Iseppon, F., Sexton, J. E., Millet, Q., Caxaria, S., Ketabi, N., Celik, P., Wood, J. N., & Sikandar, S. (2023). Gate control of sensory neurotransmission in peripheral ganglia by proprioceptive sensory neurons. Brain : a journal of neurology, 146(10), 4033–4039. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awad182

Fuller et al. describe a novel role of proprioceptive parvalbumin-expressing sensory neurons in the tonic inhibition of nociceptive signalling within dorsa

29/09/2025

Core muscle activation through active sitting:

Active sitting has been shown to increase activity in the lumbar multifidus muscle (1), a deep spinal stabilising (core) muscle in the low back. In many chronic low back pain sufferers, especially those who have had a previous spinal disc injury, structural changes to the muscle and its nerve receptors cause not only muscle weakness, but also deficits in the nerve signals that are transmitted from the muscle to the brain (proprioception) (2). The better news is that exercise has been shown to attenuate those structural muscle changes (3), and it is probable that sitting actively rather than statically (when work-related sitting is required) will aid this process.

(1) Scott, I. R., Vaughan, A. R., & Hall, J. (2015). Swiss ball enhances lumbar multifidus activity in chronic low back pain. Physical therapy in sport : official journal of the Association of Chartered Physiotherapists in Sports Medicine, 16(1), 40–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ptsp.2014.02.007

(2) James, G., Stecco, C., Blomster, L., Hall, L., Schmid, A. B., Shu, C. C., Little, C. B., Melrose, J., & Hodges, P. W. (2022). Muscle spindles of the multifidus muscle undergo structural change after intervertebral disc degeneration. European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society, 31(7), 1879–1888. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7613463/

(3) James, G., Klyne, D. M., Millecamps, M., Stone, L. S., & Hodges, P. W. (2019). ISSLS Prize in Basic science 2019: Physical activity attenuates fibrotic alterations to the multifidus muscle associated with intervertebral disc degeneration. European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society, 28(5), 893–904. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-019-05902-9

Purpose Chronic low back pain causes structural remodelling and inflammation in the multifidus muscle. Collagen expression is increased in the multifidus of humans with lumbar disc degeneration. However, the extent and mechanisms underlying the increased fibrotic activity in the multifidus are unkno...

29/09/2025

The adverse health effects of prolonged static sitting:

Prolonged static sitting is a modern-day occupational health hazard, especially when combined with a sedentary lifestyle. According to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA)1, adverse health effects that have been linked to prolonged sitting include:
• Low back pain
• Neck and shoulder complaints
• Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease
• Obesity
• Certain types of cancers, in particular breast cancer and colon cancer
• Mental health issues
• Premature death

The EU-OSHA report(1) from 2021 further stated that the recommendation to always maintain a sitting posture that is as upright as possible is no longer considered ideal and is being replaced by the concept of dynamic sitting, whereby sitting positions are continuously altered. Specialist office chairs can safely facilitate dynamic sitting (also known as active sitting), and are therefore likely to offer substantial benefits to office workers’ health and wellbeing.

(1) European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (2021). Prolonged static sitting at work: health effects and good practice advice. Available from:

Many jobs involve long periods of static sitting, which, combined with a sedentary lifestyle, is linked to ill health. This report examines the issues surrounding prolonged sitting at work, including the jobs and workers most affected, and identifies the health risks posed, including musculoskeletal...