Sciatica pain? Sit like THIS.

If you get radiating pain down your leg, you may have been diagnosed with sciatica. Naturally of course, you now seek remedies and relief for your sciatica.

The problem is the evil sciatica. How should one sleep with sciatica? Or walk? Or sit, which is what brought you to this article.

Well dear hipster, in this article I’m going to invite you to take a different approach in your search for a more comfortable sitting position.

One that focuses on what you’re feeling in your body rather than what diagnosis you may have received (or what you self-diagnosed yourself with). The problem is not your sciatica but the pain you experience when sitting.

How to Sit with Sciatica 

Let’s imagine for a moment that you don’t have sciatica. Erase that doctor’s visit from your memory for the purposes of this experiment. Delete all the googling you did about the diagnosis just for a moment.

While we’re at it, let’s remove any other diagnoses you may have received for your pain in this area of your body. Bulging discs, hip labral tears, arthritis or whatever else. For the 3 minutes you’re reading this article, your hips and back are “normal.”

But “normal” does not mean no pain. When you sit down in your usual position, you still get similar aches. What do you do? Remember, you don’t have sciatica, so this is not a consideration. You just have this achy and annoying pain in the side of your hip.

Maybe the first thing you can try is to stand up. Walk around the room for 2 minutes and then sit back down. Still painful? Maybe you can try putting a cushion under your seat. You can try crossing your right leg or the left one.

You can try a different chair. You can sit on the ground for a little while. Work standing up for a little while. Or do what I used to do and take a kneeling position when doing computer work. 

If the pain comes on when you’re laying on the couch watching TV, try laying on the ground for an episode or two. Or go for even a longer walk around the neighborhood to break up all that sitting. You can even try some gentle exercises to open up the side of your hip.

The point here is to experiment. Try different things out to see what works for you. There is no single one way to sit for anyone. Whether you have sciatica or not.

When people get labeled with a specific diagnosis like sciatica, they falsely believe that their habits now need to be customized to accommodate that ailment. The result is looking too narrowly at the problem and not fully exploring all of the options available to you.

Don’t get fooled into believing that just because you have sciatica, you have to sit in a certain way. Explore and experiment with different strategies to find what works best for you.

How to Sit in a Car with Sciatica

The same principles from above still apply in the context of sitting in a car. But of course, your options for exploration are more limited.

Limited but not impossible. Focus on the things you can control. What happens if you recline your seat back? Or forward? How about pushing the seat all the way back or forward?

What if you put a cushion on your seat? Bring your knees in vs pushing your knees out? The main idea is that you don’t allow your sciatica diagnosis to dictate your search for comfort.

It goes without saying that safety comes first. Driving safely with pain in your hips is better than driving unsafely with no pain.