There are many conditions that make the use of conventional seating painful or difficult. These include:

• Damaged coccyx or sacrum
• Sciatic pain in hips or legs
• Hip replacement/flexibility problems
• Difficulty bending knees or sensitive to pressure
• Spine sensitive to pressure
• Scar tissue
• Back operation/spinal fusion/discectomy
• Very tall

Sitting down really can be a pain. If you find it difficult you should first make sure that your workstation is set up correctly (See our
uncomfortable at work page for advice). Involve your employers health and safety department or occupational health nurse. Both you and
your employer have a duty to provide care, but first you have to tell them! Be sure to consult a physiotherapist or Osteopath. Paying privately
isn’t as expensive as you might think, and the relief from pain is worth it.

Sit/Stand desks – these desks are designed to allow you to stand up when working. They are a very popular product for people with chronic
sciatica, people recovering from back operations who are not allowed to sit down for a period of a few weeks or afterward find sitting
uncomfortable, coccyx and sacrum pain suffers, and very tall people who cannot work at a normal sized desk.

Standing is a much more natural posture for your body to maintain allowing it to do what it was designed for, standing and moving NOT sitting
inactively. These desks will allow you the option of sitting down, perching or standing. They will meet a variety of budgets and don’t have to be
expensive.

"Take productive breaks – this will allow your body the opportunity to stretch, change position, be mobile. It will increase the blood flow to tired muscles. Productive breaks are about organising your work so that every hour you do some filing, take a memo or visit in person instead of e-mailing, it doesn’t mean stopping work, its more to do with how you organise work. In the long term you will be more productive and less uncomfortable."

Cannot sit comfortably or for long, but can stand - Consider using a height adjustable desk by foot button, handle or electric such as the Deskrite with motor drive. Used in conjunction with a sit/stand chair, this will enable you to move the desk to a variety of heights and either sit or perch on the chair whilst working.

Sit/stand chairs - these will allow you to take some weight from your legs by perching on a chair/stool whilst still maintaining an upright natural posture. See HAG Capisco, RH Support.

Cannot bend knee/hip fully - The solution depends on the amount of movement you have, but the Grahl chairs with the split seat mechanism allow the front left or right quarter of the seat to be dropped down. This enables the user to rest their foot on the floor with the minimum amount of joint movement. Look also at the RH Support with a Limpan seat.

Coccyx pain - We can provide a selection of RH Chairs with a coccyx cut out. This is a 250 X 150mm cutout in the foam of the chair, where contact with your coccyx would normally be. This reduces the pressure around the coccyx area and allows you to sit more comfortably for longer. Combining this with a forward tilting seat would also help. The forward tilt allows you to have a natural pelvic posture and this rotates your coccyx away from the seat and reduced the level of contact. You may also be helped by sit/stand desks used with perching chairs such as Capisco or RH Support, bony parts coccyx cushions and coccyx cut out seat wedges (list this description in your order). Alternatively look at the Posturite Coccyx Cushion or RH logic with Coccyx Cut-out.

Very tall - Not only have difficulty with desk height as previously mentioned but getting the correct support from a chair can be very difficult. The RH Logic 4, Moveon, Extend, H05 and Credo ranges all have chairs with high backs, headrests and sliding seats as standard, have very good adjustments and have been used by members of the Tall Persons Club. If you want to check if they will fit, sit down and have someone measure from the seat to the middle of your lumbar curve and then call us.

Short legs - The obvious answer is to have a footrest under each working area, not the best answer as it can be irritating locating the footrest with your feet and lifting them onto it. A better solution is to have a desk at a height where your feet can comfortably rest on the floor - try height adjustable desking. It is possible to fit a shorter RH1 seat on most of the RH chairs and also an extra 30mm of padding to the backrest, which effectively shortens the seat further.

Short trunk - It is possible to put an extra 30mm of padding on some of the RH chairs, raising the seat but not the armrests, and also fit lower armrests.

Pressure sensitive seat - RH chairs can have an extra 30mm of foam added to the seat or better still 30mm of Tempur slow recovery foam, which moulds to your shape and distributes your weight more evenly. Need to keep feet elevated. A better idea is to work in a reclined position as in 'Cannot sit upright to work' ,above, or if you must use a desk to write, use a writing slope whilst tilting backward in a RH or HAG chair.

Some disabilities cause problems at work which do not have an obvious solution. These are some of these problems and the way in which we have solved that problem. The list is potentially endless and if you have an unanswered problem, please contact us. Conversely if you have solved a problem and would like to share it, please keep us informed.