Here is a little exploration for those of you spending more time on screens and having some pain, or want to avoid it.
. Take a moment when you are seated and ready to work on your computer. Get an overall sense of yourself in sitting.
. Begin to use your mouse or trackpad. How does this feel? Can you sense the places that move when you “mouse”?
Many people find that most of the movement happens at the wrist.
. Now take your hand away from your computer and and move your wrist in all directions as far as it comfortably goes. How much of that range of movement did you use when you “moused”? Probably quite a bit of it.
. Now see if you can keep your wrist relatively still and use your full arm to “mouse”. How does that feel?
. Now lift and move your arm through a full range of motion – toward the ceiling, out to the side, in a circle- all of it. How much of that range did you use to “mouse”? Probably not much.
. Now just for fun, place your hand on your mouse or finger on your trackpad. Keep your arm still and shift your weight forward and back on your chair. Notice what happens to your cursor. Pause.
. Now repeat, but shift your weight from side to side and see where your cursor goes. Pause.
. This time see if you can use shifting your weight on your chair to control your cursor to do actual work. What was that like?
Using your whole arm as well as shifting your weight in appropriate ways is the path to more comfortable computer use because using a smaller amount of the available movement in any joint or joints creates less strain on it.
And as Moshe Feldenkrais is known to have said ..
“If you know what you are doing, you can do what you want”.