Your Brain Has a GPS. Sitting Turns It Off

Close your eyes and put your index finger straight out in front of you. Now, keeping your eyes closed, touch your nose. You might not realise it, but you just did something special. You managed to move a body part in complete darkness with no visual feedback and (likely) landed it with accuracy. That’s because your brain has a 3D model of your body running constantly in the background that is updated thousands of times per second by your muscles and joints. Every time you move your body, your joints and muscles send these updates, like GPS updates, to your brain to tell you exactly where you are in space.1 When you sit for a long time, your brain gets fewer updates about where your body is in space. This leaves you feeling slow, sluggish, and clumsy when you first stand up, as your brain is working on an outdated map. This sense of knowing where we are in space is called proprioception. Most people have never heard of it, yet it quietly controls how you move, feel and function every day.

Try standing still after too much alcohol. You will likely sway, drift and lose control. That’s because the signal to your brain has been corrupted. Think of it like losing signal to your GPS, and the more you drink, the worse the signal gets!

Your brain expects and needs movement. Lots of it. Ancient humans evolved by moving all day long, climbing, walking, running, and carrying. They would rarely sit; instead, squatting or lying when resting. Our brains evolved with 10,000 to 18,000 steps every day.2 This movement provided high-quality input to the brain. One of the key areas processing this input is the cerebellum, which is heavily involved in coordination, balance, and even thinking. The cerebellum is directly connected to our frontal lobes, which are the parts of our brain that make us human.³ One leading theory is that complex bipedal locomotion (walking fully upright) was a major driver of human brain development, dramatically increasing stimulation to the brain through the spine and postural muscles in a way no other movement could.4,5 So if we move less, the quality of input to the brain drops.

Sitting for too long reduces movement, resulting in less brain input. Your internal map becomes less accurate. Movement feels harder, so you move less. Your muscles weaken with less movement, and your posture collapses. A loss of posture allows joints to get chronically misaligned, leading to pain and degeneration. The joints will then send even lower-quality GPS signals to the brain, reducing input further. What starts as sitting too long at a desk leads to a progressive decline in not just your body but also your brain and how they function together.

I know people (because I’ve been one of them) who wake up, have breakfast sitting. Commute to work sitting. Get to work and spend their morning sitting. Then they have their lunch, sitting. Then they go back to work, sitting. Commute home, sitting. Dinner and unwind on the sofa, sitting. Even if people do make it to the gym, what position do many of the machines require them to be in, sitting! So movement has to become a conscious choice.

So what can we do? Start simple. Sit less. Stand more. Walk more. Take the stairs. Pace during phone calls. Invest in a standing desk. Consider a small walking pad to walk while you work. Aim for 10,000+ steps a day.6 If you have not walked for a long time, build it up slowly. Most importantly, move a little all day, don’t just save it for one workout.

Every time you move, you get more accurate information to your brain. Your internal map sharpens. Movement feels easier. You feel better. Your brain was built from movement. Not from sitting. So get out there and move.