There is a school of thought that sitting on the floor is more helpful than sitting in chairs and sofas. I have to see for myself how much truth is there in this belief. Sometimes people exaggerate benefits. For example, there was a theory around barefoot walking. I tried it for a year very religiously. I have not seen any tangible benefit to my health or sleep as was professed by the practitioners. Nor did it help reduce inflammation when there was one. On the other hand, there are perils of thorns when we walk barefoot. It's a different thing that I still walk barefoot mostly. It gives me other experiences of being able to feel the variations in ground texture, the pebbles and rocks, and the grass, the floor temperature, its wetness if any, and all such.
After eating a South Indian meal with my fingers directly, it is hard to ignore the feeling of being sacrificed for an apparent hygiene of spoons and forks.
Sitting on the floor forces people to get up frequently. Apparently, that helps strengthen the whole body. There are practitioners who profess this view. But I have to see for myself if this is just a biased belief or it actually is so.
An interesting observation I made is that it is not just me, but regular floor sitters also cannot sit on the floor for too long, cross-legged or otherwise. So it seems like it is hard to sit for several hours together, even after practicing this habit. Frequently getting up must surely be strengthening the legs. Perhaps in the process it does the same for the back too. If it actually does so, and considerably, then personally it would help me a lot.
Even if my back actually is not that weak—confirmed from my ability to lift heavy objects, or move or dig ground with a crowbar and such—I still can actually feel I am risking my back to a degree given my history of slipped disc. Testing this out for myself will confirm if this is a lifestyle I can adopt. Similarly, sleeping on futons on the floor might help. I often sleep on carpet or a tiled floor covered with a bedsheet. I like it many times, yet the floor is too hard for my shoulders sometimes. Perhaps it is time to try something similar to Japanese futons! My mind is such that it always encourages me to experiment and confirm theories.
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