without delay. Children are also the most adept squatters. So what is it that causes the downward spiral from this natural state to the hopelessly stiff individuals who emerge in the teenage years? Is it simply a by-product of modern living that we must resignedly accept? Or are they preventable causes?
   Adults can learn a lot by watching the ways in which children use their bodies. If you want your body to be more flexible, more natural like a child's, then become more like a child and get down on the floor. Yoga asanas can help to maintain youthful flexibility to a great degree, but only in so far as you spend the thirty minutes or so each day on such a routine. But the best way to maintain good posture and flexibility is to use your body and the floor as part of your lifestyle. For every minute you spend in a nature designed, floor-based body posture, that is one minute your body is not becoming stiff from adapting to the shape of factory designed furniture.
   Furniture. Basically, the yoga way of looking after your body is to keep as close to nature as possible. According to this principle, one of modern Western society's silliest, most unnecessary, most detrimental influences on the human body is its furniture. You know that the yoga asanas are all done on the floor. There is no possible position that the human body cannot make which cannot be done on the floor therefore, there is no need to elevate a sitting position in the first place.
   The way in which a baby's body grows, is from the ground up, from lying, to crawling, to standing. They learn to use their muscles and joints in relationship to the ground. This is how nature evolved our anatomy. If, at any stage, you break that relationship, you will cause some imbalance between the design and function of the human framework. And this is what has happened to Western people. They have moved off the floor, completely to their detriment. Most adults can no longer sit cross-legged or sit on their feet on the floor for more than a few minutes due to stiffness in the hips, knees and ankle joints. They cannot squat flat footed due to tension in the pelvis and lower back. Most people cannot sit with a straight, unsupported spine because they have become so used to the back support of chairs and lounges. Some people cannot even lie flat on the floor because their backs have become so curved by their bed shape. In short, furniture has created a postural disaster for its users.
   Babies and children love the floor. It is a big play space, it affords them room to 
 

move.Their first experiences in furniture (usually the high chair at the dinner table) is so frustrating for them. Later on they must sit at little pre-school chairs and tables, little child's toilets, and on it goes. Their whole life moves off the floor as they age until they are one of the many who can't sit and play on the floor any more. My advice is not to start that process of furniture dependence so early on for children; to get back down on the floor yourself to relate with them rather than to elevate them up to the adult level; to use your yoga practise to regain the flexibility you once had as a child which will help in a small way to reclaim the energy, the health, the fitness and spirit of childhood.
   My family all live basically on the floor. Have done now for over 10 years. We have mattresses on the floor with cushions to serve as lounge suites; we eat on a tablecloth spread out on the floor like a big picnic smorgasbord; we sit on floor cushions at low tables for computer work and home-school-work; and the beds are all mattresses on the floor or on low bases for aeration. Whilst this may seem unusual to most Westerners such a set up is actually the norm for the vast majority of people on the planet. Such a lifestyle encourages better flexibility of the legs, better strength in the spine, better bowel movement, better sleep posture, and is massively cheaper than the fancy furniture which may look good from afar, but which just sucks your lifeforce once settled into it.
   High Chairs. The sight of young babies strapped into highchairs whilst being cajoled into eating, instead of studying the forces of gravity and parental patience by dropping spoons onto the floor, is indeed a very common sight. How else are civilised people to feed their children? Since my family eat sitting on the floor around a big tablecloth, my alternative has been to sit the young babies in a box or cane basket just next to me. (i) they cannot fall out; (ii) they do not feel dislocated from their normal floor level; (iii) their box is easily cleaned out or jettisoned when past it; (iv) it is cheaper and takes less storage space! Once the baby had finished, they were taken out of the box and could play around the rest of the family whilst our meal continued. By about the age of 20 months, the child had enough self discipline to graduate to sitting at the communal eating mat without the box.
The Baby Stroller. I consider the baby stroller to be one of modern man's most useless inventions, as well as one of the earliest symbols of laziness that a child can experience. Upon examination, strollers are seen to be 100% a device for