The Office Hub

Before you jump to conclusions and start thinking we’re telling businesses to start equipping their premises with the kind of furniture usually reserved for places of worship, think again.

Yes, it’s called a kneeling chair, and you wouldn’t really find one in any church, unless you count the size a bench used by Tibetan monks to aid them in comfortably maintaining a kneeling position during long hours of meditation. And the seiza bench, a flat piece of flat wood 20 inches long and five inches wide supported in a slightly downward tilting position by two wooden legs like the one used by the person in the inset image on the left, is where the first modern kneeling chair design was based on.

The concept of the kneeling chair was initially developed in Norway in the 1970’s by Hans Christian Mengshoel, a freelance inventor and product developer who probably suffered from horrific back pain brought about either by a really bad posture, or sitting on really bad chairs.

And since necessity is the mother of invention, Mengshoel created the first Design Studio Balans kneeling chair for people who, perhaps like himself, were tired of enduring lower back issues from resting their behinds several hours a day on totally flat seats. Read more »