Why Chinese People Squat: The Biomechanics, the TCM Explanation, and How to Recover the Position

The Position That Confused the Internet

In 2016, a photo circulating on social media showed Chinese men squatting casually outside a convenience store, waiting, chatting. Western commenters found it puzzling, uncomfortable-looking, and culturally unintelligible. The pose — knees fully bent, heels flat on the ground, torso upright — that is completely natural to most people who grew up doing it is biomechanically impossible for many adults who did not.

The squat (蹲, dūn) is not a cultural affectation. It is the natural resting position of the human body before chairs became the default resting technology. Every infant, before learning to walk and long before encountering a chair, squats. Most adults in non-chair-dominant cultures maintain this capacity throughout their lives. Most adults in chair-dominant cultures lose it by their thirties.

The TCM perspective adds a layer to the biomechanical explanation: the squat position is understood in Chinese medicine as a posture that actively promotes health — compressing and then releasing the digestive organs, stimulating the governing and conception vessels along the spine, promoting qi circulation in the lower burner, and activating the root of the kidney and bladder meridians in the soles of the feet and the base of the spine.

Why Most Western Adults Cannot Do It

The flat-footed, heels-down deep squat requires adequate flexibility in several tissue groups that prolonged sitting specifically shortens:

Ankle dorsiflexion. The heel must remain on the ground as the knees travel forward over the toes. This requires the calf muscles (gastrocnemius, soleus) and Achilles tendon to lengthen sufficiently to allow the shin to tilt forward. Prolonged sitting does not use this range; wearing elevated heels (even the small elevation of most shoes) further shortens it over time.

Hip flexor length and hip joint mobility. The hips must reach full flexion without impingement. Hip flexors that have shortened from sustained sitting limit this.

Thoracic and lumbar spine. The spine must maintain enough extension to keep the torso upright rather than collapsing forward. Again, sitting posture works against this.

People who grew up squatting regularly — for toilet use (squat toilets remain the norm across much of China, Japan, and South and Southeast Asia), for resting, for work — never lose these tissue properties. For those who did not, recovery is possible but requires consistent practice over weeks to months.

The TCM Reading of the Squat

Chinese medicine's interpretation of the squat's health benefits operates through several mechanisms:

Compression and release of the lower burner. In TCM, the lower burner (下焦, xià jiāo) — the pelvic and lower abdominal region housing the kidneys, bladder, large intestine, uterus, and lower digestive organs — benefits from compression and release movements that promote qi and blood circulation in this region. The deep squat compresses all of these organs, massages the intestines mechanically, stimulates the ileocecal junction, and upon standing, allows blood to rush back in. This is the clinical basis for the old Chinese advice to squat after meals.

Stimulation of the governing and conception vessels. The spine's flexion in the deep squat (even a predominantly upright squat involves some pelvic tuck that affects the lumbar curve) runs energy along the governing vessel (督脉, dū mài), which runs along the posterior spine, and the conception vessel (任脉, rén mài), which runs along the anterior midline. Both are the most fundamental extraordinary meridians — the governance of all yang (governing) and all yin (conception) in the body.

Kidney point activation at the sole. Kidney 1 (Yongquan, 涌泉) — the only meridian point on the sole of the foot and the root of the kidney meridian — is pressed when the body's weight is distributed across the entire foot in the deep squat with heels flat. This is not an abstract claim; any practitioner familiar with foot point anatomy can confirm that a flat-footed squat places noticeable pressure directly on the Yongquan area.

Large intestine channel activation. The large intestine's peristaltic function benefits from postural positions that do not compress the pelvic floor asymmetrically. The deep squat, compared to sitting on a toilet seat, straightens the anorectal angle — a fact confirmed by biomechanical research — and reduces the effort required for bowel function. Constipation rates are consistently lower in populations where squatting for defecation is normal.

The Health Evidence

The cultural comparison data on squatting populations is striking:

Bowel function. A 2003 study published in Digestive Diseases and Sciences compared squatting and sitting posture for defecation and found that squatting required significantly less straining time and produced more complete emptying. The authors attributed this to the straightening of the anorectal angle in the squat position — a purely anatomical finding with clear functional implications.

Hip and knee health. Elderly populations in cultures where floor sitting and squatting is normative show significantly lower rates of hip replacement and the hip-muscle weakness associated with prolonged chair sitting. The squat maintains the hip joint range of motion that chair sitting progressively restricts.

Pelvic floor function. Squatting is used therapeutically in pelvic floor physiotherapy for both strengthening and releasing the pelvic floor muscles. The position coordinates the pelvic floor in ways that chair-based posture does not.

How to Recover the Squat

For adults who cannot currently achieve a flat-footed deep squat, the progression works through ankle mobility first:

Elevated heel squat. Place a folded blanket, book, or small wedge under the heels. This compensates for the ankle dorsiflexion deficit and allows the body to practise the hip, knee, and spinal aspects of the squat while the ankle range is recovered separately.

Wall-supported squat. Face a wall one arm's length away. Use the wall for balance while lowering into as deep a squat as possible. The wall prevents falling backward (which is the immediate failure mode for people with limited ankle flexibility) and allows practice of the depth.

Calf and ankle stretching. Daily stretching of the calf and Achilles — both standing and kneeling variations — progressively restores the ankle dorsiflexion that most adults need before the flat-footed squat becomes possible.

Daily practice. Even 2-3 minutes of squat practice daily produces measurable mobility improvement within 4-6 weeks for most adults. The Chinese morning routine can incorporate the squat as one of the foundational movement practices.

The squat connects directly to the Chinese stretching exercises that include hip and lower body mobility work, and to the Baduanjin practice that systematically opens the hips, knees, and ankles across its eight movements. Both movement practices support the squat capacity — and the squat itself reinforces the lower body mobility that both practices develop.