Surely, if there’s anything madame yogis can gain from a frequent yoga practice it’s squat power! What lady hasn’t employed the hover position in public facilities in efforts to do your business and not touch anyone else’s? Ick. Well, get a load of this new yoga-riffic utka-tastic toilet. Now you can really strut your best awkward chair, cause there’s no seat!
Details about the yoga toilet of the future:
Led by faculty members John Takamura and Dosun Shin, students at Arizona State U.’s College of Design have come up with a “transgenerational toilet design concept” called Go With the Flo. The unusual-looking loo won the Breaking the Rules Silver Award at the Northwest Design Invitational, meeting five “outstanding design” criteria: “Appropriate aesthetics, design innovation, ecological responsibility and market and user benefits.”
The Flo toilet is an ergonomic, sustainable design concept for baby boomers that functions like a squat toilet. Designers maintain that using the Flo toilet is akin to yoga – by building and strengthening abdominal and back muscles. Only one-half to one gallon of water is used for flushing and The Flo reuses water from hand washing. To flush water from the tanks to the toilet, the Flo employs an electromagnetic ball valve. Go With the Flo also is free of mechanical parts. The toilet is fully self-sustaining and independent of electric power.
Though touted as a step forward in sustainability, the squat scenario feels a little primitive. Ever trying going in the woods? Yeah, it’s kinda like that. Besides, we’re happy sticking with strengthening our back and abs in yoga class, not on (above?) the toilet, thanks. Plus, the whole “transgenerational” thing is kinda bogus – we can’t imagine seniors OR kiddies trying to make this happen (bad bad images). We say back to the designing board for the old loo squad.
But wait! Alas, the support for a squat toilet…commenter: “using the squat style toilet I can testify to the improvement in bowl movement.” we think they mean bowel, but nevermind that…
Hi YogaDork ( great name BTW 🙂 )
Don’t be so quick to dismiss this toilet design. Selling it as a transgenerational design is falling short of the actual benefits it has for
people of all ages. I don’t think its a step forward, its more of a return to what we’ve lost a connection with and to our body’s natural means of expelling waste.
The squat toilet, as I’m sure you are aware can be found all over India and throughout the Far East. My belief is that people that use this style of toilet suffer far less age related physical degeneration. Not to mention that our bodies have evolved to actually expel waste more effectively in a squatting posture.
Refer to link for further details: http://www.toilet-related-ailments.com/squatting.html.
Having spent some time in India and using the squat style toilet I can testify to the improvement in bowl movement. (yes the rhyming is intentional 😛 )
Hope this casts some new light on the idea.
I spent five weeks in the wilds of north-east Thailand and the fanciest toilet I used was a bamboo hut with a hole cut in the floor. So… still squatting but most of the creepie crawlies weren’t in close proximity to one’s genitals.
However, that was only on one part of the property and if we really needed to go… we squatted wherever. For our western sensibilities, it does seem awkward and annoying, but I’m with @geeom – its better for your digestion/bowel movements.
And it gets easier as your legs get stronger.
Thing is, kids and people who’ve squatted all their lives (to work, to socialiase & to relieve themselves) do not have hardship squatting when they are older.
My yoga school in Thailand runs yoga classes at a nearby hospital and the workers and patients there all have much more flexibility in their hips than most western yogis… because they have been doing it their whole lives, and not just in yoga class!