At Upright & Balanced, we are here to help you stay healthy and pain-free while you work or game.
The company was founded and is managed by Karl Martin Staalaker, a UK-based Norwegian chiropractor, with a special interest in chronic pain, clinical neuroscience, sports performance, and injury prevention. Karl understands, in-depth, how and why spinal and musculoskeletal problems arise and become persistent. 20 years of clinical experience has taught him that chronic back, neck or shoulder pain needs more than manipulation, massage or acupuncture to get better. It requires lifestyle changes: usually more exercise and improved work ergonomics; sometimes better stress management, nutrition and sleep. If sitting is a big part of your job, our chairs can help you exercise your postural stabilising muscles, improve your sitting posture and prevent abnormal loading of your spinal joints, discs and ligaments while you work.
Our Mission
To help individuals who sit for prolonged periods avoid back, neck and shoulder pain, by enabling dynamic active sitting on truly ergonomic chairs.
Our Vision
A future where actively engaging core and spinal stabilising muscles during office work, schoolwork or gaming becomes the norm; helping to maintain spinal health, stimulate the brain and prevent pain.
Our Purpose
To promote active sitting, and educate individuals, businesses and health care professionals on the benefits of active sitting as well as the adverse health effects of prolonged static sitting.
We pride ourselves on
Personalised recommendations and service; if you are not sure which chair to choose, have any difficulties with your chair once it has been delivered, or have any other questions or suggestions, please contact us.
Putting our customers’ needs and satisfaction first. We never ‘hard sell’ our products and offer a long trial period (42 days) for you to get used to your new chair and decide whether it is right for you.
Offering a chair that is actually truly ergonomic. Sitting on a SpinaliS chair offloads your spinal joints, discs and ligaments by activating the core and spinal stabilising muscles. Normal ‘ergonomic’ office chairs, on the other hand, try to offload the spine by essentially propping you up into a less slouched posture, passively supporting your back and tilting your hips in a way that stresses the spine slightly less.
About Karl
Karl Martin Staalaker is a Norwegian chiropractor who has been in clinical practice for 20 years. After graduating with a Masters of Chiropractic in Sydney, Australia, he practiced in Spain for several years before returning home to Norway in 2011. It was in Norway that he first came across the SpinaliS brand of active sitting chairs. He regularly recommended these chairs to his patients and observed often dramatic improvements in their pain levels after they started using a SpinaliS chair instead of a normal office chair.
Karl moved to England in 2019 and completed a postgraduate Masters in Applied Clinical Neuroscience, whilst taking some time out of clinical practice to look after his baby son. When he started working again as a chiropractor, he tried recommending the SpinaliS chairs to his UK patients, but found that after Brexit there were no SpinaliS retailers in the UK. Without being able to recommend the active sitting SpinaliS chairs, Karl was missing a very important treatment tool: the ability to get his patients to sit better and engage their core muscles during their entire working day, without them having to think about it. So, he decided to take matters into his own hands and become a UK retailer of SpinaliS Active Sitting Office Chairs.
Connect with Karl Staalaker
on LinkedIn