Sitting at a desk all day every day I am keenly away of how important the back is in everything you do! I’ve found a wonderful book that gives us tool to keep the back healthy and feeling great so that it can support us in all of our activities.
Here’s an excerpt from “Natural Posture for Pain-Free Living: The Practice of Mindful Alignment” by Kathleen Porter:
DESIGN FOR LIFE
Who is more fit? Is it a small woman with elastic muscles
and naturally aligned bones or a much larger man with six-pack abs and firmly
developed pecs, deltoids, and biceps?
The small woman is able to carry heavy rocks on her head all
day long, day after day, without strain. Because the weight of the load is
distributed through aligned bones, the bones actually do the work of carrying
the load. Her muscles are thus free to perform their primary job of moving the
bones without strain. The musculoskeletal system functions as a dynamic
interplay between bones and muscles that requires the bones to be aligned and
the muscles to be elastic. This balanced interplay is the hallmark of true
fitness.
This man is clearly strong in ways the woman is not. His
power lies within his muscles alone, not in an overall integrated whole of
fully functioning parts. The popular culture of fitness today is partly based
on the idea that developed muscles are a requirement. Unfortunately, muscles
that have been developed in this way are storehouses of contracted tension,
making it difficult for them to lengthen and relax. This type of strength must
be worked at continuously and is dependent on a regular maintenance routine.
This man’s spine is shortened and compressed. His breathing is restricted
because of a diaphragm that doesn’t move in a natural, efficient way. The range
of motion of his shoulders and hips is greatly restricted. It is ironic that the
strength he has worked so hard to acquire has also become a type of weakness.
The modern-day confusion about what constitutes authentic
strength and natural, easy flexibility is at the root of most of the chronic
pain experienced by millions of people every day. In the United States today,
millions of people live with chronic aches and pain that severely limit their
activities, affect their ability to work, cost them thousands of dollars in
lost wages, and impair their enjoyment of life. Employers, insurance companies,
and workers’ compensation funds pay billions of dollars each year for lost time
on the job and benefits to injured employees.
Unnatural strength
– has its power in purposely developed muscles
– must be continuously worked at to be maintained
– limits the range of motion of the joints
– restricts elasticity of the diaphragm
– compresses the spine
Natural strength
– has its power in aligned bones
– is innate and reinforced in ordinary activities
– promotes natural, easy flexibility of joints
– elongates the spine
Whether pain is chronic and low level or severe and
debilitating, it has become an enormous problem in our country. In fact, pain
is so common that it has come to be considered a normal fact of life. The
epidemic of chronic pain has given way to a new medical specialty–pain
management–because it is assumed that, in many cases, pain is something one
simply must learn to live with. Too often pain management relies on the use of
prescription drugs that generate billions of dollars in profits for
pharmaceutical companies, while driving a crippling addiction problem for
millions of Americans.
The list of complaints is long and includes general
unexplained lower back pain, hip and knee pain, arthritis, tendonitis,
sciatica, fibromyalgia, plantar fasciitis, frozen shoulder, rotator cuff
injury, herniated or bulging discs, degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis,
spondylolesthesis, temporamandibular joint disorder (TMJ), and chronic tension
in neck and shoulder muscles. Much of this pain appears to be idiopathic,
meaning it has no clear, discernible cause, making it difficult for doctors to
know how to treat it. When asked what caused their pain, people will often say
things such as “I shouldn’t have lifted that box of books” or “I’ve been
running for twenty years, and my knees finally wore out” or “I’m not as young
as I used to be.”
If any of these people knew what their bodies were actually
telling them, they might respond with more accurate answers, such as “Bending
to lift a box of books, my pelvis was tucked under, causing my spine to round
and preventing my core from stabilizing my spine. This forced my back to strain
rather than being able to rely on aligned bones working with the strength of my
legs and arms to do the work.” Or, “Running for twenty years with misaligned
bones has put persistent stress on my knees, causing the cartilage to wear
out.” Or possibly, “This aging body is now paying the price for not living
according to its natural design.”
It can be startling to discover that exercise in and of
itself, and in spite of its obvious benefits, is seldom the solution for this
kind of pain over the long run. In fact, because exercise can reinforce and
embed unhelpful patterns of movement, it can, and often does, cause many people’s
pain in the first place. Eventually we all pay the price if our bones have not
been able to do the job of supporting us throughout the years.
Musculoskeletal pain is far less of a problem in some parts
of the world, even in places where people do a lot of manual labor for years on
end. The secret seems to be that some people never lose the biomechanical
principles of the human design, something all healthy toddlers discover when
first learning how to stand and walk.
In our popular quest for fitness and a culturally imposed
standard of beauty, many of us unwittingly disregard the importance of skeletal
alignment and create conditions that compromise our long-term health. A
misaligned skeleton causes muscles that attach to the skeleton to either shorten
or lengthen unnaturally. This creates chronic tension that restricts mobility
of certain joints. It also impairs breathing, compresses vertebrae, puts
pressure on and distorts the spinal cord (the primary neural pathway), and
affects circulation. It would be hard to argue with the fact that all of these
factors have far-reaching consequences for one’s health.
Bio: Kathleen Porter is the director of
the Center for Natural Alignment in Portland, Oregon. She offers programs for
people with posture-related pain and for children and teachers in classrooms.
She has taught principles of natural alignment at the University of Hawaii at
Hilo, the National College of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon, and the
Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Availability: Usually ships within 1-2
business days
Price: $21.95
To purchase this book visit B&N.com, Amazon.com,
InnerTraditions.com, or your local bookstore.
Natural
Posture for Pain-Free Living by Kathleen Porter © 2013 Healing Arts Press.
Reprinted with permission from the publisher Inner Traditions International. www.InnerTraditions.com
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