My Pelvis, A Game-Changer

Remember how back when you were a dumb kid and you *fell in love* with a the perfect shapely broad or charming dude....remember how you'd be bouncing off the walls and infatuated to the point of complete distraction?

Well that's how I feel at the moment.  I was up all night and can't stop my mind from racing this morning.

And no it's not the perky bartender from last night.  (I was at a kids-eat-for-$1 family restaurant with 5 little brats.)

I think I may have FINALLY, yet again, found the solution to the mystery of my pain-ridden back.

Reading that book I mentioned the other day - 8 Steps To A Pain-Free Back - I discovered some major insights.

It was actually quite simple. I was sitting wrong, standing wrong, walking incorrectly, and sleeping in positions that were guaranteed to be hostile to my back.

While the yoga I was doing the past few years was a step in the right direction, I was still making a major *kinesthetic* blunder - my pelvis was tucked back instead of properly anteverted (pulled forward).

So all my efforts to battle head-forward posture, rounded shoulders, and to tighten my core were almost for naught on account of this foundational problem. One can't well straighten out their spine with the all-important bottom piece of it out of whack!

Above I said that I was bouncing off the the walls but that's not entirely accurate.

I've actually been *glidewalking* all over the condo - back and forth nonstop.

What's that?

It's a method of ambulation described in her book that merely stretches out your hamstrings, engages your core, and gives an incredible buttocks workout. Yeah, all from just taking a few steps across the room!

Much, much more on this development will be forthcoming.

Another Bad Back Book

While I've just started reading this one - 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back - I can tell it's going to be helpful. Perhaps it'll even be *the one* that helps cure my broken back. The focus of the book is *perfect posture*.

With over 170 reviews on Amazon it impressively still holds a 5-star rating. Click the link, read the reviews, buy it, and make yourself perfectly erect!

See also - Another Piece of Bad Back Puzzle.

Another Piece In The Bad Back Puzzle?

Long-time (and clairvoyant!) readers know that I seriously injured my back 11 years ago in a freak car accident.

Whiplash was the initial diagnosis; then TOS - Thoracic Outlet Syndrome - which was most manifest in a 99% occlusion of the vein in my left arm. I suffered a gradual loss of strength in my hands to the extent that the milk carton might fall out of my hand when pouring and that I had trouble opening a beer bottle (domestic!).

Ignorant, I underwent a risky invasive surgery where they cut all sorts of stuff out of my thoracic region. It was an attempt to free up physical space around the blood vessel and whatnot. The doctor from the opposing insurance company likened the procedure I subjected myself to, to *bloodletting*, i.e. contemporary quackery.  And he was probably right.

Anyways, there was no noticeable improvement in my condition post-surgery. At the follow-up with the doctor, he actually he sent one of his minions(!) who said, "Oh, you won't be able to tell if it helped for at least a year or longer; it takes a long time for nerves to decompress...". Heck the clown may as well have been a *financial adviser* wielding that long-run BS.

Even after the surgery, physical therapists, and the doctors, emphatically told me NOT TO DO any stretching, NOT TO DO anything like yoga because that would compress my blood vessels even more.

Of course they were, and are, complete Morons as *yoga* was the only thing that ever helped my back after surgery.

While my condition at the moment is stable, I am still far from 100% strong and healthy. But I'm honestly convinced that one day, before I leave this overheated, variable-climate planet....I'll discover the magical cure and restore my back completely.

Lately I've been reading a highly regarded, technical book - Trigger Point Therapy for Low Back Pain: A Self-treatment Workbook (New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook) - to that end.

A lot of the recommended treatment, to me, came off as highly technical and time intensive. It also seems like it's geared for *practitioners* and those who have much worse symptoms than I have. Though I'm sure if I reread it with application I'll really learn a lot - enough perhaps to become the masseuse that every chick dreams of marrying! (Years ago, I once had a young lady tell me that I should really study *massage*. And she was right! A man who can massage and dance proficiently will never have to suffer loneliness.)

When I went in for my surgery in 2001, my hands were weakening and all of my back pain was up high - from the upper back through the neck.

But when I came out, I started experiencing a new *lower* back pain. I would say the pain moved but after so many years of a stiff neck I can't even tell if my upper back is better now or if I just got used to it.

Whatever, this lower back pain is far more debilitating than the upper variety and actually goes down into the top of my hiney (images upon request).

From the book I'm inferring that my issues might be centered in my quadratus lumborum - which is the hard-to-target back wall of the abdomen or something.

The book says that one thing guaranteed to aggravate this particular area is *sleeping on one's side* - which I've done my entire life.

The author INSISTS that sleeping with the knees touching, one on top of the other like this, is very bad for this quadratus lumborum or whatever it is. It also leads to a postural imbalance which I also definitely have (left shoulder high) and have had since I was a kid.

She highly recommends that side-sleepers put a (king-sized) pillow between their legs at night.

Guess what. I tried it the other night and when I woke up, I was only 20% as stiff as I normally am. This may not sound like a big deal, but generally I wake up in such rough shape that I need to spend a full hour stretching each morning before I can fully function.

I was giddy all day yesterday thinking I may have finally found something helpful. So last night I leg-straddled a pillow again and also woke up this morning feeling positively bouncy.

Now I've had false starts before. After I bought an inversion table, the first time I used it I was euphoric and thought I had found the answer. Of course I didn't.

BTW, if you sleep on your stomach or flat on your back....you should also use pillows (under your stomach and under your knees respectively) to protect your spine - click here.

Blankets are always a good idea too - particularly when your camera-wielding buddies are around.

Healthy Humility Reminder

That's what my aching back feels like at the moment!

I was sitting down on the floor the other day, just about to start my yoga....I leaned forward ever so slightly when my back wretched.

I was screaming and couldn't get off the ground for almost five minutes.

This happened to me once before in the course of my yoga - last year when I was trying to reach my toes from a sitting position.

Over the nearly 11 years since my initial injury, I've had a handful of these kinds of incidents. It's not fun. I can hardly put my socks on and my shoes have been untied since Sunday morning. Even sitting in this $900 ergonomic desk chair has been painful.

Hence the recent low blog output...

It's feeling a little better each day. I should be fine in a week or two, I hope.

But when it happened, it was so painful I wondered whether or not I've swung a golf club for the last time. One can eat right (organic!), wear their seatbelt, and exercise all they want - but still, their health and well-being remains essentially out of their hands. In that sense, the flash of excruciating pain indeed felt like a lightning bolt from above.

See also - On Yoga.