Posturally! Your Online Creative Body Therapist

Here’s a posture how to – It’s about discovering the power the shoulder blades have to release neck strain.

The strategy is to find the action of the shoulder blades, to take the pressure off the neck muscles.

Posture How To Instructions

So first, touch them. Just wrap your arm around yourself so that your hand touches the flat triangular bone in the back. Through the medium of touch, notice things about it – the size shape, where the boarders are, etc. There’s a tip at the bottom, and from there you can move over to the side, which is next to the spine. Then reach over and touch the outside. There’s a boarder on top, too, although that’s not actually the technical top of the shoulder blade. Just the same it’s important, so touch that area of the bone, too.

Repeat on other side.

Now lift both arms up so they are in front of you, perpendicular to your body. Don’t lock your elbows. Keep them straight with a bit of bend.

The first shoulder blade movement we’ll do is called protraction/retraction. Bring those blades forward and then squeeze them in back. Repeat a few times. Apply awareness to this simple movement. Notice what your arms do when you concentrate on the action of your shoulder blades in back. This is a basic therapeutic movement for the upper back.

By squeezing in back you build up the rhomboids. This helps keep the upper back straight, tall and pain free. It addresses (more…)

Injury Rehab and Treatment Depends on 9 Things

Healing an injury? Here are 9 things that may help you in your effort to speed injury healing time.

• How long have you been dealing with this particular problem? If you get early treatment for an injury, chances are better you’ll be able to avoid a long term issue. One caveat: Some doctors – yes, even the holistic ones – over treat or try to sell you on injury rehab treatments that are not targeted to what you’ve got going on. This may be because they’ve invested in education, equipment, marketing, etc in one or two treatments they now specialize in. So buyer beware! It’s why I encourage people to seek more than one opinion and to research their conditions.
• The complexity of your problem. Do you have a back muscle strain, or are you dealing with fibromyalgia triggered by a car accident years ago?
• The severity of your problem. Again, a muscle strain is generally easier and quicker to heal than a disc herniation or whiplash from a pretty bad car accident.


Treatment and Rehab for Injury Healing

• What’s usual for what you’ve got going? Much research has been dedicated to figuring out the prognosis for many diseases and conditions. This is the domain of an industry known as epidemiology. You may be able to learn about injury healing time for your injury by checking outcomes (epidemiological) research.
• Your current health status and risk factors. Do you have more than one health problem? Do you exercise nearly every day? How’s your diet? These things factor in to the success of injury healing and injury healing time.
• Your intentions and those of the people you’re close with. Where’s the harm in making goals specific to injury healing? I don’t think this can hurt you. Here’s an example – “I’m going to stretch all my hip muscles at least 3 times each week.” Hip muscles play a big role in your back health and posture. NOTE: This was just an example. Your rehab goals should be specific to you and are best made with guidance from a licensed physical therapist, or highly skilled bodyworker.
• Your motivation. Especially with musculoskeletal problems like back pain, neck pain, joint issues, when you participate in your own healing, you’re likely to get better results more quickly. So to speed injury healing time, put yourself into your rehab. Seek ideas about getting and staying motivated from the people your see. Personal trainers, physical therapists and others are trained in strategies to keep the motivation going.
• Safety issues. Setting your home up to minimize obstacles can help you proceed with healing. For example, throw rugs can be a danger for people at risk for falls. Also some people have a fear of movement once they’ve been injured. I had that after I dislocated my shoulder. OUCH! For a long time after, I held it very close to my body for fear of it coming out again. The result was I developed a lot of fibrous tissue in the area, which in turn, caused a bunch of things to go wrong in my back. It was painful and limiting. I should have paid attention to the rehab treatment I was getting in the physical therapy clinic. Ah, well, chalk it up to (relative) youth! I am finally working that stuff out, and I feel MUCH better, thank you. Fear of movement is this sort of thing that benefits from a visit or more with a licensed physical therapist, or highly skilled body worker. They can guide you on how best to move safely.
• Your network. Research shows over and over again that the roles you play in family, work and social life matter to your back health. Ditto with your attitude. So get positive and get a healthy body!

Source:
Kinser, C., Colby, LA, Therapeutic Exercise: Foundations and Techniques. 4th ed. F.A. Davis Company. Philadelphia. 2002.

Leg Length Differences

Leg length differences can cause back pain and other body problems.

Seeing movement therapy clients is a source of fascination for me. For one thing, I get to observe the attitudes people harbor in relationship to their condition. And how vastly different these attitudes can be between people – for the very same body problem.

Let’s take leg length difference as an example. A leg length difference, called leg length discrepancy in the clinical realm, occurs when one leg is shorter than the other. Uneven leg length problems come in two types.

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Muscles contract. That’s the basis of strength training, toning, working your abs, and the like. A muscle contraction happens in just the muscle. It’s an increase in tension when muscles go to work. There are a number of terms that are related to muscle contraction, but mean something slightly different.

For example, the term contracture describes a response that muscles, their tendons, and other nearby soft tissues can have to stimuli. (Stimuli can take many forms. An injury such as a muscle tear, comes to mind.) Contracture may be one of the things affecting your posture.
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Many clients and potential clients come to me with a worried look in their eye asking me to show them how to straighten their posture or spine.

One school of thought, which comes from Somatics, says that people generally take one of two forms in their spine and posture. Either their posture is “green light” or “red light”. Green light is when your posture is over energized and your spine is arched. Red light is when your posture is slumped, even if it’s just a little. In red light, your spine is bent, or flexed.

Somatics people say these basic postures are due to reflexes. Red light posture is a withdrawal reaction to stress and green light is an on alert type reaction.

But I’m not going to get that deep. All I’m trying to point out is that straightening your posture or spine depends on where you’re starting from.

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You may be aware that I am the Back and Neck Pain Guide on About.com. That’s where you can find more info on the allopathic aspect of back pain relief. Well, tomorrow (Tuesday, June 22) Secretary Sebelius will be taking questions from About.com readers regarding patient rights and insurance reform. (Btw, if you want to submit a question, send it to: backandneck.guide@about.com – and I’ll forward it to the powers that be. But do it soon! And ask specific questions about coverage for wellness treatments like massage, Feldenkrais, yoga, Pilates, etc, would you?)

So grab some popcorn. Put your feet up and even post some comments while we wait for the interview. You can watch it on the widget below. I will be!

Say the word “posture” and most people act like an alarm just went off. You’ve reminded them to get good posture as though it were an item on their to-do list. Go to the bank, return library books, get good posture. Clearly these people, as a group, want to straighten posture. I chuckle (laughing with them, not at them) because to me it seems that perhaps subconsciously they think all it takes is one yank up and the job is done.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

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Do you remember gym class when you partnered up with someone who held your feet down while you cranked out as many sit ups as you could in one minute? Those were the days. (The days without knowledge of how the core posture muscles work, that is!)

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Scoliosis is an abnormal side to side curve in the spine.

Scoliosis is a side-to-side curve in the spine. When you look at the back, you can see evidence of an S shape, or a C shape. (There are different types.) The giveaways are: One shoulder or hip higher than the other and/or one rib that looks like a hump.

Most scoliosis is idiopathic, meaning they don’t know what causes it. The other 2 types are neuromuscular (caused by a disease such as polio) and congenital (you were born with it). You can see congenital scoliosis earlier than the idiopathic type. If your baby has congenital scoliosis, a new technique called scoliosis stapling may be worth looking into. But it’s reserved for very young children.

Scoliosis curves can range from mild (about 10-12 degrees), to so severe that it interrupts the lungs and heart. If a child’s curve grows rapidly or if the curve is over 50 degrees, it may be time for surgery. Of course, a licensed MD specializing in spine will be the best person to help you decide, as they have in depth knowledge on these things. I wouldn’t trust my child’s scoliosis to a chiropractor. Don’t get me wrong, chiropractors have their place – I go to one, and I couldn’t be happier with the results, but with a severe scoliosis, chiropractic treatment just hasn’t proven itself.

Most people who have scoliosis have the mild type. I have the mild type. I’ve had really good luck with exercises. Other than the Scroth Method, I am not aware of anything in the clinical realm that has the potential to actually reverse the curve and help the spine approach straight. But when the spine deforms like it does with a scoliosis, it often creates a situation where muscles on one side get super tight, and muscles on the other side get overstretched and weak. So for me, doing specialized exercises that target the curves has really helped to establish balance through my body. More specifics in future posts.

Source:
Scoliosis Research Foundation. Scoliosis Media Guide. Accessed Feb 2010. http://sites.google.com/site/wwwscoliosisorgawareness/scoliosis-media-community-guide

How often does your upper back or your mid back hurt? If you’re like me and probably millions of your fellow humans, the answer is something along the lines of “often”. Mid and upper back pain is one of those things that seems to elude the “people in the know”, ie medical researchers and conventional physicians. They’ve done some studies on it but not nearly as many as for neck pain or lower back pain. Yet, one of the few things they do know about thoracic spine pain is that it’s about as common as lower back pain, which affects 80% of people at some point in their lives. It is also just as troubling.

My take on this dearth of information on upper-mid back pain is that it will be a while before there will be evidence based treatments for thoracic spine pain. So we non-medical people are left to our own devices to deal with it.

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