5 Myths About Back Pain That Keep People Stuck And In Agony For Years
We've forgotten how to be in our bodies, but it's not too late to learn now.
Margarita Nikolskaya | Shutterstock No matter who you are, you can get back pain. You'd think we could avoid all these aches and pains like other cultures that have avoided back pain through natural movement. According to Esther Gokhale, L.Ac., industrialized countries have simply been "educated out of our natural ways".
How we sit, stand, lift, and move doesn't seem like a big deal, but it definitely is a problem when it comes to back pain. These are actions you do all day, every day, so small tweaks can have significant impacts and lead to back problems.
Culturally, we are trained to throw money at back problems with surgery, ongoing physical therapy appointments, and long lists of exercises to do, while we continue to move in the wrong ways every day and exacerbate our problems. No surprise that younger and younger people are developing back issues.
As Gokhale, founder of the groundbreaking Gokhale Method, told Andrea Miller on the Getting Open podcast, her system is holistic and brings our bodies back to a more natural form of movement. It's not just stress, "we've forgotten how to be in our bodies," she says.
Five myths about back pain that keep people stuck and in agony
1. 'It's normal to have back pain'
No, it's absolutely not normal when we look at history and when we look at other, more agrarian cultures. It is also not inevitable to suffer from back pain or vertebral degeneration. These conditions are often the result of unnatural ways of movement
It's simply a result of being disconnected from how we are meant to use our bodies.
2. 'Sit up straight'
No, don't sit up straight. The way we have been taught does damage. Sit up smart.
Sitting up straight is not practical. Who can remember to sit up straight all day? Who can expand that energy? And if you manage to do it a lot, it happens to be counterproductive. You're just arching your back and squishing everything.
You want to sit up smart.
3. 'Chin up, chest out'
No, this makes things worse. This posture is the military standard, and like most things military, it's terrible for you. This advice is bad for your back, which arches the back and squishes your neck and lower back.
In modern times, we have a misunderstanding that an S spine is the natural shape for the human spine. It's caused a lot of misunderstanding because we think a lumbar curve for support is necessary.
You want to lengthen your back.
4. Abdominal strengthening with crunches or sit-ups
No, don't do it. Abdominal strengthening by doing crunches or worse, sit-ups, is counterproductive. Crunches are well named, jokes Gokhale, they crunch your nerves, and they crunch your discs.
You can do all the strengthening, stretching, and realigning you need on your job or at home. Sitting when done right is strengthening, cutting vegetables can be realigning, and bending over is stretching when done correctly. These are opportunities to engage muscle groups and move actively, consciously, and naturally.
You want to roll your shoulders, not stick out your chest.
5. You need special equipment or a trainer
No, we don't need anything more. We need to go back to our natural ways of movement, back to when we were toddlers and how we moved then. We need to go back to our ancestors and how they moved naturally in daily activities. We need to lose the menus of exercises that add burden and stress.
By looking at the straight back and "hinging" hip movements used for bending over by people of agrarian cultures, you can understand how they are moving naturally. Their movements show us how to relearn the natural shape of the human spine as it moves.
You want to make your daily movements, even lying down and unrolling yourself into bed, natural opportunities to replace the bad movements and alignments with the good. Listen and watch the podcast for more in-depth detail on how to sit smart and unroll your spine.
Will Curtis is YourTango's expert editor. Will has over 14 years of experience as an editor covering relationships, spirituality, and human interest topics.
