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Archive for the ‘Back Pain’ Category
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
 If you suffer from lower back pain, you’re not alone. Lower back pain ranks only below the common cold as a leading cause of missed work hours by American workers. According to the National Institutes of Health, as many as a quarter of all American adults will experience back pain over any given 3-month period.
While there can be a variety of factors leading to back pain, you may be bringing this pain on yourself simply by the way you sit, stand or bend at your job. If you’re reading this at work (or even at your desk at home), take a moment to become aware of how you are sitting.
Are your shoulders hunched a bit forward? Are you lacking lower back support? Are your legs stretched out beneath your desk? Also, consider the repetitive motions of frequent tasks throughout your day, or the times you lift too heavy a burden. Is there work-related stress causing tension in your neck and shoulder muscles?
Every year, Americans alone spend an estimated $50 Billion trying to find relief from back pain. Much of that goes towards pain-killing drugs and other “solutions” that never get to the root of the problem. But one technique first developed by Frederick Matthias Alexander over a century ago has proven to be a safe, cost-effective, and long-term solution to both treat and avoid future back pain.
F.M. Alexander discovered that poor posture and inefficient work habits are “learned” as a way to adapt to the demands of the workplace. The Alexander Technique restores balance, coordination and grace through the release of muscular tension and inefficient movement. You learn how to recognize, stop and adjust – to release and relieve stress in the neck, lower back and legs.
But knowing that you’re not sitting or moving right isn’t enough. Most people, when these poor posture habits are pointed out to them, sit more upright, lengthen the spinal cord and place their feet squarely on the floor. Then, over time, they revert back to their old posture. The old ways tend to feel “more natural” due to muscle memory. The Alexander Technique helps us “unlearn” these bad habits.
An Alexander Technique teacher will work with you at your workstation or wherever you perform your tasks, gently guiding your body so that it moves efficiently and effectively. Just as important, the teacher will help you recognize when you might be slipping back to old habits and how to make immediate corrections.
The Alexander Technique makes a wonderful compliment to ergonomic programs that many companies offer their employees. It builds on existing ergonomic workplace strategies by introducing an element of mental and physical awareness to improvements, reducing many of the risk factors behind pain and injury.
The Technique doesn’t require any conditioning exercises, specialized postures or any physical exertion at all. The basic principles are easy to learn and your instruction is personalized to your particular situation. Once mastered, it’s not unusual to discover the ability to apply it to whatever you do – work, play or any activity in between – and carry yourself with a greater sense of coordination and grace.
The Alexander Technique has been endorsed by physicians, health care professionals and scientists thanks to its track record of over 100 years successfully treating chronic pain, injury and even depression and anxiety If you’re interested in finding out if the Alexander Technique can help you, a good place to start is the website for the American Society for the Alexander Technique. It can provide you with useful information about the Technique and facilitate finding professional teachers in your area who have completed the 1,600 hours of study required to receive certification.
References
National Institutes of Health. Handout on Health: Back Pain. Jul 2010.
Little P, Lewith G, Webley F, et al. Randomised controlled trial of Alexander Technique lessons, exercise, and massage (ATEAM) for chronic and recurrent back pain. BMJ. 2008; 337; a884
Posted in Alexander Technique, Back Pain, General Health, Pain Relief, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, August 27th, 2010
Frustrated by back pain that just won’t go away? More than likely you’ve made one or more of these 7 Back Pain Mistakes:
Mistake #1: Continuing to do what doesn’t work
Mistake #2: Not dealing with pain the first time
Mistake #3: Thinking you’re too fit to have back pain
Mistake #4: Treating only the symptoms
Mistake #5: Not understanding that back pain is a process
Mistake #6: The “I’ve Tried Everything” Syndrome
Mistake #7: Not taking control
If any of those sound familiar I have good news for you. Today I’m making available the full bonus audio which discusses each of these mistakes in detail – and gives you the solution! Click here to listen to the 7 Back Pain Mistakes audio now
Posted in Back Pain, Back Surgery, Inversion Table, Pain Relief, Sciatica, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, August 19th, 2010
 Joan first experienced back pain in her middle thirties. It began with mild pain sensations in her lower back. These went away after a few days of rest. But the pain came back.
This time, it was worse. Her doctor could find no specific cause of her pain. After prescribing pain-killers, he sent Joan home.
The pain-killers brought little relief, but some uncomfortable side effects. Upset stomach, dizziness, sleepiness during the day, and a feeling of “just not being right” were the most frequent.
She tried other things. Nothing worked.
Then one of her friends told her of a healer who used Jin Shin Jyutsu (jit-soo) on her, leading to immediate pain relief. Thinking she had nothing to lose, Joan agreed to see this healer. After only one session, she felt much better. Her pain lessened greatly, she felt
more relaxed, and more at peace than she had in months. One more session, and her back pain was gone.
This is a typical scenario familiar to healers around the world who use the art of Jin Shin Jyutsu.
What is Jin Shin Jyutsu?
Healers in the Far East have known for centuries that illness is rooted in tension and imbalance. Unreleased body tension causes an imbalance of energies that adds to fatigue and discomfort. When this condition continues, illness and degenerative diseases develop. Over time, healing arts were developed to help restore balance among body energies.
Jin Shin Jyutsu is one of these ancient healing arts widely known and practiced even before the births of Buddha and Moses. Its primary aim is to release deep tension in the body and restore the free flow of energy. With the release of tension and restoration of energy balance, your body can begin healing itself again. Better health, less pain, faster healing, and increased resistance to disease and degeneration are the natural result.
More than a healing art, Jin Shin Jyutsu is a philosophy for life. Practitioners recognize there are twenty-six “Safety Energy Locks” (SELs) located along energy pathways which feed life into your body. When one or more of these paths become blocked at an SEL, little or no energy flows to the local area. This energy stagnation leads to an eventual
loss of harmony along the entire energy path resulting in illness and degeneration.
Healers who use Jin Shin Jyutsu use gentle touch to release body energies that have been “dammed up” at an SEL by stress, physical energy, emotional strain, or mental fatigue. The skillful use of touch is applied at several of these SELs at different places on the body in a certain sequence. This gentle pressure releases energy blockages to restore proper energy flow.
Reestablishing proper energy flow throughout your body immediately reduces stress and tension and restores stability to your mind, body, and spirit. The long-term result is increased health and well-being.
What Happens In A Treatment Session?
Because of the gentle, non-invasive nature of Jin Shin Jyutsu, almost anyone can be helped by it. Even those for whom the gentlest massage would be painful can be helped by Jin Shin Jyutsu, making it useful for even young children, the very elderly, and other fragile individuals.
Most treatment sessions last for an hour. You’ll lie on a table, fully clothed. At first, the healer will “listen” to your pulses on each wrist to discover existing harmony and disharmony in your energy system. This and your symptoms help the healer determine the flows that are most needed. Healers then use their hands like “jumper cables,” touching Safety Energy Locks, usually two at a time, in sequence. This restores the flow of your body energy through affected areas. You’ll feel noticeably more relaxed at this time.
Self-help exercises are also taught for you to continue treatment at home, making Jin Shin Jyutsu a long-term and cost effective solution to
pain.
Jin Shin Jyutsu in the Treatment of Pain
Western medical doctors typically lean more toward the use of medications and surgery to treat pain. Seldom do they consider turning to other healing arts to relieve their patients’ suffering.
One of the most immediate benefits of Jin Shin Jyutsu is the reduction in levels of stress. Reducing stress in the body has many positive health benefits, not least of which includes allowing your body to heal faster and feel less pain.
Scientific studies have repeatedly shown that acupressure techniques similar to the specific touch patterns used in Jin Shin Jyutsu are useful in many other ways too, including reduced fatigue, decreased post-operative pain, decreased chronic pain symptoms and increased perception of quality of life.
Perhaps most impressive though are the many testimonials from people who have found Jin Shin Jyutsu to provide pain relief when nothing else worked for them. If you suffer from chronic lower back pain, neck pain, or other ailment, Jin Shin Jyutsu may just give you the pain relief you’ve been looking for.
Posted in Back Pain, General Health, Massage Therapy, Neck Pain, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
We got an email from John this week. Even though John has suffered from lower back pain and sciatica for 18 years, he wrote specifically to tell us some “bad news” – he has no intention of buying ANY of our products! But honestly, we couldn’t be happier. We’ll let John explain…
 Hi Jesse,
I suffered from sciatica and lower back pain (herniated disc) for 18 years. I was in a desk bound job sitting in front of a computer screen all day. I ate the wrong food (at the wrong times of the day); drank too much alcohol; not enough water; didn’t get enough exercise, and I was working in a very stressful environment. So, I found your website and started to look for solutions.
The first thing I did was to take your advice. I took control of my life. I was in my late fifties and lucky enough to be able to retire early and change my entire lifestyle. I reckoned I needed to do this before I got any older if I was to stand any chance of resolving my problem.
I undertook twice weekly acupuncture sessions (including cupping) for nearly a year, which helped a lot. But that wasn’t all. I also got rid of the work related stress, ate more healthily, reduced my alcohol intake, followed your advice and did some simple stretching exercises, walked up to 8 miles a day; drank more water, and learned to relax.
During this time, my lower back pain has all but disappeared. I still enjoy reading your articles and looking at the videos because you have to maintain the discipline, but I’ve reduced the pain by around 90-95%. Yes, I still feel the odd twinge, but I no longer lose sleep because of the pain and I don’t sit around in the same position for too long. I’ve embraced this new regime into my new lifestyle without any trouble at all.
So I’ll continue to value your input from the USA, but (and this is bad news for you!), I won’t need to buy any of your products unless my back pain returns.
Hopefully it will not. But I do want to thank you for helping me — not through your products — but through your inspirational messages and for giving me the confidence to believe that I COULD improve my health by taking control of my life and my lifestyle.
Best wishes,
John
Posted in Back Pain, Muscle Balance Therapy, Sciatica Exercises, Stretching, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
 Have you suffered with chronic lower back pain, sciatica, or some other form of pain for months… or even years?
Maybe it seems like you’ve already tried everything and are just about ready to give up on ever finding permanent pain relief.
Well I have good news for you: you’re not beyond help. Over the past decade we’ve helped tens of thousands of people, many in agonizing daily pain, find pain relief. People who thought there was no hope left. And today, thousands upon thousands of them remain pain free.
On the other hand, there are many others who came to us who did not find lasting relief. They continue to struggle with the same old pain year after year. Often it grows even worse.
Amazingly, in almost every case, the difference between those who found pain relief and those who did not boiled down to a willingness to follow a few simple “ground rules” for dealing with their pain. Follow these three simple rules and you will greatly improve your odds of joining those who found relief.
Rule #1: Take responsibility for ending your pain
Relief from pain is first and foremost a personal responsibility. After all, no one cares about your pain more than you do. Maybe you’re seeing a doctor, chiropractor, or any number of natural health practitioners. That’s great, but ask yourself these questions:
- Has my health care provider conducted a completed head-to-toe assessment on me or only focused on the area of pain? (Pain is often referred from other areas of the body.)
- If a diagnosis has been made, has it been completely explained to my understanding?
- Has my health care provider identified the root cause of my pain? (Not a condition, like a herniated disc, but what actually caused the condition, like a specific muscle imbalance.)
- Have I been given a step-by-step care plan that addresses both the pain symptoms and the underlying root cause of the identified condition?
If you haven’t received a satisfactory answer to all of these questions, ask! Don’t accept a brush off. It’s your body and you need to get the right responses to properly address your pain.
Rule #2: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
I can’t tell you how many times someone has purchased one of our products, tried it, and when their pain wasn’t 100% gone in the first day or week they decided to return the product for a refund. Look, we don’t want anyone paying for a product that doesn’t help them. And we gladly process refunds all the time. But let’s be honest here. Chances are the condition causing your pain didn’t happen overnight. Oftentimes it took years to get to the point where your back “suddenly” gave out or sciatica became noticeable.
We have a lot of testimonials on our website from people who have experienced amazing results in just days. But when you’re talking about correcting conditions that took months or years to get as bad as they are, you have to realize some people may take a little longer to work through the healing process.
So what am I saying? I’m saying that if you want to get back to a pain-free life, you might have to invest a little effort. And it
might be that one treatment only gets you part of the way there. So you have to be willing to try different approaches. For example, you
may only find some pain relief by using muscle balance therapy
to address muscle imbalances, but need to also work out trigger points to finally get the full pain relief you’re looking for.
Most importantly, don’t give up. Too many people never get pain relief simply because they give up on a treatment approach too soon. Give your body time to heal and don’t quit until you get the relief you’re looking for.
Rule #3: Stop doing what doesn’t work
Ok, now you’ve made the commitment to follow through to make progress in your fight against pain. You’re not going to quit on yourself. But here’s the other side of the coin: don’t blindly keep doing what doesn’t work.
Let’s say you’re going to a chiropractor. If you’ve been going for over three months and haven’t made any progress yet, it’s likely time to seek another approach. That’s my rule of thumb… if you’re not getting some measure of increased pain relief in three months, try something else.
If you have made progress but are still in pain, try combining multiple approaches. You might find inversion therapy gives you significant pain relief from a herniated disc, but trigger point therapy is needed to completely end referred pain while muscle balance therapy addresses what caused your disc to herniated in the first place. It’s all a process of finding what works for your body.
I hope this makes sense to you. We want to help as many people as we can live a pain free life, but ultimately, it’s up to you to make the necessary changes to improve your health.
Posted in Back Pain, Herniated Disc, Inversion Table, Inversion Therapy, Pain Relief, Sciatic Pain, Uncategorized, back pain at work | 3 Comments »
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