Your spine health….who takes notice of their spine? What I mean by that is; do you know where your spine moves the most and where is doesn’t move?
You may listen to your spine during a yoga/fitness lesson but what about doing everyday tasks. You will also notice your spine when it gives you pain feedback. But then what do you do about it?
Most people who have back pain move differently. This is a normal response, which should be a temporary adjustment to discomfort. Yet when this compensation becomes a habit, as it often does, other problems arise. And with them usually more pain.
So what’s the answer?
Connecting the nervous system into what it is you're really doing with your spine. We have 24 vertebrae. The thoracic area is designed to move in all directions flexion, extension, rotation, and sidebending. With the lumber area really only designed to do a fraction of these movements, infact it really only flexes and extends.
People I work with that have lower back pain don’t move very much in the thoracic spine or middle back. One thing they have been told is ‘don’t twist’, what would be of more benefit for them is to be told and shown is to twist in the areas that are designed to twist.
Let’s go a little deeper here as to reasons why people don’t move their thoracic, this is where the emotional health comes into play. This area of the body people hold in accordance whom they are. The way we hold ourselves is made up of our habits and is an individual as a thumb print. It’s how we recognize our friends and family members from a distance. So if we are caught up in this holding pattern, these habits and it’s causing us pain what can you do about it?
As I mentioned by changing the neurological pathways, the buz word NEUROPLASTICITY!
Coordinating the role of the brain, in order to move without pain, means learning to inhibit the strain you are putting on your body. By attending to the qualities of your movement and in your breathing, such as flow, ease, smoothness allows you to organize and create new, pleasurable and comfortable movement patterns.
This rewriting of these ‘bad’ movement habits is, as mentioned previously, a process of discovery. Like most things that actually work, it take time. It takes commitment to learning about yourself, as awareness takes time to build. Just the same as learning to taste the subtle refined differences on the palate that you learn when becoming a wine connoisseur.
In Moshe Feldenkrais own words….
“We do not achieve by repetition, using force, muscle exercising, or by increasing speed or force but by widening and refining the cerebral control of the muscle range.”
In other words…..
By coordinating role of the brain in our actions, in order to move without pain, you need to learn how to inhibit the strain you are putting into the system.