spinal decompression therapy Archives - Hanna Somatics site

Ida Rolf wrote that the characteristic of a well-integrated body is a sense of lift.

What does that mean?

This post contrasts the effort to be erect with no-effort to be erect and in so doing, debunks misconceptions about good posture.

The Myth of Spinal Curves
Yes, the spine has four natural curves. However, the significance of those curves isn’t that the spine has them, but that the spine can have them. The curves change with movement and general tension level. What makes the curves change is muscle tension in the spinal muscles, which pull on the vertebrae and change their positions, and in the legs, which pull on the pelvis and change spinal curvature at the connection of spine-to-pelvis, above.

Here’s the thing: Your spine consists of vertebrae that are not square, but trapezoidal (except for one: L4, which is “square” — meaning that the upper and lower surfaces are parallel). “Trapezoidal” means that the upper and lower surfaces have different slopes. It is the meeting of the upper and lower sloped surfaces of neighboring vertebrae that gives the spine its curves — but those slopes are separated by discs that have a certain elasticity, so the curves change with movement. So, the myth is that the spine has a certain amount of curve or that their is a “normal” amount of curve. Curve, in a healthy person, changes from moment to moment; only in an unhealthy person are the curves fixated.

Now, even though the spine has curves, the spine can feel straight. That happens when the upper and lower surfaces of neighboring vertebrae meet squarely, and that happens when the spinal muscular tensions are balanced to arrange them that way and to make that arrangement the “home” position to which a person naturally returns in movement.

The feeling is of being effortlessly supported, balanced, and uplifted — poised. In the literature of Tibetan Yoga, the description is of the spine “feeling like a stack of coins” — a description that applies to sitting or standing positions, but not to action. So, the description has that limitation and in any case, these words can’t mean much of anything to you unless you’ve experienced the feeling, so we have to leave it at that.

Now, here’s an oddity of human beings: In order to feel strong or supported, people adopt efforts or various kinds. We tend to think we have to.

What happens, then, is that spinal muscles contract, pull on vertebrae, shorten the spine by compressing discs, and change the alignment away from effortless support or equilibrium.

In that way, people substitute “strength” for balance.

So, whereas a person whose back muscles are balanced feels supported and balanced from within, the person whose back muscles are tight feels “strong” — at the expense of that sense of support, balance or effortless lift. They also feel tired, sore, and stiff.

People are endlessly trying to conform to various ideas and standards, and in so doing, they are adding stress to themselves, to their back muscles, and sacrificing balance, effortless support, and lift.

People are also endlessly experiencing stress, anxiety, guilt or shame (variations of cowering), all of which trigger the muscles of the front to tighten and the spine to bow forward. In order to counter that condition of cowering, people must tighten their backs, and counter cowering with “indomitable will” or “self-righteousness”.

That condition (co-contraction of front and back), shortens the spine, literally compresses discs, and robs people of their sense of support, of equilibrium, of lift; their spine is not fully erect. We’re left with pressure and stress, the experiences of “indomitable will” and “self-righteousness”, which we may take as inevitable, right, or necessary.

It’s clear that back pain is as much psychological as it is physical. Both aspects must be addressed for a fully erect spine — for a person to stand at full stature, which is to say, feeling supported, balanced, and uplifted. It is also clear that departures from “good alignment” or good posture are as much a matter of misguided effort evident as muscular tensions as of objectively observable misalignments and their clinical consequences.

Although the psychological aspect I’ve noted above must be addressed on its own terms, the residual effects of stress and back tension can be dispeled. For more information on that topic, please see

http://somatics.com/back_pain.htm
http://somatics.com/chronic_back_pain.htm

which have audio and video links.

Add your comment — what you would like to ask or tell.

The mystique of technology as a fix for everything extends to back pain — in particular, as spinal decompression therapy, an offering that has gained visibility as among the latest in spine care (along with laser treatment — this article applies to that approach, too).

The method involves a mechanical device intended to separate vertebrae and thereby to relieve pain.

This approach is a higher-technology variation on a simpler method, inversion therapy, which involves a kind of treatment table that, by anchoring the user’s ankles and turning upside down, uses gravity to separate vertebrae.

Both methods are variations on traction, again, using mechanical force to separate vertebrae.

The premise of all three methods, spinal decompression therapy, inversion therapy, and traction, is that vertebrae are too close together and need separation.

That premise is good as far as it goes — but let’s look deeper. Why do vertebrae get too close together?

Understand that vertebrae are linked together not only by discs and ligaments, but by muscles that control spinal alignment. When those muscles tighten, vertebral alignment changes; twists, curvature changes, and compression of neighboring vertebrae result. Muscles pull vertebrae closer together; the discs push the vertebrae apart.

Muscle tightness of this sort is supposed to be intermittent and temporary, as required by the demands of movement and lifting; muscles are supposed to relax (decrease their resting tone) when these demands end. However, when, for reasons related to injury and stress, this tightness becomes habituated (i.e., quasi-permanent), problems (i.e., back pain) result: nerve root compression, bulging discs, facet joint irritation, and muscle fatigue (soreness) and spasm.

This habituation is a muscular behavior (postural reflex pattern) learned by and stored in the brain, the master control center for all muscles. Learning is a matter of memory; when either prolonged nervous tension, repetitive movements, or violent injury occur, the memory of these influences displaces the memory of free movement and habituation results; people forget what free movement feels like and forget how to move freely. They fall into the grip of the memory of tension.

Muscles obey the nervous system, with all but the most primitive reflexes stored in the brain as learned action patterns that control all movement. There is no muscle memory other than what is stored in the brain; muscle memory is brain memory.

Knowing that, consider approaches that mechanically stretch muscles or pull vertebrae apart. What do they do to habituated muscular behavior? to the memory of tension? The answer: they temporarily induce muscular relaxation but do not restore the memory of normal tension and movement, which is acquired “learn-by-doing.” We are genetically designed to return to our familiar movement patterns once outside influences end; we return to our memory of how we have learned to move and hold ourselves. Shortly after the end of therapy, our familiar movement behavior and muscular tensions come back because you can’t change learned reflex patterns stored in the brain by stretching muscles; you can only retrain those reflex patterns by new learning of movement. If you want a lasting change, that’s what you have to do.

So, the typical experience of relief after manipulative therapies lasts hours or days.

For some people, whose habituation is not that deeply entrenched, manipulative methods are sufficient; you know for yourself whether this is true of your experience; now you know why.

Here’s a question: How could you relearn free movement?

The answer has two steps:
(1) Unlearn the habituated pattern of muscular tension.
(2) Relearn free movement.

The process involves recovering the ability to feel in control of the involved musculature in movement; it’s a learn-by-doing process, not a mental process, only, but a process that involves both mind and body.

Wouldn’t you prefer to be free of repetitive therapy? to be free of dependency upon a therapist and the involved expense? to be able to care for your own back? to be free and safe to do any activity you wish?

Those are good reasons to make note of the approach described, here (bookmark this page): getting back control of your own muscular tension.

Free yourself from the grip of the memory of injuries, stress, and repetitive movement, not merely at the mental level, but also at the bodily level.

Visit this page for a more complete explanation of back pain and therapy.

FIRST AID FOR BACK PAIN

For chronic back pain, please see this page, which also contrasts conventional back pain methods (including spinal decompression devices) with an entirely new, more effective approach.

Add your comment — what you would like to ask or tell.

Category: spinal decompression therapy

The Uplifting Feeling of an Erect Spine

Spinal Decompression Therapy and Back Pain