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The acupuncturist has spent ten years traveling to countries where people rarely suffer from back pain. Here’s what she found out.
Most urban residents sooner or later experience problems with the spine. For many of us, back and neck pain becomes chronic. It does not let us sleep at night, we abuse painkillers, it is difficult for us to perform elementary physical exercises, because of it our character deteriorates – even the most cheerful person, suffering from back pain, turns into a gloomy person. Surprisingly, there are places on earth where people do not know what back pain is. American biochemist, reflexologist and integrative medicine specialist Esther Gokhale decided to find out how this is possible after she herself began to experience chronic spinal pain during pregnancy, which even surgery could not cope with.
She traveled the globe studying how people stand, sit and walk in communities with low rates of back pain. She traveled to the mountains of Ecuador, the small fishing towns of Portugal and the remote villages of West Africa. She met the natives of India – their tribe does not know what back pain is at all, because not a single person suffers from it. Even with age, the vertebral discs of these people remain in excellent condition.
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Gokhale studied people whose backs seemed to be able to withstand a hail of stone blows; people who carried heavy loads on their heads, or stooped for hours, collecting something from the ground, or sat on the ground all day doing manual work. And they didn’t experience back pain.
“There is a photograph in my book of two elderly women leaning over and picking water chestnuts,” Gokhale says. “They did it for 7-8 hours every day, and neither suffers from back pain.”
The first thing that caught the eye of the researcher was that all these people had the same shape of the spine: when viewed in profile, it resembled the Latin letter J. “Historically, this is the most natural shape for our spine,” explains Gokhale. “But for most of us, the spine resembles the Latin letter S. Only children and teenagers have the shape of J. We can also see it in Greek sculpture. You have to strive for it.”
How did it happen that our back became S-shaped? It may be due to excess weight and a sedentary lifestyle, although there is no scientific evidence for this. But here’s what Gokhale managed to prove: by changing the shape of her spine from S to J, she got rid of chronic back pain. The expert wrote a book based on her research and has helped countless readers relieve back pain. Five exercises helped her succeed. She recommends doing them at your desk, sitting and while walking.
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1. Shoulder rotation
As a rule, we sit and walk hunched over, with our shoulders and arms slightly forward. People in indigenous tribes hold their hands differently. Raise your shoulders, slowly move them back and then lower them in a rotating motion. Keep your hands free, thumbs pointing outward. “This is how our ancestors walked,” Goklei says. “This is the natural architecture of the body for Homo sapiens.”
2.Spine lengthening
Did you know you can lengthen your spine? This is not difficult. Straighten up, take a deep breath and stretch up. Stay at this height as you exhale. Now inhale again and stretch, “growing”, a little higher. Hold the new height as you exhale. Along with lengthening the spine, this exercise strengthens the abdominal muscles.
3.Squeezing the buttocks while walking
Aboriginal people squeeze the gluteal muscles every time they take a step – this is how slender, toned buttocks are formed that support the lower back. You can achieve the same result if you train yourself to squeeze your buttocks with every step. “Focus on the gluteus sciatica, which is located at the very top of the buttocks,” Gokley explains. “It is this muscle that makes the buttocks elastic, at any age.”
4. Try not to lift your chin
Try lifting your chin a little and see what happens to your neck. – the muscles behind are squeezed a little, as if flattened, aren’t they? To break this bad habit, practice wearing a light object like a rolled-up towel on your head. So you will not only train yourself to keep your chin parallel to the floor, but also lengthen your neck without much effort.
5. Forget what mom said – don’t sit up straight
“Sit up straight”, “straighten your back” – nothing like that, so you will not achieve a healthy posture. “The back in this position arches in the form of an arch, and over time, because of this, trouble begins,” says Goklei. Instead, she advises rotating your shoulders to open your chest and breathing deeply to stretch and lengthen your spine.
To learn more about these and other ways to reduce back pain and improve your posture, visit gokhalemethod.com and read Esther Gokley’s book Backache. What to do? A system of exercises to get rid of problems with the spine ”(Eksmo, 2013).