Ouch!

Have you ever tried to stand up out of a chair and suddenly felt like the woman in the photo below?

If you have, you’ll remember the stabbing pain, the stiffness and the surprise of not being able to stand fully upright. Instead, caught in some odd shape – stooped over, or off to one side – you realized that standing up straight was no longer an option.

Moments like these are no fun. You ask yourself: What in the world is happening? What did I do to cause this? What can I do to get out of this pain?

All you need is know-how

Well, guess what? With a little know-how, you can save yourself from ever feeling this way again (unless a truck falls on you).

The first step is to get rid of evil furniture that encourages you to sit like the woman below.

I know, I know. We look at this image and we are conditioned to think, Oh, she looks so comfy-cozy.  We have been taught to wish we were there, all curled up with a cup of tea and something compelling to read.

But guess what? This chair is her enemy, and every time she “relaxes” in it, she’s being set up for back pain.

This chair forces her to sit on the back of her pelvis and curl forward at her spine. As a result, her pelvis is off-center and every vertebra in her lower back is dangerously misaligned.

Here’s what’s really evil about this chair: it does its work slowly, so she never suspects the harm it’s doing. She may get away with sitting in it for years, but eventually she will try to stand up and not be able to do it. Her body will be stuck. Her lower back will spasm and prevent further movement.  And for the rest of her life, she’ll be spending time and money trying to heal her back. Sadly, no amount of exercise or surgery will make her safe and sound.

What she really needs to do is toss the chair and address the underlying problem.

The good news? Healthy alignment is easy, and it saves you from ever having your back go out again.  You just need to know what to do.

Great posture is comfortable

Below is a photo of my teacher, Georgia LeConte. She was visiting from France and watching an electronic exhibit at the Computer Museum in Mountain View, CA.

Please notice, she is comfortably upright. I think most of us would agree she has great posture and she isn’t stiff or held. She is not lifting her chest which we think of as “good posture.” Lifting the chest bends the back and requires back muscles to tighten to hold the chest up.

She has arranged her skeleton in its original alignment – the alignment of all healthy toddlers, and of people in traditional societies who never learned to sit in evil chairs. This alignment allows her muscles to relax.  Her sitting position conserves energy so she has plenty of energy for the rest of her day.

Because her pelvis is centered and her spine stacks she is safe. If she should get back pain it would be from a pathological problem, possibly a cyst or tumor in the spine. But she will never suffer from what most people have – non-specific, mysterious, long-term nagging back pain.

Easy ways to sit and stand

In class this coming Wednesday at 5:30 pm PT and Friday at noon PT we will go over the guidelines to sit well so each of us knows how to sit safely.

Then I will show you how to sit and stand using weight and counterweight, so standing up and sitting down is surprisingly easy. I’ll also show you how to safely help another person in and out of a chair – so you don’t get hurt while helping them.

If you know anyone with back or knee pain, please invite them to join us. It will save them agony, time, and money.

~Jean Couch