A Slipped Disc and the Alexander Technique:
Why Discs Slip
A disc prolapse (slipped disc) is the result of too much pressure on the intervertebral disc. Typically, pressure on the front part of the disc squeezes it backwards causing it to rupture. The core of the damaged disc then sometimes presses against a nerve root. Since this squeezing of the disc is associated with a forward bending of the spine, patients are often advised to avoid bending forwards.
Though apparently sensible, this is not good advice. If you follow it, it will make you stiffen for fear of leaning forwards. All that stiffening is a big extra strain on your back, yet you will still bend it anyway. Why? The same reason you bent forwards in the first place: your harmful habit of movement. [note]
Harmful Habits of Movement
There is a fundamental difference between the way a back is meant to be worked and the way most people use theirs.
The human spine is meant to move all of a piece, with no stiffening and very little bending. Bending should not be in the spine. The bending should occur above and below the spine: between head and spine, and between spine and legs. Moving in this way leaves the spine with all its joints very supple and flexible.
Most people habitually bend when it would be better to fold. They bend the top of their spine every time they need to move their heads. That makes them bend the lower spine when they really need to fold their legs, by bending their hip joints.
Is that difficult to understand? That’s because I’m describing you. 
Even if you have had special instruction in bending your legs to lift, I’m sure you still bend your back as well. The instruction ignores the real problem: why you bent your back in the first place.
The instruction only adds yet another habit to the one already there: a new habit of stiffening your back to try and keep it straight. It’s small wonder that disc prolapses and other back problems are so common.
Summing Up
Most disc prolapses are down to harmful habits of bending the back. To stop putting pressure on your discs and allow them to heal, you need to get rid of these harmful habits.
This is what the Alexander Technique does so brilliantly. To benefit, you need Alexander lessons. To see why, read on.
A Chance to Heal
You’d think, having found out what you are doing, you could simply choose to stop. If it were that simple, I would not need to be writing this: someone would already have told you all you needed to know.
Somebody may have shown you that your hip joints are much lower than you thought. You may know that where you thought they were is really part of your back and that you’ve been bending your lumbar spine instead of your legs. Even so, though you know all this, you still can’t let your hip joints do the bending. It feels too wrong.
It feels too wrong. This is the problem: these harmful habits are always associated with a feeling. You feel that what you are doing to bend is what you have to do to bend. When you try to follow instructions to bend your legs, you usually feel that you are doing as asked. Yet, nine times out of ten, you are still bending your back.
This misleading feeling of movement, this unreliable kinaesthesia, is the root problem. You can explore this root problem here.
Read “How to heal the pain in your back if you’ve a slipped disc” for practical ways to help yourself.
Note
When people do learn to avoid bending their lumbar spine, it is by severely over-tightening the back muscles to counter-act the strong muscular pull which is what was bending it in the first place (and still is trying to bend it). This then means a vast increase in back tension. This tension, often excruciatingly painful, is no more than a tug-of-war between the muscles up the front and the muscles down the back. It does nothing useful. It does mean a serious loss of flexibility, a dangerous increase in the pressure on all the joints (even if that pressure is momentarily more evenly distributed), and an arching of the lower back. This arching is just as debilitating as the forward bend it is supposed to correct — not least because it seriously interferes with the person’s ability to breathe.
So you see, when patients are given back-strengthening exercises to correct a so-called “weak back”, they are not being done any favours at all.
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This article is included under the following categories:‒
Personal Coaching by Philip Pawley
If you want to get the best kind of help, come to me for an introductory lesson in Liverpool.
If you’re too far away, then the next best thing is to get personal lessons and advice from me online at Repoise.com, my on-line school. (Both far-away and local pupils use Repoise).
In more detail:–
If you’re in Liverpool (or can get to Liverpool)
- There’s nothing better than individual lessons. My practice is at 37 Hope Street, Liverpool L1. Ring me on 0151 708 6172 to book an initial consultation and first lesson. (Leave your number so I can get back to you).
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If you’re short of funds, you can still have first class training from me — though it will require a little more work on your part.
The thing to do is have an individual, in-person lesson just once a month. That will entitle you to also get regular on-line lessons from me through Repoise. That way, you have the best of both worlds: in-person lessons and very regular, even daily, on-line Personal Coaching by Philip Pawley from me. That’s a real bargain because Repoise costs the equivalent of three lessons a year to everyone else.
Ring me on 0151 708 6172 if you want to arrange this.
- I occasionally run group lessons. If you’re interested in these, go here for details.
If you’re further away and can’t get to Liverpool
- There’s still nothing better than individual lessons. Here’s where you can find a teacher near you in the UK or elsewhere
- I suggest you also get direct day-to-day guidance from me by joining Repoise.
If you’re having plain Alexander Technique lessons from someone else, you still need to discover the Smiling Back Method of the Alexander Technique. You’ll get a lot more out of your lessons when you do.
37 Hope Street, Liverpool, Merseyside L1 9EA, England
Telephone: +44 151 708 6172 Mobile: +44 7872 905 154
Copyright © 2007-2012 Philip Pawley
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