According to a study performed by Guin, K., University of Central Florida, back pain is one of the most expensive conditions to treat in aggregate - accounting for over $100 billion in care each year. With all the medical advances and treatments available one might wonder why back pain is still so prevalent. Speaking from personal experience, it appears that most treatments are designed to treat the symptoms but not the root cause of back pain. Let’s take a look at some of the myths about back pain:
MYTH #1: BACK PAIN IS A NATURAL PART OF AGING
You can experience back pain at any age, even children can suffer from it. Therefore, it is not directly related to the age of your body but rather how you use your body. An injury, repetitive movements required for playing an instrument or competitive sports can be contributing factors. Emotionally traumatic events can create tension held in your muscles and cause back pain. These stress factors can cause habituated muscle tension to the point that you develop Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA), a bracing pattern. Over time you lose voluntary control over these tension patterns, altering your movements and potentially disrupting the kinetic chain. Fortunately, Essential Somatics can bring awareness to these blind spots – Sensory Motor Amnesia – and retrain your brain’s control over muscle function. Somatics can bring balance and harmony back into your movement patterns, alleviating and ultimately avoiding back pain all together. According to Thomas Hanna, Ph.D., aging is living.
MYTH #2 : A STRONG CORE CURES BACK PAIN
This is a very common misconception about back pain and can make it worse. Strengthening and contracting your abdominal muscles will tighten and therefore shorten the muscles which will pull on your back muscles in the process. In fact, I would encourage you to sense it for yourself. Stand up, place your hands on your back and engage your core! You will feel tension in your back underneath your hands. Now image you habituate a “strong core” and enforce this bracing pattern for your core and back. Can you see how that might tire your back muscles? They are “on” for no reason. It is important to release the muscles after they are no longer needed to engage. Having voluntary control to contract muscles as they are needed for strength and releasing them when they are no longer needed is a core principle of Somatics. The technique is called pandiculation. In my personal experience I have become aware that my back was not hurting because it was weak, but rather because I was constantly bracing my back muscles, therefore wearing them out. I have learnt to voluntarily tighten and release my back muscles and reeducated my brain to perform certain movement patterns without tension in my front nor back, reducing the occurrence of back pain all together.
MYTH #3: BACK PAIN IS PSYCHOSOMATIC
Some people can have the worst diagnostic test results and suffer no back pain while others with a less severe diagnosis are in agony. A determining factor for back pain can be Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA) or tension stored in your muscles, altering your movement patterns. If your muscles are held in a constant state of contraction, it shows up as chronic muscle pain and limited mobility. This pain is real and not imagined in your head. However, emotional stress can also manifest itself in the form of muscle tension which can lead to pain. An effective way to release tension – whether it’s root cause is emotional or physical trauma – is to bring awareness to the SMA so that the sensory feedback can be restored. Essential Somatics is an effective way to uncover these blind spots in your body and retrain the brain to move more functionally.
Commentaires