I?ve practiced yoga for about 15 years on and off. In the past few years, however I have been developing pain in my lower back. In the past stretching and Yoga has always helped but recently even just doing my daily routine it?s unbearable. It?s like someone is sticking a knife in my spine. I?ve gone to chiropractors, acupuncturists, and switched my Yoga teachers several times. Recently I?ve even been thinking of back surgery because my doctor is recommending it, but I have also been reading of a lot of stories where people have expensive surgery but it doesn?t help or even makes it worse.
And Then I found this website. It has some information I thought was interesting dealing with the human skeleton and how bones are supposed to be aligned. In short it?s about posture (something that I always knew was important but had some VERY wrong misconceptions about).
I will try to do a brief description of it but I highly recommend visiting the site itself. It makes perfect common sense but is totally overlooked and ignored by the Medical community and (as I found out while trying to explain this to my current teacher) the Yoga community as well.
Here?s the link if anyone wants it. naturalalignment.com
The basic concept is this. Babies, while learning how to walk, naturally figure out how to balance a large weight (their head) on top of their body. By the time we reach adulthood we have completely forgotten how to do this. Our heads are no longer being balanced on top of our skeleton but HELD UP BY MUSCLES in our neck and back. This creates a HUGE list of problems ranging from physical pain to poor circulation, the pinching of nerves and even things like incontinence.
The idea of standing up straight (or at least what we think of as good posture) is actually JUST AS BAD if not worse than slouching. They are simply polar extremes and very few people live their life in the balanced in between. It is something kind of hard to explain and I might be doing a poor job of it but I feel that it is important knowledge that everyone should know, as it helped me a great deal with my back pain and teaching me how to do Yoga from a place where I?m not straining or injuring myself. Quite the opposite, I now reap all the benefits of Yoga. Check it out.