debilitating back pain

Anissa Morgan is 46 years old and was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. In her own words, her relationship with her body has “always been a little messed up.” She didn’t like how she looked. Growing up, her mom frequently told her that she was slouching and "should pull her shoulders back," anecdotal posture advice many of us have heard.

In adulthood, Anissa spent some time in the Army Reserves as a petroleum specialist. The military approach to posture reinforced what she’d heard from her mom in childhood: that she “shouldn’t be slouching and that everything should look ‘a certain way.’” In her job, she would deliver fuel to military vehicles such as airplanes, cars, and trucks. She had to leave this position due to medical hardship after her first husband suffered a severe accident and broke his back, resulting in his paralysis from the waist down. She didn’t have anyone else to take care of both her husband and her young daughter, so she left the military. It was a short career, but she loved a lot about the military experience and the connections she formed with people during her service.

Anissa, 46, has seen her life dramatically changed by the Gokhale Method. Image supplied.

As the primary caregiver of her then-husband, the load on her body was extreme. She would have to carry her husband’s wheelchair, even while pregnant. Not long afterward, she and her husband divorced. Between pregnancy, childbirth, parenting, and the end of her relationship, she endured a lot of emotional and physical trauma.

“I was never an athlete or in super-great shape, but when I was in the military, I’d started having problems with my knees and my feet. My arches started to fall then,” says Anissa. She feels that may have been the first sign that things were going wrong.

Military posture guidelines encouraging tension and artificial positioning in the body predispose servicemembers to posture problems, which can lead to pain and injury. Image courtesy 272447 on Pixabay.

After her time in the Army Reserves, Anissa recovered from her divorce and eventually remarried. She found a job working at the Officer’s Club doing clerical and computer work. Computers were just coming into widespread use at the time. After that, with her valuable skills, she began working at the computer helpdesk at the USAA office in San Antonio. One element of her job with USAA involved travel: visiting field adjusters to set up laptops for them. One day, after a training, carrying a heavy load of equipment and baggage, she bent over and felt something give. After a couple of weeks where her back was “uncomfortable,” she visited her husband’s chiropractor, which was “like magic.” One morning, however, while making lunch for her three daughters, she bent over to pick up a box of Capri Suns and couldn’t stand back up again, and could hardly lift her leg. That’s where “the really major problems” began.

This continued until she was about 32 and her “back was done,” leaving her unable to work due to severe pain.

With her level of pain, sitting at a computer desk all day was excruciating. “Even with the great resources they have there, like standing desks and the people that would come in from Ergonomics who would tell you how you were ‘supposed to sit and stand’ — all of which I now know was wrong — it just wasn’t possible for me anymore, so I stopped working at about 32.”

Sufficiently severe pain makes even desk jobs impossible, as it did for Anissa. Image courtesy Claudio Scott on Pixabay.

“It just didn’t work”
It turned out that Anissa had a rupture in the spinal disc between her L4 and L5 vertebrae, which resulted in severe pain in her lower back and radiating down her legs, into her calves, and a loss of feeling in her toes. At the time, all she wanted was to have her back “fixed” so she could be sent back to work. By then, she had 3 small children and a job she loved. She needed to be able to show up in her life. With this in mind, she opted to have laminectomy surgery to hopefully resolve her symptoms.

Although the laminectomy gave her around 6 months of improved symptoms, the surgery soon revealed itself to have been unsuccessful in resolving her pain, which returned and began radiating down her legs again. A second surgery was proposed to fuse her L4 and L5 vertebrae. Her surgeon’s perspective had been tightly focused on the disc as the cause of Anissa’s problems, suggesting that once it was removed and that joint was fused, she would “feel grand.” There was again a little relief soon after the second surgery, but it quickly became apparent that even after this fusion, working at a desk all day wasn’t good for her body and something she could tolerate. The one way Anissa could tolerate it was with the use of opioid pain medication, although this further complicated her ability to do her mentally demanding job — troubleshooting computer problems — well. “You’re problem-solving — that’s your gig,” Anissa says. “And when your brain can’t fire, there’s no solving going on. Unfortunately, that was the end of that.”

Within a year of the first surgery, she was starting to feel pain in her legs in a different location. At the time, she had a wonderful pain management doctor, but Anissa was still concerned about the side effects and addictive potential of opiate painkillers. She began feeling terrible pain on the front of her thigh, which would command all her attention while driving an hour and a half to visit a friend. By the time she got home, she’d have a bruise on her leg where she’d been pressing the muscle, trying to get some relief. Her pain management doctor recommended another MRI, which revealed that the discs above and below her fusion site were herniated — just a year after the fusion surgery.

For Anissa, surgery was a “band-aid” treatment which did not eliminate her pain long-term. Image courtesy Sasin Tipchai on Pixabay.

“My decade of darkness”
The worst of Anissa’s severe, debilitating pain lasted a decade during which she didn’t know what else to try. She tried acupuncture, and completed five different courses of physical therapy within a couple of years. She’d given it “everything [she] knew how to do” and was still having to resort to taking enough opioid pain medication to keep herself comfortable while trying to balance the demands of her body with those of being a wife and a mother. “That,” she says, “was my decade of darkness. There was no moment that was comfortable. There was no joy left in my life, because all I could think about was the pain in my spine, which then started radiating up through my thoracic spine and neck. My whole body hurt all the time.”

Anissa was hitting rock bottom. She would wake up at night heaving and sobbing from pain. She didn’t know what else to do or what to try. All her doctors wanted to do was more surgery: fusing two or even three more levels of her spine. Her pain management doctor would give her steroid injections and trigger point therapy, all of which were wonderful, but they weren’t long-term fixes and only took the edge off the pain. She felt like a burden to everyone, and a failure, and didn’t see how she was going to go on living like that.

In a moment of deep desperation, Anissa hid in the closet, kneeled, and prayed for assistance. In her own words, she “saw the light” and was filled with a new determination. She decided to start over, trying every approach again, so that if she did have to resort to another surgery, she would know that she had done everything she possibly could to avoid putting herself in a worse situation. That was her nightmare: that she would do what the surgeons advised and the new surgery would only do what the second surgery had done.

Opioid painkillers were something Anissa was not happy about having to take in such large doses. Image courtesy newsong on Pixabay.

The next day she got online and went in search of acupuncture. She Googled and found an acupuncturist and someone’s testimonial called him a “gift from God,” and hoped that perhaps he could be such a gift for her as well. She walked into the acupuncturist’s office barely able to lift her feet to walk, with numbness in her feet so severe she would avoid the stairs at her house for days at a time for fear of falling. By going to the acupuncture appointment, she felt she was just doing her due diligence and crossing something off the list.

Her first acupuncture treatment was “excruciating.” The acupuncturist is “old-school,” from Taiwan, and she found him somewhat frightening and difficult to understand. After the treatment, he asked her, “How do you feel?” And she replied that she didn’t know, but that she might have been feeling a bit better. She was experiencing a pulsing sensation which was new to her, and which she found encouraging. When he prompted her to lift her legs to waist level by raising his hands as targets for her to reach toward, she was shocked to be able to do so, considering that she had barely been able to walk into the office for her appointment. She got back up from the treatment table “thanking God that maybe this was something” that would continue to help her. She now had hope that something better — perhaps even relief — might be possible.

Acupuncture was the first partially effective intervention Anissa found, but it didn’t fix her underlying posture issues. Image courtesy Hamilton Viana Viana on Pixabay.

Over the next three months, she frequented her acupuncturist, seeing him by her choice for treatment two to three times a week. She could feel the healing occurring in her body. The treatments reduced her pain to a tolerable level. Her next target was stopping the narcotic pain medication she’d resorted to for years. Someone in a chat room online told her about kratom, which she investigated and then used for a short time in order to transition away from the prescription painkillers. “I’ve been pharmaceutical-free for going on about four or five years now. But during that time, I still had pain.” At this point, she still had pain to contend with, but “not to the level where everything was darkness.”

“I’ve learned now that if I manage my life right, I can have joy again. I can do things again.”

The Gokhale Method is something Anissa first heard about from a friend.

A new approach to pain relief
Anissa first heard of the Gokhale Method from a friend with whom she had a reciprocal coaching arrangement: Anissa would life-coach her friend, and her friend health-coached Anissa. “She said, ‘You know, I heard about this, and it might help you.’” Anissa looked it up, watched a few videos, and bought herself a copy of 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back as it was more within financial reach than enrolling in a course immediately. “Let me see what I can get from the $20 book first, before I further the investment. From the book, I was able to tell that it was something and that it made sense to me. With what I had been through and what they had tried to teach me and what was so different.”

Anissa “almost didn’t go to the Pop-up Course.” She was aware Esther was travel-teaching in Texas, but the courses weren’t near Anissa. However, they were close enough for her to try to get to. She felt it was a sign: a response to her prayers. “I was actually experiencing higher-than-normal pain, the most I’d had in a few years, and I really wanted to go, but I didn’t know if I could. I didn't know if I was physically capable.” Determined, Anissa ended up driving 5 hours to Dallas — a drive that would be impossible for her most of the time due to her pain levels, but the endpoint of which was so important to her she didn’t want to miss it. She was assisted on the drive by one of her daughters.

During the drive back to San Antonio back from the Pop-up Course in Dallas, Anissa asked her daughter to take this picture of her standing without pain at a rest area — a truly memorable moment. Image supplied.

Dramatic results in a single day
By the end of the Pop-up Course and the drive home to San Antonio, Anissa almost couldn’t believe the results. “My camel hump on my neck was gone! And I knew it was gone, but I questioned how that had happened.” Just that day, she had noticed her longstanding kyphosis, also known as a “buffalo hump” or “dowager’s hump,” during the halfway point of the course, when she was experiencing some of her usual pain and applied a topical pain relief cream to it. She regularly asked her husband to rub this kyphotic hump to provide her some fleeting relief. But after the Pop-up Course, the hump was gone. This was a big change; nothing she’d ever done before had ever had such dramatic results in such a short amount of time. “The book was great, but I really needed the hands-on [learning], and I need to do the Foundations Course next. My body is used to being a certain way, and it’s taking time to train my brain to do things differently.”

In her own words, Anissa is “thrifty, so [the course tuition] felt like a lot of money.” It was actually her and her husband’s anniversary weekend and she wanted to do something with him for the occasion, but she reconsidered. “I thought, what better gift could I give to my husband than feeling better?”

“Acupuncture has helped me manage my pain to where I can have a life now. It’s a more limited capacity than I would maybe prefer. But what the Gokhale Method did is open the door up wider.” A couple of weeks after the course, Anissa and her husband took a trip to Marble Falls and went hiking for the first time in maybe 15 years. “I remembered how much I loved it, and how good it feels to stand in nature — wow, Lord, really! This is in my backyard? And I never would have seen it, because I was afraid [of debilitating pain].” On her hiking trip, she realized the course was “worth all that money and then some, because we get to do things we used to not be able to do, that we hadn’t done in a really long time. So it was amazing.”

Anissa’s once-debilitating pain is now well-managed enough to let her live her life again, as in this photo during her hiking trip to Marble Falls. Image supplied.

“An answer to prayer”
When she does experience pain, the Gokhale Method has given Anissa the tools to realize that something is in need of adjustment. Anissa is humble and adamant that, in spite of her excellent and heartening results, her posture journey is only beginning. “I only know this much, and it’s made such a huge difference,” she says. “Even knowing that much has made a huge difference. And there’s so much more.” The private online follow-up session with Kathleen was a needed refresher on the techniques. Being able to bring the method home to her space, to her desk, and to her home context was incredibly helpful for Anissa. Aside from the pain relief, Anissa appreciates the comprehensive nature of the Gokhale Method. “It’s for your whole body, working with your whole body the way it was designed to work,” unlike exercises focused only on giving people superficial benefits, like “great abs.”

When asked what Anissa treasures being able to do with her body, it’s the simple things that are most important. She has a young grandson, and being able to pick him up and get on the floor and play with him are precious. The freedom of being able to get in the car and drive for 10 hours and end up in New Mexico, for example, is a blessing. “I want a body that doesn’t limit my capacity to do what I do and what’s important, not to be sitting there with family and friends and wondering when I can go home because my back hurts so much. I want to be able to actually enjoy conversation and interaction with people without the primary brain focus being the pain in my body.”

Anissa considers her whole journey to have been “an answer to prayer. It was too weird the way it all happened, and the results. I always know it’s special — a gift — when it goes this well. Not that the process has been easy, because I feel like I’m constantly having to work on it and I have so much more to learn. But to get such an immediate injection of hope, to feel that maybe I wouldn’t at some point be managing the symptoms of my pain with acupuncture and supplements. I have hope that this can build up to more as I go further in the process and learn to work with my body the way it was designed to be.”

And given her history, she’s no stranger to despair. “I know what it’s like to lose hope. I know how different your life can turn out if you can’t be pointed and guided in a direction that’s not pharmaceuticals, that’s not injections, that’s not surgeries. I’ve met so many people whose long-term results are a disaster. Maybe in the beginning they’re ok, the first few years out, but talk to them 5 years after surgery and they’re all miserable, too. I’d like to be able to help share this and help save people from the decade of disaster I experienced myself.” Thankfully, with the Gokhale Method on her side, Anissa has a brighter future to look forward to.

Future generations, and our ability to show up for them, can prove excellent motivation for reducing our pain and improving our functionality. Image courtesy Sasin Tipchai on Pixabay.

Cecilia* didn’t expect to develop disabilities in her early 40s. She had led an active life, working as an academic in a competitive field and enjoying intense activities such as rock climbing, camping, hiking, kayaking, Iyengar yoga, Crossfit, and running. She even flew glider planes for fun. In her own words, she has an “extreme personality” — she pushes herself hard in life and seeks out challenging situations, whether working or playing.

Cecilia describes herself as an “extreme personality” and once enjoyed such intense outdoor pastimes as rock climbing, among others. This all changed once she began a law degree and bar exam preparations. Photo courtesy Brook Anderson on Unsplash.

Cecilia used intense physical activity for relief from persistent stress and anxiety in her demanding life, but her body bore the brunt of that intensity. She began to notice that she was frequently injured and in pain, and her healing process was unusually slow. Sitting in a chair and walking became increasingly difficult. The problems worsened when she began law school. As her degree progressed and the bar exam approached, the range and intensity of her symptoms increased dramatically. She had always been active and followed common guidelines for health. What had gone wrong?

Cecilia has seen an array of specialists she calls her “team.” She now includes Esther Gokhale on this list. Image courtesy Anne Karakash on Pixabay.

Over time, Cecilia amassed a supportive team of conventional and holistic medical practitioners who ruled out several conditions and found others. Her symptoms read like a laundry list. Unusually severe joint injuries and pain caused by relatively minor trauma. Poor balance. Extreme, chronic pain and fatigue, worsened by sitting and progressing to the point where all she could do was lie on the floor. Sizeable ovarian cysts which, thankfully, turned out not to be cancerous, but still required surgical diagnosis and monitoring. Infertility. Poor sleep quality. No arthritis, but indications of inflamed nerves and nerve roots. Persistent and severe irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), flare-ups of which often required Cecilia to spend 10 or 12 hours a day in the bathroom and left her ravenous and exhausted in her own body, unable to digest the food she ate. At her self-described “lowest points,” Cecilia sometimes woke up to discover she’d had an accident in the night as she slept. She recalls resenting a homeless person asking for money outside the pharmacy — they, at least, were able to obtain nourishment from food, unlike her. She felt ashamed of her accidents, her feelings, and her predicament.

Law school exacts a physical and psychological toll upon even the healthiest among us. Over the course of a few years, Cecilia went from extreme thrill-seeker to someone forced to use a mobility scooter to walk her dog. Both sitting and walking caused pain. Unless something changed, she didn’t know how she’d physically be able to sit for her bar exam, the culmination of her grueling law degree program and the gateway to her new career.

Active, intensity-seeking Cecilia never expected to come to rely on a mobility scooter to walk her dog. Image courtesy Sabine van Erp on Pixabay.

All of Cecilia’s individually challenging health concerns emerged and were diagnosed over the past few years, but it was having to depend on the mobility scooter, along with extremely slow-healing contusions to her bones found on X-rays, that spurred her toward a deeper investigation of the root cause of her problems. One of her doctors’ recommendation for pelvic floor physical therapy and a potential diagnosis of spinal arthritis (spondyloarthropathy) eventually led Cecilia to investigate posture training.

A postural approach to chronic pain

In childhood, she remembers her mother reminding her to “Stop slouching!” and to “Stand up straight!” However, what it means to have “good posture”, in terms of the technicalities and which muscles to utilize, has only started to become clear recently through her work first with another posture training method and now, with the Gokhale Method.

Like many Gokhale Method students, Cecilia first encountered Esther’s approach to posture through her book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. Some time before her symptoms reached their maximum intensity, she attended a Free Introductory Workshop, which was helpful, but as she was traveling frequently cross-country, her posture ended up on the back burner. She also didn’t initially think her posture could be related to her symptoms.

Esther in action, teaching at the Birch Street Studio in Palo Alto.

In contrast to Cecilia’s other posture training class, which focused mainly on relaxation, the Gokhale Method brings an array of techniques and real-life skills to the table. It also offers multiple props to assist those techniques, as well as innovative wearable tech. Each lesson is structured and specific: each micro-movement is broken down and clearly communicated, and Cecilia is given guidelines for followup practice and exercises. The curriculum continues beyond the studio and is incorporated into daily life.

Cecilia finds Esther’s teaching style especially noteworthy. As a teacher, Esther is compassionate and gentle, not judgmental or pushy — a particularly helpful demeanor for someone like Cecilia who has pushed herself very hard her whole adult life. Esther’s nonjudgmental attitude toward her students allows Cecilia to embrace where she is, here and now. “Esther really sees this as a process,” says Cecilia. “Each class is a process.” And it would be silly, she says, to think of that process in a judgmental way. This focus on learning, acceptance, and growth contrasts dramatically with the more typical American attitude, so exemplified by Cecilia’s pursuit of a law degree, an industry which idealizes perfection and punishes “underperformance” with shame and guilt.

Cecilia’s notable progress is evident in these photos and SpineTracker readings.

Cecilia finds it easy to progress in the nurturing environment of Esther’s lessons, and is able to refrain from berating herself about her ability level. She’s even experiencing gratitude to be stressing about her upcoming professional licensure examination, a grueling, three-day ordeal. "Considering everything that’s happened,” she feels “really fortunate." Were it not for her improved symptoms, Cecilia wouldn’t even have been able to consider sitting for the examination in the first place. She says, “Esther’s teaching me flexibility.” As is evident from her changing attitude toward her own body and ability, that flexibility is clearly not limited to the physical.

Although she hasn’t returned to her extreme outdoors activities, Cecilia credits the Gokhale Method with helping restore her ability to walk without pain. Photo courtesy Simon Lehmann on Pixabay.

Hope for the future

As Ceclia’s posture improved, her symptoms also improved.  Her joint pain started to improve after beginning posture training in October 2018. Since taking private lessons with Esther in early 2019, Cecilia hasn’t experienced significant joint pain. Her joint and ankle issues have mostly subsided, and her upper back pain is reduced. When pain does occur, she now knows how to use her breathing to manage the pain better. She can now walk her dog for 2 miles at a time without any pain. Her IBS has gotten more manageable, though she still has occasional flare-ups. Cecilia is optimistic that her posture training will continue to benefit her various symptoms.

Cecilia’s case is unusually complex and challenging. When she has time, she still practices medical qi gong and gets acupuncture, though she’s had to scale these back as she prepares for the ordeal of her bar exam. In addition, she continues to get sports massage and chiropractic treatment and follow a therapeutic diet for her IBS. In her own eyes, Cecilia still has a great deal of work to do and a long way to travel on this path. But things are looking up. She hasn’t needed to used her electric scooter for several months. And she’s on track to take her bar exam. She wouldn’t have been able to say that a year ago.

Cecilia’s dog benefits from her owner’s improvements, too! Image courtesy RitaE on Pixabay.

*Name changed for privacy reasons.

When I first came to this country in 1975, I had gardening on my mind. My family in India had just moved from Mumbai to Pune, where it became possible to plant a garden, and my mother was full of plans for this new adventure. Her excitement was infectious and I also became keen on gardening. As an exchange student, I started a garden in my host family’s plot. Later, when my husband and I moved to Stanford, I cultivated a communal plot at Escondido Village. In our first condominium/home, I spent several years working the very clay soil that is the legacy of every Bay Area homeowner. My efforts came to a standstill when I herniated my L5-S1 disc in the ninth month of my first pregnancy. Not only could I not think about gardening, I was also unable to pick up a cooking pot, sleep, or, worst of all, pick up my baby.

It took me several years to figure out what had caused my problem, how to solve it, and develop enough confidence to have two more children. With the additions of Nathan and Monisha to the family, we were attracted to buying a larger house. I was glad that when we sold our condominium, the music faculty buyer deeply appreciated the improved soil I had worked on.

Early efforts at soil improvement in our current home. I’m carrying Monisha on my back African-style.

Improving the soil remains an obsession of mine, and with the Bay Area’s clay-dense soil, it takes an obsession to turn the soil around! At my current home, I have developed a thriving edible garden, with many fruit trees, vegetables, mushroom beds and logs, lettuce lawns, and a vertical garden packed into my family’s land. To do so, I fed the soil many things, some of them quite unconventional: sawdust (no glue, no redwood, no walnut) from a friend, wood chips (not redwood or eucalyptus), city compost, manure from one of the many Augean-style stables in the area), coffee grounds (thank you, Peet’s!), and kitchen waste.

Hip-hinging to harvest artichokes (that magically have no choke!)

I was thankful for the new posture that allowed me to do the requisite digging, hauling, and turning to develop a fruitful garden. Over the years, it has become clear to me that each of these activities supports my posture project. Posture cannot live in a vacuum. It’s a set of principles and patterns that needs to be manifest in activity.

Today, I maintain my garden year-round and work in my garden most days. Lately I’ve been picking arugula, herbs, avocados, and nasturtium for salad, grapefruit and berries for dessert, persimmons for fruit leather, eggs for breakfast, and greens for stir fries.

  
Left: Hip-hinging in my fave Yao tribal jacket from Thailand to collect greens that Brian cooks into Indian saag. Right: Soil improvement does pay off in wonderful produce!

Have you had a similar experience? What activities support your posture project?

A quote from one of my cherished Gokhale Method students captures the before of his posture-improving, pain-eliminating journey with me:

"I was a managing director at a telecommunications company supervising a lot of people, but there would be days when I’d put in my time lying on the floor in my office--to take pressure off my spine. At first colleagues would walk in and do a double-take, but gradually they become accustomed to my having to stretch out the floor while I worked. This had become my new normal."

Another quote offers a glimpse of the happy hereafter, in particular, the adventurous life this man has been leading since we concluded our regularly scheduled, one-on-one work together, in 2008. 

"My wife and I just came back from a trip to Machu Picchu and the Galapagos. All the climbing of the Inca ruins and the walking over the lava fields of the islands went so very smoothly I never had even one issue of back trouble. Believe me, I could not be happier."

The remarkable fellow is Mike King of San Ramon, California, and I was thrilled when he agreed to share his dramatic journey into and out of debilitating back pain.

What follows is Mike's "travelogue."

"Esther, I never thought I would be able to be doing something like this. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

The "back story" to my back story

"I'm 75 now, and if I look at the kinds of things I did in my life that contributed to what turned out to be debilitating back pain, it includes putting myself through college by working in a truck service station, working on very large and very heavy tires, using pneumatic wrenches to take them off and put them on. It was physically awkward and very taxing work. I also played football in high school and college and was involved in several car accidents. These were among the contributing factors. "The first signs of trouble appeared in 1974. Especially when I did yard work or any other manual labor I would be very achey; I would really feel it. But it wasn't a big deal back then, because I could get through these episodes by popping anti-inflammatories and easing up on the manual labor. The pain wasn't yet chronic. "But by the late 1980s my back problems intensified. The pain would last longer, and it would be more restrictive in terms of what I could do. For example: I’ve always been someone who’s been in the gym; I enjoyed working out, and I ran. But when back pain began to catch up with me, I had to quit running and cut back on working out. My life began to change."

From bad back to worse

"In the 1990s I was doing a lot of international business travel, which meant frequent long flights and hotels with strange beds. This was at a time when I was becoming severely physically limited--when not only  was something like yard work out of the question, but walking had become a chore. "Yet another issue was pain-related sleep deprivation, which of course exacerbates the difficulties of any challenging situation. And when my back problem became chronic--when I saw how much of my lifestyle I was having to let go--I became terribly discouraged. Feeling uncomfortable after a workout is one thing, but when disabling pain comes at you all at once it's pretty hard to take. So, out of desperation, in June 1998, I saw my first neurosurgeon."

The diagnosis

"Long story short, the neurosurgeon ran a number of tests and did a number of scans and diagnosed extensive sciatica due primarily to damaged L4 and L5 discs impinging upon nerves radiating out from my spinal cord. And his recommendation was surgery on my lumbar spine.

Contrast the herniated lumbar disc impinging upon the spinal nerve, at bottom, with the healthy disc, at top.

"By this time I was in serious pain and walking with a cane, and in desperation I agreed to have surgery--a laminectomy and a discectomy, which basically involve the carving out of some bone to get to the damaged discs that were protruding out and pressing in on spinal nerve roots."

Two surgeries: the good--and the bad & ugly

The bad

"When I came out of the first surgery--even after a longer than normal period of recovery--it became apparent that I was in worse shape than when I went in. It's not like I was looking for a miracle, but I was expecting some relief because the neurosurgeon had painted a rosy scenario of a positive outcome. Instead, the surgery was a failure."

The ugly

"At one post-op visit my wife, who was extremely concerned, explained to the neurosurgeon that I was feeling discouraged because I was still in terrible pain and still so debilitated. And the neurosurgeon turned to her and said, 'Well, that explains why he's not getting better. He's not getting better, because of his attitude.' "Jan looked at him and said, 'No. He's discouraged because the surgery didn’t work, and you’re not taking responsibility for it.'

"In desperation, I agreed to have surgery."

"So we quickly moved on, but of course by that time the damage had been done."

The good

"Nine months later, in April 1999, I had a second back surgery, basically to clean up the results of the first failed surgery. And though I came out of that with the usual post-back surgery kinds of issues, I felt sufficiently well to travel on business to Hungary just one month later. And I got eight good years out of that second procedure, because it was done well and because I was very careful about what I did and got better at reading the warning signs. Once again, I was able to travel, work out in the gym, enjoy my life. So that second surgery turned out to be a really good thing--for a while."

Back surgery number 3?

"In late 2006, early 2007, my back pain returned, but this time I now had foot drop, a condition that can occur when herniated spinal discs in the lower back impinge on spinal nerve roots. Because foot drop made it hard for me to walk and keep my balance, it prompted a visit to a third neurosurgeon, who--as he showed me X-rays and MRIs--identified a number of discs causing my problems, specifically: L3-L4, L4-L5, and L5-S1. But when he said, 'You're looking at major spinal fusion,' I said to myself, 'I’m not going to have a third back surgery. I'm not going to put my body through this. I've got to find another way."

"Adriaen Brouwer's 'The Back Operation,' 1636, captures only some of the pain of surgical interventions."

Identifying with the man from la Mancha

An impossible dream?

"To say I became preoccupied with a need to feel better is an understatement, because when you're in pain and desperate for relief, you will find all sorts of people who claim they can heal you. For me, the experience was like going through a smorgasbord line, trying countless alternatives, none of which worked and some of which actually hurt me. And I began to view my quest as a sort of impossible dream to find a way to take care of my problem, without submitting to spinal fusion.  "I’m not a student of Cervantes, but as I got deeper into my quest the classic tale of Don Quixote began to resonate. As you no doubt know, the story centers on an idealistic but confused man's wanderings to do good works.  An indomitable inner will and extraordinary determination propelled him on his journey, despite real and imagined obstacles he encountered at every turn. And it occurred to me that people who suffer from debilitating back pain follow a similar path. While perhaps not as delusional as Don Quixote, we’re forever searching the Internet, gathering the latest information on surgical and nonsurgical approaches; we’re able to recite the definition of chronic pain; we try heat and then we try cold; we try pain blockers, anti-inflammatories, and muscle-spasm medications. We visit neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, chiropractors, naturopaths, homeopaths--every imaginable alternative practitioner.  We seek second opinions and third opinions, and then, because we're still hurting, we seek more.

"Don Quixote's indomitable spirit inspired me."

"I put a lot of miles on my car and paid a lot of fees, in search of a solution, but my quest was really wearing on me because I was beginning to believe there wasn’tan answer. And as the prospect of fusion surgery loomed ever larger, and as I could see life as I once knew it slipping away from me, I grew more concerned.  Until one night, I plucked up a copy of Costco's magazine."

A serendipitous discovery

"Deep inside the magazine, I found a small article linking posture to back pain. It was very brief, with almost no detail, but after I read it I thought, 'Hey, this something I haven’t tried!' Of course I was more than a little skeptical that the approach developed by Esther Gokhale, with its focus on posture, could have a significant effect on my back pain, but I was determined to check it out. So I gave Esther's office a call and signed up for a 1-hour free session."

"It was just incredibly serendipitous how I came to discover the Gokhale Method.”

"Later, when I got to know Esther, I asked, 'Was Costco selling your book?' It wasn’t. The story just kind of appeared, and the fact that I would find it -- and jump on it -- was just incredibly serendipitous."

What's posture going to do for me?

"By the time I met Esther I was walking with a cane and getting through the day on a heavy-duty dose of Vicodin; I was not in good shape. So when my wife and I attended the one-hour introductory session, my mindset was: 'This is kind of weird. What's posture going to do for me?' But when the session concluded and a man in the back of the room stood up and said, 'I just have to tell you something, Esther. I’m a neurosurgeon, and you’ve done more for a number of my patients than I could ever do with surgery,' I thought, 'Bingo, this is what I needed to hear.' "On the spot I signed up for the Gokhale Method Foundations course, opting for six private sessions with Esther. And I bought a copy of her book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. The amazing thing—and even I have trouble believing this--was that  I literally could feel a positive change after each session. At our first meeting, I learned how to sit. Now that may seem like a very simple thing to do. (I know I certainly thought it was,  because I’d been sitting for a lot of years and it never occurred to me that I should be doing this any differently.) But it soon became apparent that I had a lot to learn, and that I was going to have to do some serious reprogramming of old habits. And for six weeks I worked really hard, learning and practicing Esther's techniques.

"As I progressed through the six classes, Esther helped me understand the big picture of her program. One of the nice aspects of the Gokhale Method, I should add, is that it’s not something you need to go back and re-enroll in every month--or even every six months (although for a while, I greatly benefited from quarterly 'tune-ups'). Instead, you learn techniques that you can easily practice in the course of your daily life."

Reclaiming my life

"I finished the course in 2008, so it’s been five years. And at age 75  I’m enjoying life and doing everything I want to do. One thing I hugely enjoy is being out and about with my camera, finding things to photograph, and--since working with Esther--I’ve done wonderfully well when I travel. My wife and I are just back from China; last year we hiked around Machu Picchu and the Galapagos; the year before we explored southern Africa--and next year I'm returning to Africa. We’ve seen so many amazing things and I’m grateful to the Gokhale Method for helping me regain the mobility I need to do all this--I'm grateful to Esther and her method for enabling me to (quite literally) reclaim my life.

"Freedom from back pain means freedom to travel. Here I am in Tiananmen Square."

"I feel lucky to have visited the Cape of Good Hope and lucky to feel well enough to explore more of Africa next year."

Photo Credits: Mike King, Machu Picchu, 2012:  Jan King Herniated lumbar discs: Wikimedia Commons Surgeon: Wikimedia Commons"The Back Operation," Adriaen Brouwer: Wikimedia Commons "Don Quixote," Honoré Daumier: Wikipedia "Getting Back to Our Roots": Screen shot from The Costco Connection Esther Gokhale and Mike King from Back Pain: The Primal Posture Solution video: gokhalemethod.com Mike King, Beijing: Jan King  Mike King, Cape Point Lighthouse, near the Cape of Good Hope: Jan King