Babies

For many people, their first encounter with back pain is when they become parents. That was certainly true in my case, although, to be factually correct, I was a mom-to-be in the ninth month of my first pregnancy when a herniated disc brought me, literally, to my knees.

Why parents get back pain

You would be right in thinking that many aspects of parenting, be it sleep deprivation, exhaustion, hormonal disruption, or other stresses, contribute to back pain. But I notice in parents and grandparents who report new pain, or the worsening of old or existing pains, that there is one culprit that stands out above all others: round back bending.

Being alongside children and grandchildren can take a lot of bending. Our bending habits can hold the key to our back health and staying pain free.

Round back bending can be repeated endlessly in caring for babies and young children. We sit and cradle or nurse our babies for hours at a time; we interact with little people who live on the ground.  Then we have to lift them, carry them, and put them down again. We pick up innumerable toys and dropped food items. We get to carry the diapers, clothes, snacks, and bottles, and we also have to maneuver folded strollers and other baby furniture in awkward spaces.  

Why roundback bending does damage

Rounding the spine to bend compresses the front portions of the intervertebral discs, causing the contents to bulge towards the back. This distortion of their cylindrical shape can cause damage to the discs over time—wear and tear of the fibrous outer layers of the discs, and potentially posterior herniation of the shock-absorbing contents. Disc bulges and herniations are likely to impinge on the nerve roots which lie behind the discs, a frequent cause of severe pain. As discs deteriorate, they offer less protection to the vertebrae, which can result in degenerative conditions such as osteoarthritis, bone spurs, and spinal stenosis. 
Constantly pulling on the spinal ligaments while rounding the back will cause them to become overstretched and weakened, which not only leaves the spine vulnerable to damage, but encourages the back muscles to chronically tighten and/or spasm in an effort to stabilize the spine. Poor bending technique can cause all sorts of trouble, from immediate sharp pain, to frequent niggles, to silent wear and tear that takes years to show up.

Rounded bending initiates a cascade of degenerative and painful back conditions. This is more fully explained in my book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back.

Bending that’s good for you

Yet many populations bend frequently and report next to no back pain. Young children, our ancestors, and traditional and non-industrialized cultures throughout the world, largely maintain a straight spine as they bend. They bend using the hip joint, rather than the spine. This maintains optimal alignment and spacing in the spine, which preserves the spinal discs and the nerve roots. Other benefits include lengthened hamstrings and a strong inner corset. A spine that uses these baseline biomechanics can tolerate occasional flexion or extension when required. We teach all this posture know-how and more in our in-person Foundations course, one-day Pop-up course, our online Elements course, plus our Gokhale Active program. 

The place to begin is not to “learn bending,” but to train your back out of rounding. Start by stretchsitting, which will help you find a straighter, more lengthened lumbar spine, and to become familiar with this healthy arrangement. You can watch our free video on stretchsitting here.

Stretchsitting uses gentle traction while you sit to lengthen your spine and decompress your discs. 

Can wearable tech help your bending?

In the past decade wearable tech has come to market. Simple, relatively cheap posture devices consisting of a single sensor with an accelerometer are designed to tell you if you are slumping. They detect when your upper back leans relative to a horizontal plane, but cannot distinguish between round back bending and healthy straight back bending. When I developed a posture wearable, this distinction was the functionality we looked for to compliment the comprehensive education we give in healthy posture and how to get there. 

Our wearable system uses two sensors. The Gokhale PostureTracker™ tracks your bending via an app, and shows you exactly how you are bending in real time. PostureTracker both alerts you and visually shows you if you are rounding your back and heading toward doing mischief, so you can return to a healthy alignment. PostureTracker is an optional learning boost for any students taking either a Foundations or Elements course.

PostureTracker alerts you when you round your back to bend (left), helping you to reestablish a healthy straight back (right) and develop healthy posture habits.

Best next action steps 

If you would like help with your posture, get started by booking a consultation, online or in person, with one of our teachers.

Consider joining one of our FREE Online workshops below to learn more about the Gokhale Method®.
 

My passion for researching posture has taken me far and wide. I was in a village in Burkina Faso in western Africa when I first noticed how people there would track the conversation from speaker to speaker mainly by using their eyes, rather than by turning their heads. Along with their excellent body posture it contributed to a strikingly well-centered, dignified bearing.

This young man in Burkina Faso demonstrates the dignified bearing that comes with an appropriate amount of eye tracking.

Comparing what I saw in Burkina Faso with what I was used to seeing back home, I realized that in the US, and the wider industrialized world, we move our eyes a good deal less and our necks a good deal more. Why such a difference, I wondered, and what is its significance for our well-being?

In Paul Gauguin’s 1893 painting from one of his Tahiti trips, Woman Holding a Fruit, the unnamed subject shifts her gaze with her eyes, rather than by turning or twisting her neck. Public domain image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Babies and infants in all cultures track actively with their eyes, both when they are still, and when they turn or reach. One possibility why this changes for children of school age in the industrialized world is due to the amount of reading, writing, and screen time they experience. It seems we grow into a more restrictive, “ahead only” habit.

Infants in all cultures track very actively with their eyes, as my daughter Maya demonstrates here.

My son Nathan tracks with his eyes while reaching for a toy.

As adults, this trend can continue with desk jobs and other prolonged, forward-oriented activities, such as driving. Perhaps this is why, as we age, we develop a more fixed “tunnel vision,” which results in moving our necks rather than our eyes.

Computer and desk work are possible factors in reducing our range of eye movement. Original image courtesy Studio Republic on Unsplash.

Excessive dependence upon neck movement to reorient our visual field often contributes to soft tissue strain and wear and tear on the delicate discs and joints of the cervical vertebrae. Far better, then, to try to reduce this dependence and reintroduce eye tracking now and then.

Time spent in nature provides us a chance to practice our eye tracking. Follow that movement! Photo courtesy Nathan Anderson on Unsplash.

How can we reintroduce this ancient technique into our industrialized-world lives? I am a great advocate for getting out into nature whenever possible to literally expand our horizons. Time spent with young children, especially babies and toddlers, can give us an opportunity to mimic and mirror them — to their frequent delight!

This dancer in San Diego demonstrates beautiful eye tracking. Image courtesy Avnish Choudhary on Unsplash.

Many dance forms, including, but certainly not limited to, classical Indian Bharatnatyam and Kathak, also offer us ample opportunities to practice eye tracking, which lends our dance gestures and movements a depth of emotion. By allowing our eyes to track while on a walk or hike — perhaps while watching a darting squirrel or rabbit cross our path — or while watching a sports game from the stands, or while trying out a new dance style, we can provide ourselves a chance to relearn this method of respecting the neck and maintaining an especially dignified composure.

These elegant dancers in Trinidad and Tobago show the gravitas and depth that can come from skillfully-employed eye tracking. Image courtesy Isaiah McClean on Unsplash.

This is the first post in our multi-part series on floor sitting. For Part 2 on squatting, click here.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor is common in many cultures around the world, and has become popular in some segments of modern Western societies.

This Druze woman who I met in Israel has sat cross-legged all her life. She runs a hospitality business — all the food is laid out on the floor and the guests sit along the periphery of the room. She is at ease in this position for extended periods with her back remaining upright and relaxed.
 

In this temple in Bhubaneswar, devotees sit cross-legged for extended periods in performing rituals.
 

These Buddha figures in Thailand show relaxed, healthy, upright cross-legged sitting posture.

For those who grew up sitting on the floor (thus maintaining their original muscle flexibility and joint mobility), sitting on the floor is comfortable and healthy.

Babies in any culture have the capacity to sit cross-legged with healthy upright posture. This is Monisha White, Esther Gokhale’s youngest child.

It comes in handy at sporting events, in working with young children or with objects on the floor, or in a minimalist context. For people who did not grow up sitting on the floor, though, it can cause a host of problems.

When we are born, our hip, knee, and ankle joints are not yet made of bone, but rather of cartilage. The cartilage ossifies with a timeline that is specific for each joint. The hip socket, for example, is made of three cartilaginous plates at birth. The first pair of these plates ossifies at age 2; the last pair ossifies at age 16. We know that ossification patterns are influenced by mechanical stresses, so it is a commonsensical argument that the habitual positions a person assumes during the ossification period in childhood will dictate how the hip joints (and other lower body joints) set. Someone who has not sat on the floor since being a baby will have a different hip architecture than someone who sat on the floor to eat and squatted to use the toilet growing up. The shape of the joint will be different, as will its range of motion. Some joints have a “use it or lose it” mentality! Additionally, the muscles around these joints will have resting lengths that are adapted to the habitual positions. With muscles, it is simply a matter of stretching to get them to cooperate and be comfortable in new poses. For the bones and joints in an adult, however, things are more fixed. It is unlikely that any amount of practice could find us comfortable and sitting healthily in the lotus position for the first time as an adult.

In this first post of our multi-part series on floor sitting, we will teach you how to modify cross-legged sitting so it is more accessible and healthy for your modern body.

How the “pros” do it

Having grown up with this position since early childhood, people like the Thai woman below are able to preserve a healthy base anteverted pelvis and a well-stacked, relaxed, and upright torso.

This Thai woman sits through a prayer ceremony sitting cross-legged. Notice her upright and relaxed torso atop an anteverted pelvis.
 

In a tribal market in Orissa, this woman sells pots and roots while sitting cross-legged for hours comfortably.

The problem in modern cross-legged sitting

This position tends to tuck the pelvis in people who did not grow up sitting cross-legged. The pelvis is limited by the external hip rotators as well as by the shape of the hip socket itself. Without an optimal alignment of the pelvis, you will be stuck between two poor choices: relaxed and slumped, or upright and tense, each of which causes different kinds of damage.

Cross-legged sitting on the floor for modern urban people usually involves a tucked pelvis.

     
A retroverted (tucked) pelvis often results in a relaxed and slumped torso (left). Being upright on a tucked pelvis requires tension in the long back muscles (right). This is not a sustainable or healthy position for long periods.

The fix: use implements (pillows, wedge, blankets) under your bottom to help facilitate rotation of the pelvis. Allow the legs to be lower than the hips to accommodate tight external rotators and the shape of the hip socket.

A support under the sitz bones facilitates sitting cross-legged in a healthy way — upright and relaxed.

Do you use any of these techniques? Do you have props that help you sit on the floor more comfortably?