chiropractor

If you have had back pain, odds are that you have visited either a physical therapist or a chiropractor. They are the most frequented medical practitioners for all types of structural pain, and our teacher community has been enriched by both these (and many other types of) practitioners. For this post, I have invited Vera Baziuk, a chiropractor and Gokhale Method® teacher based in Edmonton, Canada, to join me for a Q&A. We would like to share with you how she sees the interface between chiropractic and our method. 

Gokhale Method teacher and chiropractor Vera Baziuk.

E: How did you first discover the Gokhale Method?

V: I was researching the best home exercises and stretches for certain patients for back pain relief. I felt that this was a missing component in chiropractic for fully resolving back pain. I stumbled upon an interview with you and Dr. Mercola. What you said in the beginning about the J-spine grabbed my attention. I immediately went to the Gokhale Method website and downloaded your book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back

This was one of those career aha moments, when I know on an inner, deeper level, that something is right and what I need to be doing. I began looking into teacher training in November 2019, however, teacher training was not going to be possible with a three-month-old, and I still needed to take the Foundations course. Then COVID hit.

I took the online Elements course in the spring/summer of 2020, right in the middle of COVID, and waited for the announcement of teacher training. In fall of 2021, I gained in-person experience in a Pop-up class in Palo Alto. That weekend was amazing! I had never felt quite the stretch before as when Esther adjusted my stretchsitting. I shall never forget that initial amazing feeling of lengthening in my erector spinae muscles and ultimately the spine. I wanted everyone I knew to feel how good that felt. If I wasn’t hooked before, I was after that class! 

Gokhale Method teacher Sabina Blumauer guides a student in stretchsitting.

E: Were you initially skeptical about the Gokhale Method?

V: No, I wasn’t. The interview I heard between you and Dr. Mercola made complete sense. The book and Elements made a well-presented argument for the natural J-shape of the spine, supported by analysis of body mechanics, muscle contraction, and relaxation. Hundreds of photos showed how the spine looks when posture is done well in daily activities—and how things look when it is not. It became evident that poor posture was the real culprit to back pain. And that the posture pot of gold is still attainable at any age. 

E: Do you see any divergence between chiropractic and the Gokhale Method? 

V: The main thing I encounter, from fellow health professionals and patients, is confusion about healthy spine shape and pelvic position. 

For example, in conventional trainings, having an anterior pelvic tilt is equated with having an excessive lumbar lordosis. The Gokhale Method makes the important distinction between upper lumbar lordosis (undesirable) and L5-S1 angle (desirable). The Gokhale Method also uses more descriptive and “sticky” language when it comes to spinal shape—instead of talking about lordosis and kyphosis, we refer to J-spines, C-spines, and S-spines; this helps students understand what they need to embody more accurately and easily. This is explained and illustrated in detail in your book, and also addressed in a blog post on spine shape and another on pelvic angle.

E: Has the Gokhale Method complimented your practice as a chiropractor?

V: Incorporating the Gokhale Method into my practice is a natural fit because, ideally, there is an active and passive component to most healing. 

Passive care is when the chiropractor (or therapist) does something to you, like an adjustment, mobilization, TENS, ultrasound, laser, soft tissue therapy, or acupuncture. While these modalities can be effective in providing relief from pain, they often do not solve the root cause of the problem. Unfortunately, perhaps due to persuasive marketing, people often expect entirely passive solutions for their back pain. They begin to believe that a magic bullet for back pain relief exists.

Here I am giving a patient a chiropractic adjustment. This is an example of passive care, using diagnostic skills and clinical knowledge, plus hands on techniques, to effect change.

Active care consists of therapists providing tools to their patients/clients that they can use in their day-to-day lives to help them in recovery. These may be cryotherapy or heat, exercises to strengthen muscles and stretches to lengthen muscles, nutritional advice to improve healing, stress management tips, and general physical fitness recommendations. This active care component is critical in creating lasting, functional changes.

The Gokhale Method provides high quality active care. It is an educational intervention that teaches and empowers people to make gentle changes to their body 24/7, often with both immediate and cumulative benefits. I don’t know of any other intervention that does this so comprehensively and also includes the J-spine paradigm. 

E: So you see the Gokhale Method and chiropractic as working together? 

V: Yes, absolutely. The Gokhale Method helps chiropractic adjustments hold more effectively and chiropractic adjustments give people a welcome jumpstart on feeling better. 

Most people who come for chiropractic treatment have sustained a lot of damage over the years in their muscles, tendons, ligaments, discs, and joints, so experiencing a break from their cycle of pain is very welcome. But partial or repeated short-term relief from pain is ultimately unsatisfying, both for the patient and practitioner. The Gokhale Method offers ways of transforming the postural habits that caused the problem in the first place. I find that, given most people’s starting point, a combination approach restores function, gives long term relief, and improves comfort along the way. 

My Gokhale Method students find learning how to rest and sleep in comfortable, therapeutic positions makes an invaluable contribution to their recovery. Here I am teaching stretchlying.

E: What impact has the Gokhale Method had on your thinking about chiropractic? 

V: I feel like my eyes have finally opened. For example, revisiting my textbooks, I noticed that references to posture are minimal and often an afterthought. Dr. David Magee is a well-respected physiotherapist who has written numerous classic orthopedic and physical examination books that both chiropractors and physiotherapists still learn from today. I began to wonder why, in one of his books, Posture Assessment is Chapter 15 of 17? It should be Chapter 1! Nearly all musculoskeletal conditions are a direct result of poor posture. 

E: Do you discuss the subject of posture with your patients?

V: I now see my patients’ complaints through the Gokhale lens, with posture as the starting point. Looking at someone in the past, I could see their posture was not ideal, but I still dealt with their presenting complaint in parts, not as a whole. For the past year, I have switched my filter and now consider all musculoskeletal pain in relation to posture. 

When speaking to patients for the first time, I begin to paint the picture of what healthy posture looks like and how their current posture compares. We then explore options to solve the problem with some immediate pain relief solutions and a longer-term relief and prevention strategy—the Gokhale Method. 

Teaching my Gokhale Method students healthy bending not only enables them to avoid future back pain flare-ups and protect against damage, it also brings many other biomechanical benefits—such as natural length in the hamstrings and improved hip joint mobility.

For existing patients, I periodically offer observations on how their current posture is very likely contributing to a flare up or increase of pain from their last appointment. Many wholeheartedly welcome hearing more about the Gokhale Method.

E: Can you share a specific case where the Gokhale Method has enhanced the outcome for a patient?

V: In September of 2023, I met Kay Chui Lee, who is happy to share his journey. He was referred by a massage therapist, and presented wearing a cervical collar for an acquired torticollis (neck twist to one side). His posture was a significant C-shaped spine, with a very tucked pelvis and his hips parked forward. His erector spinae were perhaps the tightest I have ever felt. In addition, he had tight sternocleidomastoid, scalene, levator scapulae, and trapezius muscles. His gluteal muscular tone was weak. 

Kay Lee started as a chiropractic patient, and, to best serve his needs, I also encouraged him to enroll in the Gokhale Foundations course. He stopped wearing his cervical collar about halfway through the course. After the course, his neck and head rotation to the right had improved and there were times when Kay was able to look straight ahead. 

A combination of the Gokhale Method and chiropractic treatment is enabling Kay Lee to gradually become more upright. His head and neck are returning to a more natural, comfortable, and symmetric alignment. 

He walks daily, practicing what he learnt in glidewalking, and reports doing so without the fatigue he used to feel after a walk. He sleeps better and can manage his day with greater comfort. The texture in his erector spinae muscles is softening and he reports less pain with muscle work. To date, Kay continues with chiropractic treatment and there are ongoing improvements. I am hopeful that with alumni classes, online or in-person, he will continue to improve.

E: Thanks, Vera, for sharing how you are using chiropractic alongside the Gokhale Method. I am sure your insights will help both our students, and chiropractors and their patients, to embrace this complementary pairing with a new level of confidence.

Best next action steps 

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

You can sign up below to join any one of our upcoming FREE Online Workshops…

Suffering with back and hip pain, Kapil recalled the upright, elegant posture he had seen in India.

My background and posture in India

I am a 45-year-old software engineer living in California. I grew up and lived in India until I was 37. In my mid-twenties I developed lower back pain and right hip pain, and I recollect having a series of MRIs and medical traction but obtaining nothing more than temporary relief. I also went for Indian massage therapy, which did effectively relieve the pain for some years. Like many modern desk workers, my posture had gradually deteriorated. The massage addressed the symptoms this caused but did not improve my posture.

Here I am 33 years old. I am starting to round my shoulders, sink into my chest and lift my chin.

As Esther often says, older generations, villagers, and the manual workers in India have excellent posture, which includes a J-spine, the head back, and the shoulders back. 

I would observe people around me with upright, elegant posture, and could see that it was healthy, but I couldn’t figure out what I should be doing to get there.

Tall, elegant posture is almost universal among Indian villagers. Firstpost

My father had very good posture and no back pain. I wondered if I had muscle weakness, or if it was just that my body was structured differently. 

In this photo my father is in his eighties and has preserved his upright bearing. Note that his feet are angled outward due to the external rotation of his legs.

Here in the States, I continued to work with various health practitioners to see what was causing my pain. Some sessions with a chiropractor helped, but the relief, though it sometimes lasted as long as a year, was always temporary. I felt that something I was doing was making the pain reappear. 

Getting started with the Gokhale Method®

I found the Gokhale Method through a blogger in the Bay Area, who referred to the Gokhale Method having seen Esther’s presentation at Google. That led me to the concept of postural education. I realized that I needed guidance to restore healthy posture to my body that didn’t know what to do.

Because poor posture is a relatively modern problem, traditional therapies like massage and yoga did not need to address it—and didn’t for me. Even though I grew up in a part of the world where healthy posture was common, I did not know how to integrate it. In many areas humanity has made huge progress, but now, with our posture, we actually need to achieve some healthy regression!

Traditional therapies such as massage may temporarily relieve the symptoms but not the root cause of back pain. Pexels

I read Esther’s book, realized I needed a teacher and decided to take an Initial Online Consultation. It became clear my posture could be changed. I chose to take the 18-lesson Elements online course over about six weeks in the autumn. 

Becoming pain-free and making further progress

The earlier lessons were quite easy because each lesson focused on just one thing, so I had time to practice and adapt. They nevertheless had already helped to decrease my pain by the time we came to the later lessons. The later lessons needed finesse to coordinate everything that had been learned. Walking was the most challenging, with so many parts to consider at once.

The course is well paced and structured, using intelligently designed stepping stones. I could see how the lessons fit together. Reflecting back, if we had started with the later material, it would have been a daunting task.

When we got to the walking lessons, I thought about asking to spread the lessons out more, but I now recognize that the momentum of our regular schedule was important. Mastery was not expected, and I needed that additional input and tips to continue making progress. There is a saying, “without the guru I cannot gain knowledge” and I found this to be true both for the content and the teaching method.

My “Before” pictures as I embarked on the Elements course. I was trying to implement a few principles I read about in 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. I still had a long way to go.

I have learned to focus on one posture tip at a time, and cycle through them to keep improving on everything I do, whether it is bending or sitting well. Ongoing practice, rewatching course videos, and referring to photographs all help keep things on my radar, reinforce good habits, and create muscle memory over time. 

An active lifestyle is not enough

I have always led an active life—I played racquetball at least twice or thrice a week, I did yoga almost every day, I gardened once or twice a week, and I walked (and still do, almost every day). On reflection I can see that all this exercise, without paying attention to my posture, did not prevent my back and hip pain.

I wouldn’t be able to garden for more than 30 minutes if I hadn’t learned to hip-hinge. My pain would come back. Agricultural workers in India can work eight hours a day, day after day—because they hip-hinge! It is fascinating to see Esther point out this type of bending, in photographs and in ancient art.

Women hip-hinge with ease at a market in Odisha, India, while they examine pots.

I can see that some of our modern occupational hazards arise from sedentary work—so I have always been very careful to not sit for a long duration, switching places each hour. Yet, if I don’t roll back my shoulders, glide my head back, and take care of my rib anchor, none of that matters—I would still have pain. Taking breaks is helpful, but it’s not enough. Posture is a fundamental thing that needs to be taken care of too.

Going forward

I am aware that I have taken Elements only recently and still have a way to go, but the posture that I have learned to recreate in my body has not only stopped my pain, but also feels very natural to me—my neck being tall and my head staying back as I sit at my desk, for example. I would still like to use the PostureTracker™ biofeedback tool that can help me to track my progress and monitor my posture adjustments in real time.

I paused my yoga regime while I was taking Elements in case there was anything I was doing that was contrary to a new way of doing things. Esther then showed me a new way of doing sun salutation which I look forward to resuming shortly. When I learned to improve my posture I made no other lifestyle changes, so I have good reason to believe posture has addressed the root causes of my pain and will be sustainable. 

I would have had many years of a pain-free life behind me if I had made these changes earlier—however, better late than never! I am very fortunate to have found something that has made such a difference to my life.

I have a lot of respect and enthusiasm for the Gokhale Method, and my motivation with this blog post is to spread the word about it. Please share my story to inspire others who suffer unnecessarily with back pain. 

Free Online Workshops

If you would like to find out more about how the Gokhale Method can help support you, whether you have back pain or other musculoskeletal pain, sign up to join one of Esther’s upcoming FREE Online Workshops.