parents

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®.
 

This is the fourth blog post in our series on old family portraits and photographs. Previously we have looked at how antique images can inspire us to improve our posture in the Upper Body, Lower Body, and Small Bends. Here we are going to focus on how old family photos from abroad make a special contribution to our posture knowledge. 

Photographs as historical evidence

Antique photographs are often notable for the healthy posture they capture. Even images taken well into the twentieth century are likely to show healthier posture than we see around us today.

In the US you have to go back several generations to reliably find images of healthy posture, and usually even to a time when photography was not widely available due to its elaborate processes and cost. Had the first immigrants to North America settled later, we would have much more photographic evidence of their intact posture. As it is, we have rare but valuable examples from the 1840s onward. 

These European settlers all show a preference for sitting with a straight back.

Sharing our heritage from abroad

People with heritage from abroad will often have photographs of their family, especially parents and grandparents, showing excellent posture. Immigrant parents frequently bring excellent posture with them from their homeland, while their children grow up adopting the tucked and slouched posture they see around them in the US.

In our “bring and tell” sessions on our Alumni 1-2-3 Move program participants have generously shared their own family photographs. It is noticeable how many of their ancestors and older generations from abroad have particularly wonderful posture. Their posture would not have been exceptional back then, but today we can find it an inspiration for our own personal posture journeys and improvement. 

Lucy Atkin shares a photograph of her maternal grandfather on the 1-2-3 Move program. He was of German/Prussian descent. It shows a lifted sternum, a tall neck, his head turns on the axis of his spine, his eyes look ahead.

 
1-2-3 Move participant Susan Rothenberg shares a photograph of her paternal grandparents from Lithuania. Their feet are turned out and their shoulders are back and wide.

The decline of posture in the US

Posture deteriorated sharply with the “flapper generation” in the 1920s, and then nosedived again after World War II. The decline in our posture over the generations is a fascinating story, which I have written a little about in my book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. 

I consider there are two main reasons why posture deteriorated more rapidly in the US, while the “old countries” kept it intact for longer. Firstly, when young adults are transplanted from their place of origin, they lose some of the kinesthetic traditions that would otherwise be reinforced by their parents and grandparents—for example, how to perform tasks in the fields, or raise children, with all the lifting and carrying that involves. Even rest positions for sitting and sleeping well can be forgotten. 
 

As children we learn what we see around us—and that goes for healthy posture too. 

Secondly, due to its pioneer days and mainly youthful immigrants, the US evolved a culture and commerce driven by innovation. While this dynamism has brought many benefits, prizing innovation also has its downside. New fashions, furniture, and lifestyles have been developed and adopted indiscriminately, often with a damaging impact on posture.

Posture deteriorated sharply in America from the 1950s—a decade earlier than in most of Europe. Crain's Chicago Business

Looking back to our heritage

“Modernizing” trends from the US were slow to take hold in Europe, due in part to postwar austerity, and this meant that more traditional posture often persisted well into the 1960s. It is not uncommon for today’s seniors to have photographs of themselves as children in the 40s and 50s with parents and grandparents showing largely intact posture, especially if their roots are abroad. You can observe chins rested down, wide, open chests, and externally rotated legs and feet. 

 
Gokhale Method alumna Pauline Tilbury, aged nearly five, at the beach in Filey, England, June 1959. Her grandparents in particular show the open posture typical of their generation—and children.

Some readers will recall the beautiful photographs in the post Posture in Old Lithuania by Gokhale Metho​​d™ teacher Aurelia Vaicekauskas. Aurelia came to the US with her parents from Lithuania in 1979. Her post shows the inspiring posture of the people there as they lived and worked in their traditional communities.

Aurelia’s post Teaching My 95-Year-Old Lithuanian Mom the Gokhale Method includes this wonderful family photograph, posed on her mother’s wedding day in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1957, with everyone exuding elegance and poise. Truly, when it comes to posture, looking back to our heritage is one of our best ways forward.

Gokhale Method teacher Aurelia Vaicekauskas’ parents (far left) in Lithuania with family on their wedding day.

We work diligently to bring healthy, natural posture within the most modern of contexts here in the US. We are grateful that this posture remains embodied in various populations around the world, and embedded in historical art and sculpture the world over. We also celebrate its existence in the photographic records of our relatives from abroad.

You are invited to share any of your family photographs of ancestors from abroad in the Comments below this post. (Log in and click on the upload picture icon, far right .)

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