A New Way to Relieve Chronic Back Pain

Any kind of conditioning involves repetition and formation of habits of one kind or another.

The conditioning that causes back muscles to become musclebound are of three general kinds:

1. repetitive movements
2. sudden violent injury
3. stress (nervous tension (referred to by Dr. John Sarno as "tension myositis syndrome).

Repetitive movements teach your brain to hold muscles at a heightened state of readiness to contract (tighten) -- which elevates muscle tone (tension) and creates muscle fatigue (soreness).

Sudden, violent injury triggers protective reflexes to "hold you together" -- reflexes that commonly persist indefinitely after the incident/accident and that cause many people never to be the same even after therapy.

Stress (nervous tension) means what the words say -- and what, in popular parlance, the expression "uptight" means.

Conditioning sets up brain-level learning to hold muscles tight and ready to contract (spasm). Then, a minor situation can trigger spasm, which causes pain, which causes cringing, which tightens muscles further, which causes more pain in an increasing cycle that can amount to a severe episode of immobilizing back pain or which can level off into a chronic pain situation.

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None of these approaches directly addresses brain-muscle conditioning, but only its effects.

STRENGTHENING
When we consider weak muscles as the cause of back pain, there is some truth to the idea -- muscles in constant contraction get tired and feel weak. However, the problem of weakness gets solved as soon as muscles resume their resting state. So the problem isn't weakness; it's muscle fatigue. Your back isn't weak; it's tired from overexertion of its muscles.

STRETCHING
When we consider stretching tight muscles as a solution to back pain, there is some validity to that idea -- muscles in constant contraction are short, self-shortening. However, the problem of muscle tightness and shortness gets resolved as soon as muscles resume their resting state. So the problem isn't that muscles need stretching; it's that they are constantly shortening due to conditioned reflexes of the nervous system.

SPINAL ALIGNMENT ADJUSTMENTS
When we consider spinal alignment as a solution to back pain, there is some validity to that approach -- muscles in constant contraction pull on the spine and distort its alignment. However, the problem of spinal alignment isn't a problem of the vertebrae. Bones go where muscles pull them, the control center for the muscular system is the brain (not the doctor or therapist).

DRUGS -- MUSCLE RELAXANTS and PAIN MEDS
When we consider relaxing habitually tight muscles with drugs, we can understand the rationale for the approach. However, drugs do nothing to the patterns of movement and tension controlled by the brain; they only dull the system and the muscular tension patterns remain.

Likewise, pain medications. They dull the pain while the muscular tension patterns remain. Degenerative damage continues unabated.

SURGERY
Most surgery deals with the consequences of either violent injury or congenital defect (necessary) or of long-term muscular tension patterns. Of course, no surgical procedure can change the brain's programmed control of muscular tension and movement; you can't change programming by cutting.

Now you can understand the track record of conventional therapeutic approaches to back spasms.

If these approaches don't address the brain's control of habitual muscle tension, what does?

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Somatic education frees musclebound muscles and tames muscles spasms.

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Taming Muscular Tension Habits

Somatic education uses several techniques of brain-muscle training, but the most important one (by virtue of its speed of effectiveness) uses a neuro-muscular behavior related to yawning (similar to the pleasurable morning stretch), but magnified in its potency by certain techniques. We call this "the Whole-body yawn"; the technical name is "The Pandicular Response" (first discovered by researcher A.F. Frazier and first employed clinically by T. Hanna, Ph.D.).

To repeat, the idea behind the "strengthening and stretching" regimen for back spasms is based on a misunderstanding; it's a misunderstanding because the muscles involved are almost never weak, but tired; it's a misunderstanding because the muscles involved are not "short" (in a fixed sense, like a rope being too short) and therefore, in need of stretching, but "in contraction and shortening" (as an ongoing activity -- muscles always shorten and thicken when they tighten) and in need of relaxation.

Sore muscles don't need strengthening; they need rest and refreshment. They don't need stretching; they need to relax and lengthen -- and that lengthening takes pressure off of joints, nerves, spinal discs, and bursae ("bursitis").

You need to regain your full range of muscular control, from full strength to full relaxation, something you can't regain by being manipulated by someone else; you regain it by a form of learning, albeit a specialized one for which you will probably need training.

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EXPLANATIONS OF BACK PAIN TERMS Bulging Disc Degenerative Disc Disease Disc Tear or Torn Disc Facet Joint Syndrome Herniated ("slipped") Disc Injury vs. Spasm Radiculopathy Ruptured Disc Sciatica, Referred Pain Scoliosis Spinal Fusion Spinal Subluxations

Contraindications -- When This Approach Won't Work

If you've seen a doctor for your back spasms, he or she has either discovered that you need surgery or that you don't. Surgery is a last, desperate resort and most doctors are reluctant to recommend it. If you have been sent for therapy or given drugs, yours is not a surgical situation, meaning that your spasms are not a protective reaction against injury, but a reflex-conditioning problem.

In the majority of back spasms, there is no injury. The back spasms are just a movement malfunction -- a tension habit formed under stress. It's the "tension" part of "nervous tension."

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