Chronic Solutions

Many years ago I worked in landscaping, first as a laborer and later as a crew leader. During that time I became friendly with the boss so I told him I had some skill as a healer (I got a lot better since). He then told me that he had been working in landscaping for about 20 years and as a result has chronic low back pain. He was 43 years old at the time.

I knew from experience how hard the work can be on the lower back. I would often finish a 10 or 12 hour workday with a stiff and aching lower back myself. So I listened to him talk and thought about the possibility that I will end up like him: with chronic back pain in my early forties and expecting another 30 or 40 years of life suffering from it.

I didn’t like the idea of moving in pain like many old people do*, I didn’t like expecting such an unappealing future and I didn’t like the idea of being in pain for a few decades. Not if I could do something about it! But what were my options?

I couldn’t quit the work because I needed the income.
I couldn’t get a massage every week to relieve the tension because it will be too expensive.
I couldn’t get regular chiropractic adjustments because I’d have to find the time to do it two or three times a week.
I could…well, I didn’t know what I could do until I got the idea I could take care of it myself.

But how?

While thinking about my situation it occurred to me that:

If I continued to work in landscaping I could expect to have a sore back at the end of every workday. If my back was sore at the end of every workday it will get tighter every day. If this continued for a long time my back will be ruined and I will be in pain all the time. If I want to avoid this unappealing future I will need to do something at the end of every workday to get rid of all the tension in my back. I expected that it will stop my back from getting tighter and tighter and will keep it healthy no matter how long I worked in landscaping.

A friend of mine who is an MD mentioned to me that he considers any pain that persists for more than three months to be a chronic problem.

So it occurred to me that I was in a chronic situation (work that I had to keep and was hurting my lower back every day), that was causing a chronic problem (chronic tension and pain in my lower back) and was leading to a worse problem. What I needed to do was find a chronic solution! Something I could do every day to relieve my chronic problem so it won’t get any worse.

And it occurred to me that many people doing hard physical labor every day are probably suffering from similar problems. Maybe I could help them as well…

So I picked up a couple of books, and picked the brains of a couple of people I knew, and selected 3 simple exercises to do. Every evening after returning home from work I’d take off my work boots, lie on the floor and do my exercises until all the tension was gone from my back. Sometimes it took almost 30 minutes, but I was determined.

At first I did the exercises the way everyone does exercises. I was doing them trying to stretch my tight muscles. It worked but I still felt stiff the next morning so I hoped I could find an even better solution. Luckily for me I returned home one evening so tired and sore from work that I didn’t have the energy or the desire to stretch so I did the exercises very lazily. To my surprise I found that my back relaxed more quickly and the next morning I was not as stiff as usual.

So I immediately changed the way I was doing these same exercises. Instead of using them for stretching I used them for relaxation.

The surprises kept coming: within a few days I noticed that my back was relaxing more completely than before (I didn’t even know that was possible). A few day after that I noticed that it was taking me less time to relax my back. After a few weeks I realized that my back was no longer as sore at the end of my workdays and after a few more weeks I noticed I was becoming more flexible.

All this from 3 simple exercises that I was doing lazily?
Why (and how) was this happening?
It seemed impossible, and definitely against everything I’ve been told all my life. But I could not argue with my own experience. So I thought that maybe I am unusual and this will work only for me. But no. Over the years I have taught these exercises to many people and they all reported getting good result. So what was going on?

I found out that a lot of what I was taught about tension, stretching and relaxation was just not true. But how could that be possible? And what is the truth? It took me only a few days of experience to feel it, but many years of thinking and studying before I understood the principles involved and before I could explain it to others.

So here’s to you, tension, so very hard to get rid of by stretching and so easy to get rid of with some simple exercises done lazily, but regularly.

How to use this information in your own life:

If you find yourself in a chronic situation that is causing a chronic problem you could adopt a chronic solution. I will not attempt to describe my exercises here (it will be way too long for a blog) but you can send me a note and I’ll send them to you. You could give them a try and monitor your results by yourself. Make sure you do them lazily and with relaxation, rather than stretching, as a goal.

Wishing you peace and Health,

O

*See blog on Moving Like Young People Move