Thank You Grand Rounds 3.51
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Exercising the abdominal muscles is not the key in stopping lower back pain. Using them when standing to deliberately flex the lower spine forward enough to reduce overarching and return to neutral spine is how abdominal muscles "support" the spine.
In a hospital, Grand Rounds is a lecture for doctors about a patient or topic. On the web, the weekly Grand Rounds is an electronic post that lists notable medical posts of the week. Grand Rounds is a lot of work for the host. We appreciate the efforts.
Labels: Grand Rounds
4 Comments:
At Friday, September 14, 2007 9:02:00 AM,
Omnipleasant said…
Hi Jolie,
Nice to see you are blogging. I'm training to be a yoga teacher and I'd love to teach the right things to my pupils such as good posture. Your insights are very inspirational.
After struggling with minor but persistant kneepain for some years,
I was diagnosed with seriously fallen arches recently. I'm not really flat-footed, but ankles that drop inwards too much. (I could clearly see that on the video my podiatrist made of me walking on bare feet). In a week I'll be getting new orthortics.
Though, after reading a patient's testimony on your site I decided to try and use my feet differently. So now on my walks to and from my day job I'm trying to walk 'right'. Rolling on the entire foot, heel to toest, leaning more on the sides and using all five toes. It feels awkward though and I notice that I often forget it. I wonder if this will 'fix' my feet eventually?
Anyway, thanks for sharing your knowledge!
At Monday, September 17, 2007 6:25:00 PM,
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM said…
David, It "fixes" arch positioning as soon as you do it right. Once you understand the purpose, it will not be awkward. It is the same as any other good posture. Just stand still and see that you can raise your own arches back to normal, taught in the post Arch Support Is Not From Shoes. It takes only seconds. Understand more with Which Shoes Help Exercise, Fall Prevention, and Ankles?. Make sure you are also not pronating from higher up - Healthy Knees.
It is natural to use your body in healthier straighter way, and control how you stand and move - the whole intent of yoga. It seems at odds to say that yoga teaches body awareness, strength, or positioning, then let ankles slump without control, and purchase expensive devices to do it for you.
Good work finding my web site's inspiring patient stories - http://www.drbookspan.com/PatientStories.html. Send photos of your progress if that will help you and keep us posted.
At Tuesday, September 18, 2007 10:22:00 AM,
Omnipleasant said…
Hi Jolie, thanks for your reply.
I'm printing out the articles you recommend to read on the train.
I'm totally with you on what you say about yoga and body awareness, also that meditation should be something you do during your regular daily activities, not just on the mat (like I read on one of your older posts). But I haven't met a teacher yet who taught me these things. I had to find out myself through experience, articles or the right books.
On the other hand, some people just seem to use their feet right without thinking about it. For instance I cannot see the inward dropping of the ankles with my wife's feet, while she's not concerned with body mechanics at all. And I wonder if there's anything I can do about the fact that my knees are more lax than average, or that my right leg is a tad shorter than the left one?
Until now I've just been following the advice doctors gave me.
I've been wearing orthotics since I was a kid, and had knee trouble on and off since I was 17 (I'm 29 now), so I don't feel like it helped me much. It's only since I started learning more about yoga than what I heard in class, and when I started reading articles like yours that I began to learn and believe that there is more that I can do myself. So far I'm a bit disappointed in what doctors or yoga teachers had to tell me.
But I'm motivated to learn and practice the right things, so I can know what I'm talking about when I teach yoga myself.
If I lived closer I'd love to attend your seminars, but since I live in Belgium, I'll stick to your posts and books for now.
Sorry for the long rant. I'm going to try out what I read in your articles and take pictures like you said. ;-)
At Thursday, November 15, 2007 7:55:00 AM,
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM said…
A short update to David's success is posted on Your Fitness Fixer Requests in the Works with more to come.
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