The Alexander Technique & Back Pain
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The Alexander Technique is commonly thought of as a form physical therapy that is used in particular to help with conditions that are correlated with long chronic tension or stress such as back pain, stiff necks ‘frozen’ shoulders etc.
Whilst it often does bring relief for back and neck pain (because these conditions are often caused by chronic stress or muscular imbalances) the Alexander Technique actually describes a method that is designed to change the habitual movements in everyday activities and bring freedom of movement, improved balance and coordination. The method or technique is intended to reeducate your mind and body rather than being a series of treatments or exercises.
It is a process that teaches you a simple and practical method for improving your overall physical ease. It helps you discover a new balance in your body by releasing unnecessary tension and it can be applied to all routine activities e.g. standing, walking, sitting, lying down, lifting and so on,…As such it brings freedom of movement, improved balance and coordination to everyday, repetitive activities.
A particular focus of the Alexander Technique is to learn how to use of the appropriate amount of effort for a particular activity, which gives you more energy to share across all your activities.
As mentioned above, the Technique is not specifically designed to address back pain and stiffness, stiff necks and so on. However, because these conditions are often connected with long term issues of poor posture and movement, chronic tension or stress, the Alexander Technique also relieves back pain by correcting the underlying causes of the condition.
You can watch this 13-minute introductory video on the Alexander Technique produced by the British Medical Journal in 2008 as part of a major study showing the effectiveness of the Alexander Technique in alleviating back pain.
Video link Introduction to the Alexander Technique
How Inversion Tables Can Help With Back Pain Relief
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I’ve not read any studies that have demonstrated definitively that you can get health benefits from using an inversion table and/or using inversion therapy.
Like many types of treatment, some users think they’re great and say they get worthwhile back pain relief from an inversion table, whereas others say the benefits are marginal, or not apparent at all.
The positive side of inversion therapy is that there appear to be no harmful effects – either it helps or it doesn’t, but there’s no downside (except possibly the waste of time and money).
A typical, home-use inversion table
So the potential benefits are as follows:
(A) For Back Pain Specifically:
- An inversion table can give you relief from different forms of back pain.
- An inversion table takes pressure off your back and enables the body to stretch and re-align and can help to stretch and strengthen ligaments.
(B) Potential General Health Benefits:
- Because you’re hanging upside down inversion therapy may help increase oxygen flow to the brain – your head is now ‘down’ for the blood flow.
- An inversion table may also help to improve your circulation
- By taking pressure off your discs it can encourage natural healing processes to occur
The Theory Behind Inversion Tables:
Clearly when you’re lying on an inversion table, gravity is working for you and acts on your back in the opposite direction to normal. In this position, the downward force of gravity elongates your spine and increases the space between vertebrae. This can relieve the pressure on your discs, ligaments and nerve roots and less pressure typically means less back pain.
Usage:
Most people start using an Inversion Table at a shallow angle for a few minutes at a time and then increase the angle and duration as they become accustomed to it.
Look at it this way, lying on an inversion table is a way to take a break and relax. Given that stress and tension are often a cause of muscle spasms in the back, neck and shoulders, anything that relieves this stress is likely to bring relief. An inversion table will provide a full body stretch that can help to reduce muscle tension.
Even inverting on a shallow angle for a few minutes can help relax tense muscles and speed the flow of lymphatic fluids. The job of your lymph system is to flush out your body’s wastes and carry them to the blood stream. Clear this waste, introduce fresh supplies of oxygen to your muscles stiffness and pain in the muscles should ease disappear.
Changing the subject slightly – this stimulation of your lymph system is one of the benefits of yoga. Yoga exercises and postures massage internal organs and stimulate blood and lymph flow. Some advanced yoga positions hold the body upside down e.g. various forms of head stands. However, an inversion table is certainly easier to use than learning yoga head stands!
Trying An Inversion Table
Reasonable quality inversion tables appear in the $150-$300 price range. Practitioner/professional quality tables go much higher than this - $500-$1,000, but my opinion that they’re overkill for the average domestic user. These are a good secondhand buy though, especially if you are an eBay wizard and can find one that has been lightly used.
In future posts we’ll look at the pros and cons of some different tables.
So in summary, you have little to lose from trying an inversion table and you may get significant relief from using one.