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Where is the science? Show me some studies and experiments. This qualitative BS is worse than useless.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article65231...
"The Masai, most Brazilians, gymnasts (but only when they're actually doing exercises) and anyone who carries rocks on their heads for a living, have an upright posture." Somebody would give a shot at explaining why (most) Brazilians were singled-out in this example?
Where is the science? Show me some studies and experiments. This qualitative BS is worse than useless.
A huge point of change for me was due to this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1269951. To sum it up, tension - and the resulting psychogenic pain - was the major, possibly the sole cause for my pain. Not posture, not lack of exercise or some defect in the spine. At least, since just reading part of this book and all of its predecessor, my pain has gone from constant/unmanagable to a minor annoyance. There is some real empirical evidence behind Sarno's research.
This would have been about 20x as useful with pictures or videos to illustrate what the author is talking about.
It shows a couple of videos and mentions the Gokhale Method http://www.egwellness.com/gokhale-method and Ageless Spine by Kathleen Porter http://www.agelessspine.com/book.htm also links to previous posts with further discussion like the Asian squat, and images/videos
You might find it useful
[edited to add] These direct links from CR should be more relevant http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.com/2008/11/posture-fun... http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.com/2008/11/posture-age... http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.com/2008/11/esther-gokh...
"The Masai, most Brazilians, gymnasts (but only when they're actually doing exercises) and anyone who carries rocks on their heads for a living, have an upright posture." Somebody would give a shot at explaining why (most) Brazilians were singled-out in this example?
I feel posture just aggravates existing muscular problems. Its good to understand the mechanisms that cause and perpetuate these problems. There's the muscle sheaths that have stiffened by the lack of use of the full range of motion and the constant deposition of collagen, which literally glues the sheath to itself. This tight sheath can impair blood flow to a muscle, especially when the muscle is contracted for a lo…
Excellent point... "Stand-up straight" as advice is simply too simple.
Still, I think your good advice from Trigger Point therapy should be supplemented with some information from the Alexander technique.
You see, original article begin correctly in saying that "bones don't get tired, muscle get tired". If someone could stand or sit without muscular tension, they could avoid getting or aggravating trigger points.
BUT....
It's just that at point of being in distress, people just don't know how to do that. And there really isn't an easy instruction set that will tell most people how to do that because... trigger points and habitual misalignment causes people's sense of their bodily position itself to be distorted. Specifically, when your muscle is habitually shorted, it "feels" to the person like that muscle where it should be. So a person who say is told to "straighten their back" will do by tensing another muscle to fight against their habitually shortened muscle. And so in practice, as you observe, "posture doesn't help".
Still solution to people's misuse of themselves also has include something like a "hands-on retraining" of the body so the muscles and nerve learn together what "upright" actually means.
I'd link to Wikipedia on the Alexander technique but the article has gotten so crufty it's an embarrassment... Still, retraining of "use of the self" is an important compliment to any massage.
This would have been about 20x as useful with pictures or videos to illustrate what the author is talking about.
This is simply incorrect, as are most of the conclusions that follow from it. Basically, many muscles can trade off individual contractile fibers to remain under tension all day without perceived tiredness.
You are not a stack of blocks and you can hurt yourself by pretending that you are. Your body includes tensile as well as compressive structures and the whole thing is tied together with a control system. You are not meant to stand up without reflex muscle contraction! (You also aren't meant to sit or stand in one position for very long, but that's a longer discussion).
I trained as an Alexander Technique Teacher, but for the technically inclined I'd recommend reading Moshe Feldenkrais's Awareness Through Movement as an antidote to this way of thinking. See Understanding Balance by Tristan Roberts for more detailed information about postural reflexes.
"The Masai, most Brazilians, gymnasts (but only when they're actually doing exercises) and anyone who carries rocks on their heads for a living, have an upright posture." Somebody would give a shot at explaining why (most) Brazilians were singled-out in this example?
Somebody would give a shot at explaining why (most) Brazilians were singled-out in this example? Most people who don't live in a sedentary society probably still have good posture and maintain their natural skeletal alignment. I don't know if this applies to all of Brazil.