Care for your Spine!

More rambles about the spine…
So it has been my experience as a health care giver – of massage – in case you weren’t keeping up on that point – that most people take really crappy care of their spines.
Now, I could go into how I’ve seen the effects of poor treatment of the spine.  I could go into how the spine (not to mention the legs and the entire body) gets compressed and tight with high-heel shoe wearing or how discs can bulge and cause extreme pain with enough time at the computer.

But I won’t do that.
NOPE!  Most people are pretty smart and can tell when their backs are hurting and people can most certainly tell when they are using their bodies and compromising their spinal health.  Pain is usually the indicator.
What I know people could stand to focus on more is how to improve their spinal health.
Some things you can do are pretty darn easy.
1.    Water
I had a client once who had received hours of bodywork from many very skilled practitioners thru the years (she was in an airplane wreck.)  I asked her what, thru the years, had been the best at reducing her pain.  She said, “Drinking a lot of water everyday, the pain in my body was always almost completely gone when I drank lots and lots of water.”

Drink water, every day!
2. Stretch and exercise. – Do what works for you.  Do simple limbering movements everyday and give yourself some cardio and/or weight bearing stressors everyday.
3. Get enough sleep – duh.
4. Don’t sit in one position all the time.  Take notice of your body positions:

? Do you find your self leaning the same direction when you’re lounging?  Do you cross the same leg over the other when sitting?
These sorts of questions will tune you into the finer patterns of arrangement in your body.  What I suggest is being aware of all your movements and body patterns; at work, play or rest, see if you can move just a little differently.  Try using your other hand to do some chores, cross your left leg instead of your right, try to stand on both legs when in line at the bank instead of leaning on one leg…
All of these little changes are deeply impactful to your body and your habitual patterns of movement and rest.  When you break out of old patterns, you are literally breaking up fascial patterns as well as creating new neuro pathways, which will make you more “body-smart” in their formation.
What does this have to do with spinal health?  Well, everything!  When you make your life a practice in moving with awareness as apposed to habitual movement and resting patterns, you create stability in a more 360-degree fashion.  There are less imbalances of tightness and strength in your body so the chances of pain and injury are reduced.
Ah! It’s reminds me of a good spiritual principal

Here it is: When life is in balance… all is pretty darn peachy.

What else can I say about the spine?
It houses the Nervous system!
Even as early as days after conception – our spines are forming the shapes and patterns they will have our whole lives!  Everything from the fluid balance in your mother’s womb to the old high school sports injuries leaves their mark on your spine.
How our spines are shaped  have very interesting and phenomenal connection and effect on the nervous system and how we work.
Chiropractors are the ones that have taught me that everything from digestion to eating disorders get affected by the shape and alignment of the spine.  Some disorders and symptoms make it easy to understand how nervous system health is connected to the happiness, health and shape of the spine: Headaches from a twisted vertebra in the neck or sciatica from low back tightness or disc slips and bulges that press on the nerve cords as they come out thru the bones of the spine.
Some times other disorders are a little difficult to connect to the spine but I assure you it’s all related.  Insomnia, Depression, and mental emotional issues can easily come from tissue restrictions that occur far from the deep workings of the brain.  Say that a section of vertebrea in a particular spine is “strait” and has lost it’s natural curve: the bones are out of ideal alignment, surrounding muscles are bent our of ideal shape and are tight and pained.
Fascia around the spine gets thick, sticky and hard with collagen…
Interlaced between the vertebrae, the spine is surrounded by encroaching tightness and the traveling fibers of collagenous scar tissue and fascia – the movement of the spinal cord is then stuck and restricted (because the spinal cord is soft tissue too) so the pulls from that “stuck point” in the spinal cord “tug” at structures up within the brain.
These deeper brain structures could be the limbic system, the hippocampus, or the pineal gland.  These structures along with many others with big names that I can’t spell, are ones that regulate hormones, sort and store memories and send signals of fight or flight into the system.  They do lots of other things but I’m not going there right now.

To summarize, pulls and stuck places in the spine can restrict movement of the spinal cord thus “pulling” at the brain (top put it very simply) in very subtle but very impactful ways, creating everything from headaches to symptoms of bipolar and depression.

So the spine continues to be super-cool and interesting as a topic of blog-posting ness.

I will post more on the spine in the future.  I think this might be enough for now unless something occurs to me soon.  Otherwise I think I’d like to change the topic.

I think in my next posts about health, the body and what I know about it… I will talk about stretching.

Stretching falls into the “self-care” category.  Stretching is such a simple but profound activity.  Some people use it for simple limbering before an athletic activity while others lean on it as their primary form of spiritual practice and connection to God.

Now that sound like a bad-ass topic!