how to fix neck pain upper back pain, shoulder pain...

How To Fix Neck Pain Upper Back Pain, Shoulder Pain, Rotator

Cuff, and Tightness Without Drugs or Surgery

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This summary covers: Neck Pain, Shoulder Pain, Bad Cervical (Neck) Discs, Nerve Impingement. Pain Down the Arm, Reduced Cervical Lordosis, Forward Head, Poor Posture, Round Shoulders, Rhomboid Pain, Upper Crossed Syndrome, Spondylolisthesis, Muscular Pain, Rotator Cuff Tears, Numb Fingers,

Repetitive Strain, "Stress" Pain, Tightness. Dr. Bookspan pioneered functional exercise and fitness, and developed methods used by military and top spine centers around the world.

Copyright & Reprint Instructions

Copyright © Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM Named "The St. Jude of the Joints" by Harvard School of Medicine clinicians

Director Neck and Back Pain Sports Medicine Director AFEM - Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine

Hello, You're on the Fix Neck and Upper Back Pain page of Dr. Bookspan's web site. This is a no-ad, no hype site dedicated to getting you back to your life - healthy, mobile, and happy. There are hundreds of free articles here for you.

Neck and upper back pain (and numb fingers that sometimes occur too) is usually easy to fix. This article shows you how to understand and stop several major causes of neck and upper body pain, and learn healthy ways to move so that you do not get the pain in the first place. That is different than doing stretches or exercises to stop symptoms (then return to the same bad movement that caused it). Stop causes, and you will no longer get the pain, and your neck, shoulder, and upper back can heal. You can enjoy your favorite activities instead of giving them up.

Not All Exercise is Good Medicine. I show you how to change daily movement and exercise into Healthy Medicine.

No health insurance needed for this innovation in health care and major health care initiative. Much cost, time, and worry currently spent in medical treatments are unnecessary, and often unhealthful. It's not

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health care if it's not healthy™. Welcome to our Health Care Reform School™- We call it Fixa U™. I have developed information through years of research in the lab, and put it here on my web site for the benefit of the world - evidence-based primary source sports medicine. Get better and the world will be better.

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A Short History of My Work To Develop These Methods (skip this if you prefer to go straight to fix pain with article, below) This information is not copied from someone else who said it, or something I heard in a gym or in exercise science school. I am the scientist who researches what really happens. This is what I found through years of work and years of schooling in research design. I started lab research studies in the 1970s to find why standard neck pain, back pain, and other pain exercises and treatments didn't work. I saw that rehab info was not being applied to how people move, sit, and live in their ordinary daily activities. I applied it. People got better. I saw that common treatments and in fact the assumptions about why pain occurs, were not done by real researchers but repeated from myths people liked and bad studies with flawed design and stats. I did painstaking studies and also kept careful records (hundreds and hundreds of real patients) so I would know which things actually worked in real life, and which were due to other things including just time passing. When I was working on studies of the human body during immersion for combat swimmers, the experimental subjects, the lab physicians, and others in the lab kept saying they had all these aches and pains. Exercises their own physical therapists and docs gave them did not work or made them worse. I fixed them up. Their doctors started calling me (calling the lab actually, as I don't have a phone) asking how I fixed them so well. They (and their physicians) started taking classes with me. In the 1980s, class participants asked me to write everything down for them. I was surprised. I thought they should have taken notes. I typed information sheets for them. More doctors came to me after taking my classes, saying they knew their standard Patient Handouts were ineffective exercises. They asked me to make handouts for their patients. I was surprised. Again. I thought they could do that themselves. I typed Patient Handout sheets for them. I kept collecting data like a good scientist, doing studies to test and retest methods, and develop better ones. When the internet came out, I sent handouts electronically, instead of photocopies. In the 1990s I typed everything in several training manuals that became books. One is Health & Fitness In Plain English - How To Be Happy, Healthy and Fit for the Rest of your Life. After two different publishers, the new THIRD edition of How To Be Happy, Healthy and Fit... eliminates wrong things previous publishers added over my objections. Another book is Fix Your Own Pain, with patient stories in every chapter showing why patients get better, or don't, and why. Several more books of my life's work tell how to make life pain free, stronger, and more fun. Each book is different. I have seen fitness and rehab myths and fads come and go, but these methods remain effective over time. More about me in Adventures. Limited Classes and appointments to train directly with me, and workshop certification by me through AFEM for top students. Get the books for reference while you keep getting better:

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To keep this quick and easy, much is shortened. Use this summary to get better now, and get the books and eBooks for the rest:

Info, Drawings of the figure Backman!™ and photos in this article copyright © Dr.

Jolie Bookspan

Now, go fix your pain.

Answers In A Nutshell

1. My work is not alternative medicine. This is standard-of-care, evidence based sports medicine techniques, applied to real life - where you actually need it.

2. Neck pain and upper back pain are not a disease or "condition" or something that once you have, you have it for life. It is an injury like a sprained ankle, that with a little common sense and information, can heal and you can be better than before.

3. You do not need to have surgery or extended medical treatments or rest to relieve neck pain or most rotator cuff tears.

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4. You do not need to give up impact activities like running or martial arts, give up weights or heavy occupational work, or activities you love.

5. Many common exercises and well known stretches, even rehab stretches cause (or don't fix) neck pain because they are not healthy movement. They are found in gyms, yoga, Pilates, and many popular fitness books and videos. They are done out of tradition, and like smoking they may "work" but are not healthy. By changing your movement and body habits to healthy ones, you will get the built-in exercise you need for health while you prevent causes of much neck and upper back pain.

6. You do not need to give up computer or other desk and sitting work to stop neck pain. Sitting and moving in unhealthy ways can be easily changed to healthful habits. This article will give you the concepts. After understanding them first, use the free Sitting Healthy article. This is different from doing sets and reps of exercises, then going back to injurious daily habits.

7. Neck muscle, disc, or joint injury are not the cause of the problem - they are RESULTs of what you are doing to hurt your neck - things you can fix yourself. Even when inflammation or immune response are identified, they are results, not causes. This article will show you how to understand and fix causes instead of using drugs and surgery for the results. This means you do not fix pain with a bunch of exercises and stretches. We fix the injurious movement habits that cause the problem.

8. You may have several causes of pain. If you fix only some of them, you will fix only some of your pain. The answer is not to continue on, missing the rest, saying "it just takes time." Don't allow the other damaging causes to continue. Check for other causes you may have missed and fix them all. Then you will stop all pain, and instead of alternating feeling better from fixing one thing and hurting from other causes, wondering why you have intermittent results, you fix all and heal all and go on stronger and better than before.

9. Not all neck pain is from what may show on an x-ray or other test or scan. You are not doomed by scan results.

10. Many common medicines and prescription drugs can cause pain. Un-needed treatments and surgeries are done - causing more pain and reduction in physical ability. Easy changes can stop the need for harmful medicines.

11. This article explains all the above. Make sure you understand the concepts (many highlighted in green).

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1. Bad Discs

The pressure of your own body weight on your neck muscles and discs over years of poor sitting, standing, and bending habits is enough to injure your neck as badly as a single accident.

After years of squashing the discs in your neck with a forward head posture - letting your neck tilt forward, jutting your chin

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forward, so that the weight of your head unevenly presses the vertebrae and the discs between them, the discs start to be pressed outward toward the back. They break down (degenerate) and bulge in the direction you've been pushing them (herniate). The disc and the swelling from damaging the area can press on nerves, pain goes down your arm. This is not old age, it's bad habits that you can stop.

Tightness from years of poor positioning can press on the same nerves mimicking nerve impingement and disc pain.

A degenerating disc is not a disease, but a simple, mechanical injury that can heal, if you just stop grinding it and physically pushing it out of place with unhealthy habits.

Left - side view of normal disc between two vertebrae. Right - disc pushed out (herniated) from bad bending habits.

Lift and bend properly to avoid damaging your discs.

Sitting, standing, and living with your neck and head forward can eventually push cervical (neck) discs out

As you can see, it is not a matter of strengthening muscles to stop pain. Strength does not make you sit or move in healthy ways. Many people do strengthening exercises and become stronger people who still slouch. No special chairs or devices make you sit right (although many can encourage worse sitting, so see the article on Healthy Sitting.) Sitting well won't happen automatically from exercises, stretches, special chairs, or devices. Sitting, standing, moving, and living your life with healthy movement mechanics is up to you.

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Instead of doing a bunch of artificial rehab exercises, and using stiff, uncomfortable posture drills, then going back to damaging daily life movement, try living and moving in healthy ways - functional movement mechanics. Here is how:

2. Muscular Pain, The Forward Head (Reduced Cervical Lordosis), Upper Crossed Syndrome

Tilting your head and neck forward is called a "Forward Head." A "forward head" is the source of much neck, upper back, and shoulder pain. Sufferers are often told they have a condition or disease or problem that is inherited and they need to live with it and take months of treatments, even medicines, when the causes are simple mechanical injury and the ways to fix it are easy and quick.

The head should be vertically over the body, not forward. Check to see if you let your head and neck tilt forward, shown in the first drawing at left below.

Are you too tight in the upper chest and shoulder (left drawing) to comfortably stand upright? (right)

The forward head (#1 left) commonly results in sore shoulder, neck, and upper back. Such pain can be easily fixed.

A Forward Head makes your upper back muscles ache. The pull and strain of the weight of a forward head is like the weight of a bowling ball yanking forward on your upper back muscles. A forward head can eventually damage neck and upper back structures, over years of moving and rubbing at angles they were not built for. Chronically holding neck muscles in an overstretched position weakens them. The forward head creates shortened, contracted muscles in front, and a stretched, weakened back. Cervical (neck) discs are pressured posteriorly. This creates a cycle of forward positioning that herniates discs and makes sore aching muscles, and the tightness and habits that keep you tilting forward. The result is that the average person has upper body pain from the poor positioning and at the same time, the chronic poor positioning makes them too tight to stand up straight. Check Yourself - you may be surprised to find that you do much of your standing, sitting, activity, and exercise with a forward head. No wonder you have pain. Look in any fitness magazine and see all the photos of people doing exercise with their neck tilted forward and chin jutting forward. Look at how people jut their chin and neck forward when they eat. See how they often tilt the neck forward and pinch the back of the neck at a sharp angle to jut the chin upward when they drink, instead of gently "unrounding" the upper back and keeping the neck more neutral. Look how they carry backpacks and bags - neck tilting

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forward against the load instead of using muscles to hold the spine in upright healthy position. Then they do shoulder stands in yoga, which simultaneously overstretches the posterior ligament, pushes discs outward, and creates forces that generate bone spurs. The average person overstretches and unequally stretches their neck and upper body so much, it is no mystery that they hurt - it is a mystery that they don’t hurt more.

Upper Crossed Syndrome. The pain and other problems of the forward head are sometimes referred collectively as "Upper Crossed Syndrome." It is not a disease or "condition" or structural problem, or something to live with. It is mechanical pain from bad posture - slouching. It is easily fixed. Stop holding your neck and head forward. It is simple. Don't "do exercises" for your pain then go back to the forward head. Methods follow below.

Muscular Pain From The Forward Head Poor standing and sitting ergonomics are a common cause of numb shoulder, upper back pain, and headache. It makes a classic "tension" pain across the shoulders, in a diamond pattern down the middle of the upper back, in the neck, up the neck to the head, and sometimes down the arm. Forward head is a common source of headache. Yet, after mechanically pressuring their neck all day, people call it stress and do not fix the very forward posture that would give them relief and stop the injury process.

Surprising Source of Shoulder Pain and Rotator Cuff Tears The forward head and rounded shoulders are a surprising hidden source of shoulder and rotator cuff pain and impingement. With the head held forward, and/or shoulders rounded, the upper shoulder rotates forward which gets in the way of normal motion when you raise your arm. The upper arm bone squashes the soft structures of the shoulder capsule against the shoulder bones (where the scapula meets the clavicle). This can cause pain, squashing (impingement) and rotator cuff injury. How often does this happen? Every time you wash and comb your hair, pull off a shirt, put away groceries, scratch your head, brush your teeth, and reach for anything you can be causing mechanical injury to the area and / or cutting into rotator cuff tendons a tiny bit at a time, until they fray and eventually tear. In short, a forward head and rounded shoulders can cause shoulder and upper back and neck pain through many dozens of injurious movement mechanics a day. Injury adds up over time.

3. Making It Worse Trying to Stand Straight - "Craning" Hurts Discs, Facets, and Soft Tissue

Check yourself - when you try to stand straight or "pull back your shoulders" do you do it by increasing the inward curve of your lower back, by craning your neck, or both? "Craning" the neck means folding or pinching the neck backwards, with the chin and face lifted. Craning the neck is surprisingly common, and a major source of neck, disc, facet (spine joint), and shoulder pain. Craning may be confused for, even the cause of spondylolisthesis in the neck - a sliding of the vertebrae.

Check to see if you crane your neck to look up, to drink, eat, to reach overhead, to try to stand straight, to read, to dress yourself, and wash in the shower. Check yourself to see if you jut your chin forward so often in daily life, continuing injurious habits and pain.

People are often told to stand up straight by bringing "ears over shoulders" or pulling their shoulders back. The result is that they tip their head back and crane the neck instead of getting the point - which was to straighten your positioning (posture), not make it worse. See the drawing of Backman!™ below demonstrating craning. To stand and sit straighter, don't tip your head back, yank your ear over your

shoulder, or merely bring shoulders back, leaving the neck still tilted forward. Get the concept of straightening your neck and upper spine together to make comfortable healthier upright position.

Are you so tight that you crane your neck to look up, or to try to stand straight?

The forced, pinched neck position hurts and can even create a sliding of vertebrae on the one below it, called spondylysthesis (in general, the top or bottom bone sliding more changes the name to retrolisthesis

or anterolisthesis - covered separately). No surgery or pills needed, just stop craning your necck.

Use the two stretches below to become comfortable holding straighter position, then stop craning!

WALL TEST

Try This Wall Test To See If You Need to Fix Upper Back Pain and Poor Positioning. This is a diagnostic test, not an exercise:

1. Stand near a wall, with your back close to, but not touching the wall.

2. Back up toward the wall. See what touches first, and how it feels most habitual for you to stand.

3. If your heels, backside, upper back, and back of your head all can easily and comfortably touch the wall (Figure # 5), without trying or straining, then it's a good probability that you can stand healthfully upright and straight. That is the goal.

4. Do you like to, or feel most comfortable to stand with only your behind touching, as in figure # 1 in the drawing below? You may stand flexed (bent forward) at the hip.

5. Do you like to, or feel most comfortable to stand with your upper back leaning back to touch the wall with the rest of your body forward of the wall (figure # 2)? You may stand with upper body slouched backward.

6. Does it feel most "normal" to keep your head forward? Figure # 3

7. Do you need to arch your lower back or crane your neck back to line up - figure # 4? Tight, painful, and needs fixing.


Do this wall test, described above,

to see if you have the healthy positioning needed to avoid neck and upper back pain.

If you are too tight to comfortably stand as straight as in figure # 5, then you are too tight to stand up straight. Pain can result from the bad positioning (slouching) your tightness creates all day, every day. (Note to large people - if you have a barrel chest and big back, you'd have to have a jug sized head to reach the wall without leaning back In that case, no need to reach the wall. Check if you can comfortably hold in line with midline of the body).

For everyone else, being too tight to stand upright in health is common and no mystery. Here is what to do:

Two Retraining Stretches

Tight pectoral (chest and front of shoulder) muscles rotate your arms inward. To see if you do this, put your arms at your sides, look in the mirror and note direction of your thumbs. Do they face inward – toward each other? To restore this muscle group to functional resting length do these two stretches, then *use* the new straight positioning for all you do. It is not the stretches that fix the problem, but the purpose of the stretches - to allow you to hold healthy position the rest of the day:

1. Chest Stretch (also called Pectoral or "Pec" Stretch, even though it includes other muscles and structures in front / chest)

Face a wall, left-hand photo below. Lift one hand up, elbow bent out to the side. Shoulder down and relaxed.

Turn away from the wall, using the wall to gently brace your elbow back as you turn away, shown in the middle and right-hand photos, below. Hold only a few seconds - 3-6 should be enough:


.

Instead of "doing" a stretch, get the purpose - to feel the stretch in the front of your chest on that side. Then you move accordingly, instead of doing strange rules that you can't feel or understand.

If you don't feel the stretch in the front chest, you are not doing this stretch right. See if you arm is behind you or merely out to the side. Remember, understand what you want to feel, then you will know how to move.

Don't ruin the posture of all your other segments. Don't let your lower back arch or your chin jut forward. Stay upright and relaxed without straining any other areas out of line

If anything hurts, you are doing it wrong. If your fingers or arm goes numb, you are pushing too hard.

Hold properly just a few seconds, then switch arms. Keep good positioning - avoid the three mistakes

pictured next.

Avoid hyperlordosis by flexed hip (left), forward head

(center), and hyperlordosis by thoracic lean (right). Thank you to participants of the Snowmass 2004 Wilderness Medical Society Stretch Workshop for demonstrating in the photo above.

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Drop your arms and look at your thumbs again. Thumbs should face forward now. Try the Wall Test again. It should be easy to stand straight now. If not, see if you have done this stretch correctly.

2. Next - the top of upper back/ shoulder (name is shortened to Trapezius Stretch, even though it includes Levator Scapulae and several other muscles and structures, of course)

Stand against the wall, with your back and the back of your head against the wall, gently

Put one hand behind you, as if in an opposite pocket, photo at right.

Breathe in. While breathing out, slide your other hand down the side of your body toward your knee, photo at right.

Tilt your head downward to that same side, gently. Keep it as much against the wall as you comfortably can.

Don't round or hunch forward, or drop or raise your chin. Feel a nice stretch along your entire side. Hold a second or two while breathing. Switch sides. If your lower back hurts or pinches to do this trapezius

stretch, you may be increasing the arch in your lower back. If you don't know how to tuck your hip to reduce overarch, see the free article on hyperlordosis to fix this.

Try the Wall Test again. It should be easy to stand straight now. If not, see if you have done this stretch correctly.

Repeat correctly until your Wall Test shows you have fixed the problem. Your wall test should become straighter starting the first day you use this two-stretch method correctly.

How These Two Stretches Fix You

Do not do these two retraining methods "as stretches" then go back to forward head. They do not fix the forward head. They fix ability to be comfortable without a forward head - standing straight. Do both stretches many times a day to allow you to stand and move the rest of the day without the forward position that injures and brings on pain. Use the Wall Test to check if you are straight. If not, do the two stretches above (pectoral and trapezius) again, then check if you have accomplished the purpose of the stretches with the Wall Test again until you have corrected the problem right then and there Do not walk away with a tight, forward neck. That would be silly.

There is a third stretch in this series that I teach in my books, classes, and private appointments.

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More good stretches are also in the Stretching Article on this web site.

Exercises to Strengthen and Retrain Muscles

Neck pain exercises are misunderstood. Do you injure your neck all day then hope to fix it with a few exercises? It will not work if you "do exercises" then walk away with no use of the positioning or strength you just practiced. It is like eating butter and sugar all day, then doing 10 minutes of exercises and wondering why it doesn't "work." When you stop sitting, standing, and bending wrong and injuring your upper back and neck many dozens of times each day, it can heal.

The key is what you do all day. Try these retraining drills slowly. See how you feel the next day, then increase. Use these movements, not as exercises to do 10 times, but to retrain how to stand, sit and move with straighter healthier positioning all day.

Holding Healthful Upright Position is Upper Body Exercise

One of many conventional exercises often misused and misunderstood is the "double chin" (also called "dorsal glide"). It In this not-so-helpful exercise, people are told to pull the chin in 10 times (or 15 or 20...). Often people do this in stiff, painful ways. Then they go back to walking and sitting all day with their head

forward, wondering why their neck still hurts. Or they force their chin in, causing more pain. Don't do

that. Even people who have never had neck pain, hurt when they do this uncomfortable not-so-helpful exercise.

Instead, understand that "the double chin" exercise is not something to "do 10 times" then stop. It is something you use in relaxed way to learn the concept of not holding a forward head. Then you can use it to keep

healthful relaxed but upright head position all the time. In other words, you do this concept one time. Also you use it to see if you are too tight to stand comfortably straight. You fix that first, then go on to use the straighter

positioning.

People who think they must keep the chin pulled in stiffly often notice pain at the bottom of the neck where it joins the shoulder, and/ or pain behind theeears. Keep chin from jutting forward, not stiffly or so tightly that it

hurts, but easily so that your ear and back of your jaw is above your shoulder, not forward of it. Also don't retract so sharply that the double chin forms. Change the bad "double chin exercise" into a more useful,

functional way of standing simply, straight, and healthfully. When you try to "straighten up" make sure you can tell if you are straightening from your upper back, not by

increasing the inward curve of your lower back, or leaning your upper body backward.

Test your position with your back against a wall often during the day, to see if the back of your head touches, without pain, strain, craning your neck, or arching your lower back (described previously).

If it is not comfortable, do the two easy stretches (described previously) to restore ability to stand upright, then use that ability all the time, in intelligently applied, relaxed, healthy way.

The idea is to do this without strain, not to

cause it.

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The Point of Exercises

Strengthening and stretching are important, but do not change posture or lifting habits, and so, do not “cure” neck pain or posture problems. Use this new Dr. Bookspan method of using your brain and voluntary healthy movement habits to stop the source of pain. I have redesigned back exercises to be used to retrain you how you hold your body all the time.

Doing neck exercise is not like getting a shot of penicillin or going to confession. It does not “fix” bad habits the rest of the time. Neck exercise is supposed to retrain your thinking and habits *all the time* not just something to "do 10 times." Strengthening has no effect on posture if you don’t apply the strength the rest of the day to control joint angles for all activities.

Neck pain has a large component of bad movement mechanics, not weak muscles. Strength does not make you stand or move in healthy ways. Many people do strengthening exercises and become stronger people who still crane their neck, look upward constantly pinching back from one neck vertebra instead of runrounding their upper back, and slouch their neck and head forward. "Core" exercises are especially misunderstood and repeated and prescribed without any understanding that stronger abdominal muscles have little to do with the most common causes of back pain. Moreover, most conventional core training exercises are done in bent forward ways that reinforce the same bad mechanics you started with. For the research and interesting story on what abdominal muscles really have to do with back pain, see my article on Abdominal Muscles - what they do may surprise you. Bending, standing, moving, and living your life with healthy movement mechanics is up to you. The rest of this article tells more on how.

Where strengthening helps - Someone may use good body mechanics all day, yet ache with fatigue at the end of the day. That is not a back injury or true back pain that needs treatments, and should not be addressed with medications. Another instance is someone who really is so weak that they can't hold up their own body weight or the weight of their shoulder bags and instead, shifts it onto their joints, which wear with time and grind under the weight (slouching).

A little strengthening allows you to do more before fatigue pain sets in, and to be more able to use good mechanics instead of slouching. Strengthening will not keep you from slouching, and don't fall prey to unhealthful exercise programs claiming to cure back pain. Almost any movement can make you feel better for the moment. Over the long run, it's better not to use injurious movement techniques for your health. Use good mechanics for all you do and healthier ways to exercise explained in this article, other free articles on this site and the books with more.

Do You Exercise in Ways that Damage Your Neck, Shoulder, and Upper Back? - Neck Pain FROM Your Exercises:

If you hurt from excessive forward bending all day over their desk, steering wheel, work, and TV, the last thing you need is more upper back and shoulder rounding. Many exercises, ironically even those commonly (but mistakenly) prescribed for back and neck pain, involve more forward bending - toe touches, knee to chest, crunches, and shoulder stands like "the plow" and "The Frog" (lying backward, raising legs over head so that all weight is on your upper back and neck).

http://www.drbookspan.com/AbsArticle.html

. You already are good at rounding your shoulders. Don't add to your round shoulders with more stretching

in back. Round shoulders are part of the problem in the first place.

Instead, stretch the front, as taught earlier in this article.

Why add to a forward head with these?

Adding body weight to a stretched-forward neck accelerates disc degeneration, gradually pushes discs outward to the back (herniate), and can eventually make the bone protect itself by

growing a bone spur.

I did studies that found no relation between hamstring flexibility and lower back pain (except for all the people hurting their back by DOING hamstring stretches) - click to see why it is so often mistakenly prescribed for back pain.

Is Your Drinking Killing Your Neck?

Check if you jut your chin forward to eat and drink. Pushing the neck forward while lifting the head (chin forward and up) creates severe forces on the discs, presses the joints together in back, and in general produces unnecessary pain and injury. Instead, keep chin in. When eating and drinking, get more of the

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lift from your upper back, "unrounding" and straightening the forward curve of the upper back, instead of only pinching back from one spot in the neck.

Easy, fun Neck Saver reminders for drinking and sitting click items.

Discs Can Heal

Disc injury is not a life sentence. Disc degeneration or slippage (herniation) can heal - if you let it, no differently than a sprained ankle. Stop damaging your discs with bad bending, standing, and sitting habits and the discs can heal. It takes years to herniate a disc, and only days to weeks to heal it by stopping bad habits.

Muscles Can Heal

When you over-tighten muscles with hunching and bad habits, they can remain too shortened to let you stand properly. Or they stay tightened in “knots” or spasm. This changes their muscle chemistry. When you slouch, you keep some muscles overly shortened and others overly stretched, which weakens and strains them. Massage does not stop the cause. Are you paying good money gimmicks and medical devices and massages and treatments and adjustments then go right back to causes? Stop bad movement habits and you will stop causes, and muscle knots and triggers and sore spots will quickly heal.

Pain When Your X-Ray is Normal

You may be in great pain from simple damaging mechanics. Your X-rays and scans are normal. You may be told nothing is wrong, or that it is "stress" or to give up favorite activities. Your pain persists from bad postural habits. This is no mystery. Change the bad habits to change the pain. You will be able to keep your active life and do more than before.

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When Pain Is Not From What's On Your X-Ray

Other times, the scans show some minor problem like arthritis, herniated disc, or degenerating structures. Just like car tires that are mid-life, but perfectly good, some wear may show on exam – but this is unrelated to performance or pain. Pain is falsely ascribed to the arthritis or to the disc. Patients feel doomed, and are often told to give up activities. Pain (even the herniation itself) may mostly result from poor mechanics. This is no mystery. Change the bad habits to change the pain. Keep your active life - it's important for your health. Sometimes, the scans show some major problem, and major surgery is performed to correct it (taking out away from healthy outdoor fun and indoors, sick, eating institutional food, away from fresh air and sunshine - that's not health). When the original problem was from the bad positioning, often pain persists or returns because you never corrected the mechanics that caused it. The defect itself may return from uncorrected mechanics. Surgery can be avoided. Fix the source of the problem and the results of the problem can heal without surgery. Instead of being forced into reduced health and activity, you can do more and have a fun active life.

Pain From Your Medicines

Common prescription medicines cause much joint and muscle pain. The pain is not a rare effect as previously thought. It is common.

Are you on medicines for lowering cholesterol? Sleeping medicines? Drugs for depression and anxiety? Irritable bowel drugs, stomach acid drugs (a large contributor to osteoporosis and thinning bones, too) drugs to concentrate, to help wake up, to calm you, for allergies. More and more drugs are found to have pain as side effect, even, of all ironies, drugs for pain.

Stretches and exercises will not fix this kind of pain. People with existing pain are often put on new medicines that cause more pain in an expensive, unhealthy cycle of pills, payments and pain, all needless.

In an ever worsening cycle, side effects are "treated" with yet more drugs with effects that lessen and degrade your health. That is not "side effects" and that is not health care. Many of these drugs are not needed. Some, like stomach acid drugs, cause the problem in the first place. Others have even more serious consequences.

A top health priority is to stop the need for these drugs so that you can lessen, then stop the need to take them. If you are in pain, so don't exercise, then get cholesterol and other health problems from not moving, can't sleep, then take cholesterol and sleeping medicines that cause dependence and more pain, use the healthy principles in my free summary articles and all my books so that you can move again, and be healthfully tired at the end of the day and sleep well at night. Not all exercise is good medicine. Healthy exercise as healthy medicine will stop the pain and need for medicines that cause more problems.

Pain From Your Expensive Ergonomic Pillows, Beds, and Devices

Check for large pillows, firm pillows, and beds that press or curve you into specific positions. They are a common source of neck and upper body pain, even headache. Often they are designed for people with

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unhealthy tightness to hold them in that same unhealthful position. Save your money and get free preventive medicine and relief - use healthful stretches and movement in the day time so you can straighten out more comfortably while sleeping.

How Long Does It Take To Fix Pain?

Using everything presented above, you should feel the difference as soon as you stop the causes of pain and try the two easy stretches and reposition your head and neck during all you do. If you're not feeling better right away, check what you are doing compared to what you have learned above and in the other free articles, for example, are you still sitting badly right now reading this?

It takes years to hurt a disc or neck muscles, and only days for it to start healing once you no longer are injuring it. Make sure there is not something else contributing to your pain. It is almost always quick and easy to start getting your life back and start feeling better right now. Don't wait.

When you look upward or reach up for all your daily activities, don't jut your chin forward and pinch your

neck back at an angle. Instead, "unround" your upper body, which is a great stretch that you need anyway.

What To Do Every Day To Prevent Neck Pain To restore proper muscle length to allow healthy posture:

First thing in the morning, don't sit on the bed. Instead of sitting and rounding your back first thing, turn over and lie face down. Prop gently on elbows, but not so high that it strains. It should feel good and help you straighten out first thing. Get out of bed without sitting.

Don't droop and hang your head forward when standing, sitting, and other movement. Remember that posture and body positioning is voluntary. This is the whole key to stopping upper back and neck pain when standing, sitting, exercising.

During the day, check if your positioning is straight with the Wall Test - described above. The wall stand does not fix the posture - it is a test.

If standing straight with the Wall Test is not comfortable, use the Pectoral (pec) muscle stretch and Trapezius stretch - described above.

To look downward for reading and working, simply keep chin comfortably in, and neck straight and upright, not forward. Tip your head down

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instead of hanging the weight of your head forward on your upper spine and muscles.

Lie on your back on the floor (diagnostic for tightness and repositioning). Can you lie on your back without needing a pillow under your head? If not, your forward head has become dangerously tight. Do everything above to relieve it. Be careful and use your brain not to do unhealthy things that hurt.

Sit without rounding your shoulders and upper back. Sitting article. Count how many times you let your head tilt or hang forward each day.

Imagine the injury to your neck by doing that many times each day. When sitting, it is not important "to keep feet on floor" or keep “flat thighs”

- parallel to the ground. That is often repeated as advice to prevent pain, but it does not change injurious mechanics. Focus on the main issue, not the trivia.

Do upper back extension exercise (described above). It will feel good. When you pull your chin in to fix your posture, don't do it by arching

your lower back. The postural change needs to come from your upper body, not by creating another strain on another body part.

Don't think you have to live your life "on eggshells" constantly holding yourself rigidly straight. Restricting your movement to limit pain is not how to live, isn't healthy, and isn't fun. Get more active. Learn the principles and apply them, instead of memorizing "rules" and buying expensive ergonomic chairs and beds.

(to keep this article quick and easy, much is left out. The books tell more.)

Summary

Neck, upper body and much shoulder pain is not a mysterious "condition." People spend their day sitting, working, walking, and driving rounded forward, lifting and bending with rounded forward bad positioning all day, then exercise rounded forward, physically pressing discs outward and overstretching muscles in back. They do yoga and Pilates moves with their head forward or pinched and craned backward, then do shoulder stands, plows, and other stretches that forcibly push discs outward. They take anti-inflammatory medications for mechanical pain that is not inflammatory, try remedies that do not address the cause of the problem while they continue doing the causes, do physical therapy in bent forward ways that exacerbates the original problem, give up favorite activities, have surgery then return to previous bent forward habits. Then everyone is astonished that they "tried everything and nothing seemed to work." It's like eating butter and sugar all day, waving your hands in the air for five minutes, then saying "I don't understands why I don't lose weight, I do my exercises."

Are you letting your weight rest on the joints and discs of your neck by hanging it forward, instead of holding body weight up on muscles with straight positioning? Using muscles to hold healthful straight positioning would stop the pain at the same time that you burn calories, strengthen, and be a free workout.

Use healthy positioning to stop the cause of pain and damage. Then no need for pills or surgery, and the injury can heal.

Pain can be avoided by no longer damaging body structures with poor mechanics.

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It's simple - Don’t memorize complicated rules. Just use muscles easily to reposition for daily life.

How is your body positioning right now? Rounded, bent forward to read this? The whole point of exercise and therapy is missed when you don’t learn to consciously use your muscles the rest of the day for standing, sitting, bending, and shock absorption. Use your muscles to stand and bend properly for all daily tasks. Bonus: It burns calories, strengthens, and is a free workout.

Watch other people’s posture, gait, and movement habits. It will remind you to straighten up.

Notice injurious "fitness and health" moves featured in fitness and yoga magazines and books.

Make sure your pain is not from medical conditions (vascular, infection, other) or from many medicines known to have body pain as side effects.

Send me your success stories and photos showing the principles in action. Prizes for best ones

Please do not e-mail me saying you are "doing the exercises 10 times" and want me to "tell you how to fix your pain from the forward head." Here is the answer now: Stop slouching your head and neck forward or forcing and yanking to straighten, and the source of pain can stop. It is not the exercises that fix things, it's you.

Send success e-mails and photos. First make sure you understand everything in the article above.

Send typos, ideas to improve this site, funny jokes (clean only) - typos @ DrBookspan DOTcom

Get the books to get even more.

You Don’t Have To Live With Pain

Student Comment:

"It is an honor to know you! The best part about all of your work is how you infuse it all with a sense of duty, honor, and commitment to bringing out the best in all of us - I don't know how you do it, but that is

what makes you exceptional. I agree with that student of yours who thought you were a superhero." ~ Linda Hsu, Massage Therapist, AFEM Certified, Fixing Neck & Back Pain

What To Do Next:

Now that your neck and upper back are better and you have hope again, you can take what you saved and have a vacation, give to the poor and still Click DONATE - secure and safe through

PayPal. Thank you !

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If you sent what you saved on years of pills, gadgets, and treatments that don't work, it would be thousands. A few bucks out of that is gratefully appreciated. I provide breakthrough information not

available elsewhere - no ads, no hype - to stop pain and get your life back. This is my work.

Why donate? So YOU can get more free real ongoing pain-free life. I have no salary to write this, no paid desk job. All my patients got better so no income from "rerun" patients. Anything you send is appreciated

and lets me write MORE ARTICLES FOR YOU.

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Help Without Donating - Use the Amazon book links below, with more on my BOOKS page. Order things you wanted anyway- song downloads, health and medical equipment, home stuff, movies, whatever. For orders through my links, even if for other things, as long as you started on my links, Amazon sends my web site a small percentage (no names sent to me, so happy anonymous shopping). Larger purchase send more to the site, so get your next computer or tractor here :-) Many small ones are helpful since they also send perks for higher counts. Thank you for helping keep this site running by shopping for things you want anyway. Use the links for next time too.

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Fix Your Neck With Fitness as a Lifestyle (Functional Fitness). See photo examples of using healthy movement in real life. Fitness as a Lifestyle isn't reps of exercises or purchasing training "plans" - It's using healthy movement for all you do in real life, making your daily real life

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See Dr. Bookspan's Adventures on This Web Site.

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That said, Be Healthy - Respect Copyright

This article is © and here to benefit the world. Information, drawings, and photos are © protected copyright. To cite this article or any parts, put author Dr. Bookspan, and

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If this article fixes your pain, send it to a friend (the article, not the pain)

Entire site is education only. Nothing is medical advice. See your doctor first and use your brain

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http://www.drbookspan.com/FitnessLifestyle.html

Fitness as a REAL Lifestyle - Functional Fitness, Exercise, & Daily

Movement

Healthy Movement Mechanics Builds Health and Strength Into Your Real Life Where You Need It Most,

Prevents Pain and Injuries - Fun, Free, Real Daily Life

Copyright © Jolie Bookspan. MEd, PhD, FAWM Director Neck and Back Pain Sports Medicine

Headmaster AFEM - Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine

Copyright & Reprint Instructions

This is the Functional Fitness page of Dr. Bookspan's web site, a free, no-ad site dedicated to getting you back to healthy, strong, happy life. No hype, no sales of silly fitness products. Dr. Bookspan's work is evidence-based primary source sports medicine that you can use yourself, right away, to make your own life better. There are hundreds of articles on this site for you. This page gives you an important group of articles of a practice pioneered by Dr. Bookspan - fitness as a (real) lifestyle. At the end are links to more, including functional programs for your groups using Bookspan Basics - skill sets all written out for you.

FUNCTIONAL FITNESS SUMMARY

Good movement and body mechanics are a powerful prescription for health and fixing pain.

Fitness as a Lifestyle does not come from going to a gym or doing reps of exercises. It is how you move in all your regular daily activities at home, at work, and everywhere. Moving, sitting, living, and working in tight injurious positions that reinforce bad posture and injurious joint positions all day is why most exercises and rehab and PT don't fix injuries, and why people don't get all the strength and ability they could - they are missing the most important time to use healthy movement - real life. Fitness as a Lifestyle is moving in healthy patterns all the time - getting strength, stretch, and injury prevention built in to your regular ordinary day.

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FUNCTIONAL FITNESS - "Gyms With Benefits"

These skills are basics for healthy fit pain-preventing daily life - built in to all you do.

No gyms, gimmicks, trainers, PT, or devices needed. Functional movement is a free gym that builds awareness and discipline as it

strengthens and increases your physical abilities during your daily activities at home and work.

Paying to go to a gym to burn fuels to power machines to exercise you, is obscenely backwards. Instead, you burn calories and strengthen using functional healthy movement to clean your house, your neighborhood, and make a better world.

Paying to go to PT to fix pain, and going back to the injurious body mechanics and movement habits that caused the injury, or using habitual poor mechanics to do your PT (because it's what you know and go back to) is sad, ironic, indefensible, preventable. Instead, we use healthy mechanics to prevent pain and let existing injuries heal.

Functional Fitness adds much movement for strength, mobility, injury prevention, awareness, stretch and other benefits that would otherwise be missed out on every day. It reduces injuries and helps you get healthy movement to fix existing ones.

This curriculum is part of my own teaching and sports medicine practice, and is incorporated into the classes of my Academy of Functional Exercise Medicine (AFEM) and Bookspan Basics. If you are using and learning healthy ways of body and actions, you can be a part of the fun - Certification, awards, community health, making medicine and health care healthy, building health into daily life, teacher training, and innovative projects for human powered fitness - click Academy. No charge to participate. This is for health.

For a wonderful place to come learn, fix injuries, gain skills, build a better greener world, see Project 5 on my Projects page.

More Functional Fitness - for your mind and spirit - see Emotional Training. This is all included in Dr. Bookspan's innovative program of

#GymsWithBenefits. Have fun!

Readers - send in your stories of how you use these training skills in your life and your exercise

to:[email protected]. More Sharing ServicesShare this page

Why Fitness as a Lifestyle? by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM

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An injury survey by US military revealed that 62% of American injuries in Iraq are occurring in the gym. The same is happening at home. How can this be? Several things are happening. Just as not every medicine is healthy, not all exercises and stretches are healthy.

Just as smoking "works" for weight loss, but is not a smart or healthy way to do it, many exercises "work" for cosmetic results, but result in long-term injury, and promote bad movement habits. Other common exercises don't work your body the way you need to move in real life, resulting in strains and injuries when going about daily activities.

1. My work shows you hundreds of simple ways to change your exercises, stretches, and daily movement, to make them fun, healthy, and the way you really need to move for healthier daily life.

2. Instead of repeating what others claim about health, I do original research. In my laboratory research in human physiology, and my sports medicine clinical practice,

3. I see patients every day who are hurting and unhappy, despite all the exercise and fitness they do. Many of my patients are yoga teachers, physical therapists, and Pilates teachers with back pain, hip pain, and neck pain. I see personal trainers with herniated discs and knee pain. I see body builders with back pain, despite all the abdominal exercises they do. I see patients, including fitness instructors, who aren't getting more flexible no matter how much stretching they do. I see people who are stressed, tired, achy, and not in shape, even though they spend hundreds of dollars a month on supplements and pills, gizmos, equipment, trainers, and classes.

The answers are simple, and my work and articles cover many easy changes you can make so that your fitness becomes not only more effective, but fun and healthy.

Get started now with the next in this series - What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?"

Photo © copyright Dr. Bookspan of of Paul Plevakas, contractor

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What is Fitness as a Lifestyle? by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM

To many people, fitness means stopping your "real life," changing clothes, driving somewhere else, and doing uncomfortable things without similarity to movement in daily life. Then they go back to "real life" - slouching, bending wrong, walking heavily, sitting rounded, leaning back to carry packages, taking elevators, and avoiding movement.

1. At the gym, people do squats with a trainer, paying to learn proper form and upright back, then bend over wrong to put the weight down when they’re finished.

2. They do proper lunges for their legs in exercise class, then bend over wrong without using their legs to pick up their things when they leave. They work with weights to isolate arms but never learn how their entire body stabilizes a weight, then hurt their back opening a window at home.

3. They work on a treadmill or elliptical trainer but sprain their ankle when out walking because they haven't trained balance and stabilization. They sit hunched in bad posture waiting for exercise class to start. In modern life, exercise is something you go and specially "do," then destroy and ignore your health the other 23 hours a day. Fitness has become “fast food” – stripped of value, sweetened up, and mass produced, even when unhealthy.

Changing your real life into healthy movement is a big and inspiring area of rethinking and retraining.

Instead of sitting slouched then stopping to stretch because your back hurts, sit and stand well so that you do not get stiff and sore in the first place. Instead of lifting packages, babies, groceries, laundry, and everything else wrong all day, then stopping to do back exercises because your back hurts, lift properly.You get built-in exercise, strengthen your knees, and save your back.

You don’t need to go to a gym; move, balance, and reach in healthy ways in order to do your real life. Instead of thinking you must stop your life to get health and exercise, fill your life with built-in healthy movement.

Thank you for photo: National Cancer Institute, Linda Bartlett (photographer)

Bending Right is Fitness as a LIfestyle by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM

Readers asked for more pictures of healthy bending around the house and workplace during daily life. They've been getting excited about the idea that daily life is the way to physical ability and health, instead of stopping life to do a bunch of exercises. People spend time and money for endless treatments and gadgets for back and knee pain and tight Achilles tendon. Healthy bending prevents the commonest sources of all of these.

A major predisposing factor of knee and hip arthritis is weak thighs.

A major risk factor of hip osteoporosis is lack of weight bearing exercise.

A major risk factor of falls is weak legs and poor balance. The Achilles tendon gets a natural stretch with each time you

bend right with heels down, and loses this constant normal source of stretch without good bending.

The most important contributor to making a lumbar disc degenerate, or slip out of place (herniate), and press on nerves causing sciatica, is bad bending forward.

The biggest contributor to upper back and neck pain is keeping the upper body rounded and bent over forward.

If you would like to reduce risk of falls, osteoporosis, bad discs, sciatica, achy upper back, and arthritis, get a built-in Achilles tendon stretch, and get strong shapely legs all at the same time, just use your legs with good body position for daily healthy bending.

Why go to the gym or to physical therapy to do knee bends to strengthen your legs, then spend your "real life" weakening your legs and degenerating your lower back discs with bad bending, and say, "I don't have time to exercise."

You will get free built-in exercise just moving in life. My friends and family in Asia are astonished when I tell them I teach Americans how to bend to look in the refrigerator, and that Americans tell me it is too much work to bend right to load dishes in a machine that washes for them. Then they pay money to go to a gym or buy equipment to exercise their legs.

Here is a fun way to change mind set to exercise as a lifestyle:

Count how many times a day you bend and how many times you can choose to harm yourself or help yourself.

If you would like to try "fitness as a lifestyle," this is the best place to start. Think of it:

when bending to make the bed, to pick up laundry, look in the refrigerator, load and unload the dishwasher, to pick up your shoes, open a lower cabinet, lift a child or pet, feed a child or pet, pick up things from the floor, pick up hand weights to do exercise, put down weights after exercising, many daily activities.

Drawing of BackMan! (tm) copyright © Dr. Bookspan

How Often Should You Be Healthy? - When Do You Do Lifestyle Exercise? by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM

A reader sent in the photos below to help others recognize unhealthy bending. She asked, "What is your advice when someone is having to bend to put dishes in the dishwasher? It just seems so uncommon to think to squat while loading the dishes."

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1. There is no better time to bend in healthy ways than your real life.

2. The whole point of fitness as a lifestyle is that your daily life is healthy movement - not to change clothes to do squats at a gym three times a week, then change clothes again, go home, and bend wrong all day.

3. Healthy bending is for every time you bend. How often is that? My article "How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending" showed how we estimated that active people wind up bending up to 400 times every day for ordinary activities. Even sedentary people are over 100 bends a day if they do things around the house like pick up the paper, feed pets, and reach in dishwashers and refrigerators. Why harm your back and miss free exercise for your legs hundreds of times a day?.

Most people know and repeat, "bend your knees" if you quiz them on healthy bending. Bending knees slightly, as in the above photos, does not make bad bending healthy. Bending over forward pressures your lower back discs, whether your back is rounded (photo above left) or straighter (above right). You are still bending over and the leverage point is your lower spine. Bending right is simple:

With feet side-by-side, comfortably apart, bend knees, keeping your torso fairly upright - as if not wanting something to fall from a shirt pocket (right drawing)..

Keep both heels down and shift your weight back to your heels. Pull your knees back over your heels. Don't let them droop

forward under your body weight. When you shift your knees

back, you will feel the effort shift away from your knee joint to your thigh muscles.

Don't stick your backside out or exaggerate the lower back arch.

Unless you are moving in healthy ways for your real life, it is not a lifestyle and it is not healthy. Healthy bending is easy and life changing. It is free exercise and injury prevention. When should you do it? Each time you want your daily life to be healthy.


Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy? by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM

Most people know that sitting badly at your desk, as in the left-hand photo below, is unhealthy:


1. It is easy to see that he is rounding his back forward.

2. His ear is far forward of his shoulder (even with his shoulders so rounded that the shoulders are forward too).

3 He is jutting his head and chin forward - The weight of his head is straining on the muscles and joints of his upper back.

The bad body ergonomics of rounding forward is a common cause of upper back and neck pain, often mistaken for "stress," even contributing to pain down the arm as you slump the weight of your upper body on nerves that go down the arm, compressing them. The forward bend to the spine squeezes your discs of your neck and lower back, gradually degenerating them and forcing them outward, which is called herniation.

Now look at the right hand photo of the bicyclist. The rounded forward positioning is the same. It does not magically become healthy because you are calling it an exercise. It is just as unhealthy whether you are at your desk, on a stationary or real bicycle, on an exercise ball, motorcycle, or in the car. What to do instead is simple. Sit up. Don't round your back. Are you rounding forward reading this right now? How to start fixing it - get the concepts, not rigid rules of angles and placement:

Pull your chair in close to the desk. Put your hips all the way back to the seat back. Lean your upper back against the seat back, not your lower

back. Notice your shoulders and chin. If forward, place them back. Move your chair far enough in to rest your arms on the desk.

Don't crane your wrists to type. I will write more about wrist pain. There should be no pain when keeping arms comfortably on the desk, which keeps the weight of your arms from hanging forward on your neck.

Don't push your lower back against the seat back. Many seat backs are rounded outward so that you have to sit bent forward if you rest your back against them. If the seat back is concave, put a small soft cushion (or loosely rolled small towel or shirt) about as small as your forearm in the space between the seat back and your lower back. Do not press against the roll - that makes the useless to stop back pain.

Don't tighten and strain to sit straight. It is common to be so tight from a lifestyle of forward rounding that sitting straight is not comfortable. Do the pectoral stretch in Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain, then use

the wall test in the same article to check if the stretch worked. On a bike, unless you are in a high level race, straighten up. It is simple. Healthy.

Why exercise in unhealthy ways? Watch people at the gym and in life. Notice how often fitness publications ask you to practice being bent over forward. Instead, get free built-in back muscle exercise and prevent strain and pain just by sitting with healthy positioning.

Thank you clipart.com and creative commons for photos- they own the copyright my copyright is for the photo composite of the two together only

Lifestyle Balance, Hip Stretch, Upper Back Positioning Awareness - Ancient Shoe Exercise by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM

In the yoga classes I teach, students learn that the poses themselves are not what gives good posture and focus. We learn what healthy positioning is, then apply it to how to move for daily life after walking out of the class.

In my sports medicine practice, I regularly see yoga teachers as patients for back, knee, and neck pain. That is because several yoga moves are not good for anyone - just as not all food is healthful. Many moves are fine, but other traditional poses injure joints, even when done "right" (or especially when done right), like bending over from a stand or a sitting position, whether the back is rounded or straight, as shown in the above articles on this page. We omit those moves and use others that are better stretches without the degenerating forces on the lower back and neck discs, for example, healthier hamstring Stretching in my healthier stretching article on this site. You don't have to injure yourself to get exercise. Fitness is supposed to be healthy.

In my yoga class, I use a fun, effective hip stretch. We stand on one foot and reached for the other ankle crossed over the bent standing knee (drawing at right). When we do this, we practice the daily healthy position of keeping the upper body upright and straight, with the chin in, not craned forward. One new student was not happy with my class. She was used to sitting on the floor in classes she ordinarily took. She was peeved that we did so much standing. Although people call yoga "mind and body," she didn't like that we used the body. Although people frequently say that yoga is about understanding and light, she whined and complained and cursed me under her breath for most of the class. She wanted to know why I was making everyone do an extreme and bizarre movement.

I told the class it was healthy and happy to do this move every day. I pointed to my crossed foot and spoke the name of this ancient move - "Putting on shoe."

I hope you will try this too, to get a normal and healthy hip stretch and better balance everyday. Remember that most of the world stands to dress - the ones lucky enough to have shoes. Stand up now


and try it. You will get free balance, healthy hip stretch, and leg strengthening every day from daily life. When you get good at this fun move, keep your ankle crossed and bend the standing leg enough for you to reach to the floor to retrieve your other shoe or sock. Keep your chest up and your back straight to prevent practicing unhealthful rounded position. Even though this one bends over, it does not transfer the pivot force to the lower discs for several reasons.

Have fun adding new healthy movement to your life every day. Write your stories and take photos of how you make your life better by fixing your fitness to be functional and healthy. Send me the photos, or a link to your photo sharing site of your examples, and I can put you up in lights as a role model for healthier life.


Household Fitness as a Lifestyle - Every Day by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM

Fitness as a lifestyle at home is using healthy movement and body positioning as you go about all your daily activities:

Making the bed. Ivy from New Zealand uses a half squat instead of bad bending (bending over) to functionally strengthen

her legs and prevent back pain.

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Feeding the dog. How often do you bend around the house in a day? Do you bend over wrong putting weight and leverage on your discs, or bend with legs, getting built in strength and stretch. The more you use it, the more you

get the practice, strength, and stretch you need to do it.

Vacuuming with a good half-squat.

and full squat. For more on knee strength and injury prevention squatting see my knee pain article

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Good lunge with front knee over foot. Gives stretch and strength for legs and is good for knees. Good bending helps fix knees. Avoiding good bending does not get your knees the built in movement and

strength they need for doing and enjoying daily life activities.

Full squat for chores with feet facing the same direction as knees, and both heels down. Good full squats, done right, can be healthy for both back and knees. Lower back gets a wonderful

stretch without bending over, and then knees can go through range of motion without harm when you use good mechanics, as above - feet facing the same direction as knees, and both heels down.

A Thai villager sits straight, getting nice hip stretch, and keeps ankles straight It is common to bend up the ankles when the hips are tight. Keeping ankles straight shifts the stretch to the hip where it is needed and stops overstretching the outside of the ankles, where is is not needed or

healthy.

Gardening and washing dishes. Our friend Mom Pon is relative to the Abbot of the Muay Thai Monks on Horseback near the border of

Myanmar (Burma). We stayed with her during the time we spent at the monastery. She sits straight and comfortably in full squat to get things for dinner from her garden, then to wash dishes in her kitchen. We do the same when we help. She stands straight with chin in to reach overhead to get tamarind fruit from

her tree

Our friends, the elder Thai ladies, sit straight while they watch a parade

A hill tribe mother stands straight without rounding forward or leaning backward from the weight of her baby -

Healthier Carrying gives you Free Ab Exercise and Stops Pain

A villager takes his children for a fun ride, while sitting straight.

Sitting straight to wash the kids.

I gave these villagers soap bubbles for their baby. They played for hours.

Enjoy life, laugh, and share good times.

Thank you for photos - David from Belgium, Ivy from New Zealand, and Dr. Bookspan

Fitness and Health as a Lifestyle for Holidays by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM

If you think you won't have time to exercise over the holidays, here is good news. This post will show you how to move in healthy ways so that you have healthy exercise built-in to all the cooking, shopping, furniture moving, and social interactions. Here is more good news. You don't have to go to a gym to work off the stress and eating too much from the holiday. Life is not supposed to be a poison that you deliberately take, then need an antidote to offset.

Here are four of the healthiest, quickest ways to make your holiday preparations and participation into fitness and health as a lifestyle:

1. To pick up chairs, babies, and grocery bags, to move furniture, and for lifting things from the floor, bend your knees, keeping your knees over feet, weight back toward your heels, and your body upright - upright enough to keep things from falling out of a shirt pocket.

2. To carry chairs, babies, grocery bags, furniture, and any loads in front of you, don't lean back. It is a common bad habit to lean the upper body backward, increasing the lower back arch. Leaning backward shifts the weight of the load off your core and arm muscles and onto your lower spine. Get free, built-in exercise for your abs and arms and save your back by standing upright, not slouching back. Don't lean and arch backward to carry things.

3. Notice all the times you round and hang forward over things that you can easily reach by standing upright. Check your upper back positioning when standing over counters, sinks, grocery bins, vacuum cleaners, cribs and baby-changing tables, and when setting food tables. Don't let your body weight hang forward or your upper back rounded. Stand upright, chin loosely in (not strained and yanked inward to force "good posture" - just as unhealthy as slouching). Too look downward, tilt your head instead of pushing it forward to see what you are doing. Relax shoulders downward. Smile. Breathe.

4. Preparations and family interactions are no excuse to do unhealthy behaviors out of habit, like smoking, overeating, and arguing, then blame it on stress. The bad habits are even more stress on body and mind. If something is wrong, see about fixing it in a good way. Don't suffer in silence with people telling you that you have to be happy just because of a holiday. Make your home healthy for yourself. There is no place it matters more

Get exercise cleaning the house of junk and clutter. Take the extra clothing, toys, and household items to a shelter. Carry the bags with healthy positioning to the people who need it.

Make a healthy meal with family or alone, without television or phone. Carry the meals to shut-ins and isolated elderly in your neighborhood, and the homeless on the street.

Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Do grocery shopping, cooking, and vacuuming for those who are too sick or disabled or alone to do it for themselves. If you think you don't have time because you have young children, take them with you to help carry things and to teach them healthy ideals, and how thankful they can be for the home you provide.

Don't smoke, drink soda (diet soda is just as unhealthy) eat junk food (even if it has marketing words like "organic" on the label), or undo the health benefits of fruit and vegetables by junking them with cream, sugar, and cornstarch. Add up all you spend on cigarettes and junk food that take a healthy body and give it health problems. Take the money and give to the poor. With what you save on prescriptions and treatments for all the pain and jitters you cause yourself, you can feed a village and still take a vacation.

When you eat the holiday meal, say thankful things. Taste your food. Turn down seconds. Breathe. Smile. Help clean up. Shoulders back. Enjoy the roof over your head. That is health as a lifestyle



Don't Confuse Exercise With Real Fitness by Jolie Bookspan, MEd, PhD, FAWM

One of my readers, Dr. Zoe Eppley, e-mailed, "I have been trying to apply your "bending right" approach to my daily activities. I find my tight leg and hip muscles seriously limit my ability to squat. Could you please recommend some stretches that will help?"

I receive this inquiry often. People are realizing that they are too tight to move in healthy ways for normal everyday life. I hear it from instructors of aerobics, yoga, Plates, personal trainers, and many others. This is an important epiphany. If you are too tight to move in healthy ways, then it is likely that you spend every day of your life moving in tight ways that create pain and perpetuate tightness.

The good news is you do not need to "do" stretches and exercises. Keep bending right and you will get exactly the stretch and strengthening you need. My most important message that I stress in all my work about exercise is not to "do exercises" but get crucial, functional, effective exercise by moving in healthy ways during normal everyday life.

People spend fortunes on treatments for pain, gadgets, potions, pills, prescriptions, adjustments, and ongoing medical scans and tests. Tightness and body pain is often made to be a mystery because it persists even after surgery and exercise programs. The reason is that they don't stop the cause. My successful techniques for fixing pain, even the most resistant back, neck, knee, and other musculoskeletal pain, emphasizes that you don't "do exercises" but simply stop the source of the injury by stopping unhealthy injurious movement patterns, and using healthy ones. Many people do ten repetitions of an exercise and hold each stretch for 30 seconds, then go back to unhealthy moving, sitting, bending, walking, exercising, and everything else that caused their pain and tightness in the first place.

If you are too tight to use your legs to bend down and get back up without using your hands or getting help, you need th

how to fix neck pain upper back pain, shoulder pain...

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