Yoga Postures Helpful for for Back and Neck Pain

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Book Review of Back Care Basics

Back Care Basics : A Doctor's Gentle Program for Back and Neck Pain Relief by Mary Pullig Schatz, M.D.

I tried a number of different physical therapists for my back and neck pain, and all but one actually made my condition worse. The physical therapist who actually ended helping me not only helped to eliminate my pain, but also to reduce my spinal curves from scoliosis. His therapy included mostly stretching and yoga type poses that helped to improve my posture and body alignment.

The physical therapists who did not help had me do lots of calisthenics oriented, gym-class-type, strengthening exercises. I realize now my pain problems were because my back muscles were too tight, so the strengthening exercises were just making these muscles tighter and tighter, and making my back increasingly more painful. When I pointed out to one PT that the exercises were not working, she told me to keep going -- that I should "just work through the pain." Well, pain just led to more pain and none of the standard physical therapy exercises she prescribed for me ever helped me one bit.

At about the same time I found a physical therapist trained in body alignment, I found the book Back Care Basics, written by Mary Pullig Schatz, M.D. Dr. Schatz is both a medical doctor and a yoga instructor. She discovered yoga poses as a way to treat her own back pain, and now teaches yoga classes to others to with the same types of problems. For me, my backache was from tight, contracted unbalanced muscles and the stretching, lengthening poses in yoga were just the treatment I needed to help me.

When my backache was at its worst, I bought just about every back exercise and treatment book I could find. Of all the treatments I tried, I would say that yoga is the treatment that helped me the most. And of all of the books that I read, the book Back Care Basics is the most helpful with the most detailed information.

The book has many diagrams of bones and muscles to help the reader visualize what is taking place in your body as you do the poses. It also has a section in the beginning that helps to determine the problems you may be having with your own body alignment, such as swayback or flat back. Most of the book consists of pages of different poses, with pictures, detailed instructions on how to do each pose and the types of conditions each pose may help. I used to have scoliosis (sideways curved spine), kyphosis (rounded shoulders) and sciatica. This book has sections for each problem, so it was a great find for me. Interestingly, the book doesn't have a special section on TMJ, but after improving my body alignment, my TMJ pain was also cured.

Related Pages:

Yoga for Back Pain - Yoga poses (postures), videos and books to relieve chronic upper and lower back pain.

Yoga for Eye Floaters - some poses I found helpful.

Related Web Sites:

Extension & Recovery Yoga by Sam Dworkis. Free for students and teachers. Yoga for health and fitness. Safe yoga exercise, breathing, and mediation for chronically ill, injured and aging students.

Yoga for Beginners - for further reading - choosing the right apparel, finding a good teacher, developing your personal practice, etc.

For the further information see my sections on:

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