The author offers words of encouragement to a friend going through a rough patch.
An old friend of mine — I won’t name the person here — is going through a rough time with some very painful back problems. This post is my attempt to cheer that person up.
I won’t get into all the “everything’s going to be ok/I’ve been through similar stuff” talk. We’ve done that already. Nope. This time, I’m just going to make an attempt at getting my friend to laugh. Laughter is, after all, excellent medicine.
First, some vintage Bloom County:
Or maybe some Spinal Tap:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeGteg74mjw&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Or a King Diamond Christmas song:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a5fHMlb4V0&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Savage Chickens is always good for some comic escapism:
That new “Creature Double Feature on WLVI 56” Facebook group is good for a laugh, and plenty of nostalgia to make you forget about that back — for a while, anyway.
And if all this fails, gimme a call.
I’m sure this post did its job of cheering your friend up! Perhaps I can help with the back pain part. There is a lot of confusing information available about back pain. I like to keep things simple by using a quick little test. Try this out. It’ll literally take 1 minute.
Lie down on your back for 30 seconds with legs extended out, resting on the floor. Now bend your knees so the feet are sitting flat on the floor near your behind for 30 seconds. Which one feels better? If your back pain diminishes with knees bent then your spine has excessive extension stress acting on it. There are simple exercises to correct this. If your spine felt better with legs extended then you have excessive flexion stress acting on your spine. Again this is easily correctable.
Chronic pain results from a cycle of issues. Anatomical problems feed biomechanical issues which then affect movement habits that reinforce the original anatomical and biomechanical problems. Fixing back pain requires attention to all three levels. It’s quite simple to correct though and outlined this in my book. I’m very successful treating chronic pain and it is likely this information will be the key you’ve been missing to fix your pain. I’ve also posted this test on YouTube, if you’re interested.