‘My bed is so cosy, nice and soft,. When I sleep I sink into it, I am in adreamland and I feel wonderful and so fresh in the morning. I love my bed, it is so dear to me.’ ‘Disgusting!’ said the osteopath.
‘I have never played any game in my life. When I was young I entertained myself with novels and movies, or kept myself busy with my course books; I was a bookworm. When I got married, I hardly had my chance to participate in games. My house is well equipped with modern gadgets and amenities so that I hardly exert myself physically.’ ‘Frustrating!’ said the osteopath.
‘I was tall with good features, but since I was tall I could hardly hold myself erect. This was also due to the natural instinct of a teenaged girl. I graduallydeveloped a habit of walking and sitting with a forward stoop. I gradually developed a habit of walking and sitting with a forward stoop. I cannot change it now.’ ‘So unmindful!’ said the osteopath.
‘If you go to Rajasthan, watch the ladies carrying a number of water pitchers on their heads. They walk miles and miles to bring water for the cooking and daily washing. It is a pleausre to see them walking. They walk so straight and their walk looks so very graceful.’ ‘Wonderful, it is healthy!’ said the osteopath.
‘Do you see boys making pyramid formations in a circus or on the streets of Bombay to bring down the pitcher hanging high and tied to a rope on Janmashtami? They make human pyramids, one boy over another, to reach the top to break the pitcher. Only a team of healthy and stout boys with straight backs can play this game and succeed.’ ‘It must be very interesting and so healthy!’ said the osteopath.
‘We live in a village and our work involves hard labour in the fields and at home. When we are young we go to the akhada to do dand-baithak and wrestling. We perspire, we rub mud on our bodies, we take a swim, we feel fresh and fine. We cannot afford thick mattresses, so we just spread a little rug on the ground and full into a dreamless sleep, only waking up in the morning. We feel fine and energetic; we feel like pushing and punching somebody. ‘You have the healthiest habits in the world! Said the osteopath.
At the London college of osteopathy, we used to hear an interesting story about a man called Frederick Matthias Alexander. He used to cure his patients of their aches and pain, only by teaching them how to stand and sit correctly and how to do different activities using the correct posture. He cured his patients just by correcting their posture! This may appear very surprising, but it is true. Osteopaths are very careful about the posture of their patients. They tell their patients how to correct their posture and do corrective exercises, so that men today are conscious of the role that posture plays in the etiology of different diseases.
It is very important to know how one should carry one’s body. A humped back and vertebrae contracted together cause back pain. The neck sunk down on the chest causes stiffness in the neck, pain in the arm and headaches. When we stand erect, how many of us put equal pressure on both the legs? All the body weight is usually put on leg, putting a constant strain on the pelvis and lumbar spine. Bad posture keeps our muscles tense.
How many teachers or parents are watchful of their child’s posture? The correction of posture in a child is much easier than in grown-ups and elderly people. Healthy habits developed by a child help him right through his life. As parents or teachers, we should be conscious of how a child sits and if the posture is incorrect, we should point it out to him and take care to keep on correcting it. It is very important to see how a child sits, treads, writes, walks and plays.
Spinal curves are absent at birth and during the first few weeks of life, there is one continous curve as the child is curled up in the womb. This primary curve undergoes changes as the child gorws and lifts up his head, tries to sit, crawl, stand, walk and run. At the age of three months when the child tries to lift his head and look around, the upper secondary curve in the spine – from the first cervical to the first dorsal vertebrae – starts developing. By nine months when the child is able to sit, this curve is convex forward.
The lower spinal curve (lumbar) from the first lumbar to the fifth lumbar vertebrae appears between twelve to eighteen months when the child tries to walk. It is more prominent in females than in males. The thoracic curve from the second to the twelfth thoracic vertebrae is concave forward. The pelvic curve from the lumbo-sacral joint to the coccyx faces downwards and forward.
The primary thoraic kyphosis (being forward at the thorax) present at birth is maintained; the cervical and lumbar lardosis (bending backwardat the lower spine) are developed during the process of growth, so that man can assume an erect posture. Biologically speaking the lumbar and cervical (neck) curves emerged after man acquired an erect posture during the evolution of human life.
Mechanically these curves are so constructed due to the structure of the vertebrae, that they are maintained even when we lie on the floor or an extremely hard bed. If these curves are excessive, they are a causative factor for different aches and pains. For example, the spinal joints most vulnerable to internal derangement are between the fifth and sixth cervical, and fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae – the area of the spine where the cervical and lumbar is most marked.
From early childhood every effort should be made to prevent future backache. Back pain is a universal symptom. So the aesthetic consideration of a child’s posture and mechanism of disc protrusion should be a consideration before selecting exercises for children. In adulthood when disc degeneration has already started and the spine is comparatively stiff, exercises suddenly forcing a person to bend forward should not be included; if included at all, enforcement should be gradual, so that the spinal ligaments are able to reattain their elasticity and undue damage is not caused by sudden force.
A patient with back pain should not be advised to do forward bending exercises. Sometimes even when a sufferer from back pain finds that flexion exercises increase his discomfort, he is asked to do these exercises. Any exercise which aggravates pain. During or after it has been done, is harmful. It is a symptom of injuring a sore spot and healing of the pain is delayed by such exercises.