Self Help tips for June

Well, the weather seems to have finally got more in line with the time of year and if it holds for the weekend then next week promises to hold lots of people coming in with garden related injuries. As it has been half term this week then we also expect parents to be coming in after trying to keep up with their children!

So what injuries are we talking about?

The most obvious one is back pain. Everyone will get a backache at some time or other, either from digging or weeding, or simply by trying to lift something that is really to heavy for you.

If the problem is a simple backache with no other symptoms like pain down a leg, or pain when you cough or sneeze, then try sitting on the edge of a chair with your legs wide apart. Now bend forward and try to touch the floor with your hands. Keep your head up all the time so the bending movement happens at the hips and not in the spine. Just hang there for about 20 - 30 seconds and you will find that the backache reduces. If you can get into a full squatting position, with your heels down then all the better.

But absolutely do not go into the pain. If it hurts don't go so far.

What this movement does is to open the sacro-iliac joints which sit between the pelvis bones and the sacrum. The sacrum is the big triangular bone which forms the keystone in the arch of the pelvis and is the commonest area of problems.

Because we insist on sitting on chairs and don't generally squat on the ground, then we lose nature's way of self correcting the loading that we put on these joints. This is one of the reasons that there is so much back pain in the western countries.

Try this exercise and see what happens and let me know