The Good Back

Hi All

In an earlier post I referred to the small of the back (yao) as a catch 22 area, another common handle to the self-same area is 'bad back' like in 'I have a bad back'.

Well ... I used to have a 'bad back' and now I have a good one, all the credit for this and other refurbishing of my body go to Tai Chi Chuan as taught by Rock Ng, my Wu Style teacher.

O.K. what's the catch, what is causing this very common dysfunction ?

The cause is hidden in structure of the of the spine, and the load bearing function that it has.

If you'll look through Gray's Anatomy - or your descriptive anatomy book of choice, you'll see the structure of the vertebrae, the load bearing part of it is the body which is connected to vertebra above and below through the disks. The load that the spine carries is the thorax, and the balancing force are the gravity muscles passing though the 2 grooves at the sides of the vertebral spines.

As long as the structure is such that the weight is passing through the disk bodies, the structure is stable. An analog will be:

mmm ddd wwwww
mmm ddd wwwww
mmm /\ wwwww
mmm / \wwwww

In this configuration, as the weight (ww) increases, the muscle (mm) will contract more, and the resultant force will be still passing through the disks (dd). This structure is inherently stable.

When the lower back curvature gets more pronounced, the balance point will move off the disks, towards the pedicles, impairing their function, and then when the arch increases more it'll pass beyond the vertebral structures, into the muscle mass creating a bow.

When this happens, any muscular contraction, instead of balancing the structure will unbalance it further (catch 22), at this juncture the structure is inherently unstable. More so, the splinting reflex will kick in increasing the dysfunction. This is a positive feedback circuit, and the only way to stop the runaway process is full bed rest, muscle relaxants etc.

Some MD's and others will recommend at this juncture to increase the strength of the abdominal, reasoning that pulling the far side of the lever (ll) will decrease the curvature, true as it goes, however, this will increase the pressure in the body cavity, impair abdominal breathing and in essence create a 'double weight' area.

When attempting to use Tai Chi Chuan incorrectly at this juncture (using the muscle at the top {front} of the thigh) the knees, qua and yao are blocked (the qua directly since the quads will pull the pelvic rim forward, the knees from lots of pressure on the patella, and the yao indirectly from rotation of the pelvis that translated to additional lower back curvature), and little headway can be had.

The TCC 'trick' is to flatten the yao by bypassing the quads, counter rotating the pelvis to flatten the yao, and releasing the abdominals so that belly breathing can be had.

Peter G. has posted a very detailed description of the recovery process to the TCC list a few months back.

The key to this is reasonably simple even if not commonly spoken about, one has to transfer the load bearing from the quads to the fascia lata by tightening the tensor fascia lata.

This practice is commonly referred to as 'u shaped crotch' (see CPL's book) and is accompanied by an outwards rotation of the thighs, and inwards rotation of the lower legs.

This method has to taught hands on, and practiced under supervision.

Once the key is given, one needs to invest in daily horse stance practice.

Starting with a few (5-10) * seconds * at a time, (if you can do much more to start with you're doing it wrong). The feedback is simple, the sides of the thigh feel a very hard burn.

One practices 3-5 times a day, a total of a minute of so at a time. As endurance builds up, one increases the depth of the sit, until one can have 'knee over toes'.

When this stage is reached, one narrows the stance, and starts high again.

When one can maintain a *correct* sit for 5-10 minutes, one can starts doing the form, correctly.

David
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Earlier Posts = appereard in http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/bodysmith/
Qua = top of the thigh as it articulates with the pelvis
Yao = small of the back and the flanks
Peter G. = Peter Gilligan, http://www.neijiainsights.co.uk/
TCCList = http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/TCClist/
CPL = Chen Pan Ling, http://www.amazon.com/Pan-lings-Original-Chuan-Textbook-Chiao/dp/0966024052