5 Steps to Pain-free, Comfortable Aging
It can be a surprise to find out that a rounded spine and collapsed posture, so common to many elderly people, is not an inevitable feature of aging. In fact, new evidence is pointing to longstanding postural habits as the primary indicator of whether or not someone will shrink and round with advancing age. A look at the postural habits of those who maintain elongated spines and flexible joints into their 70s, 80s and beyond, reveals a direct relationship between naturally aligned bones and the “youthful” qualities of easeful movement such people maintain over the decades of their lifetimes.
With new questions being raised about the relationship between osteoporosis and calcium intake, it is becoming increasingly clear that avoiding structural collapse involves more than just ingesting enough calcium (or magnesium or Vitamin D or any other substance, no matter how valuable it may be). Nor is it simply the luck of the draw or one’s inherited tendencies that keep one comfortably upright. In a culture that worships muscle “strength”, as we do, the crucial role played by a naturally-aligned skeleton in providing the underlying framework of support for the body, has, until recently, been thoroughly misunderstood and overlooked.
Here are 5 Things to Know About Healthy, Comfortable Aging:
1) Learn to inhabit your body in the same way you did as a toddler. Every healthy baby in the world learns how to become upright by discovering how to align the skeleton along the vertical axis of gravity. In a process similar to learning to ride a bicycle, the young child must find the specific arrangement of bones that makes it possible to balance a bowling ball-like head on top of the spine. Muscles, whose primary job is to move bones, play a secondary role in providing upright support, as evidenced by the relaxed muscles so characteristic of very young children just learning to stand and walk. This interplay of muscles and bones is the musculoskeletal system that is designed to function in the same way in every healthy body, whatever one’s inherited body “type”— tall, short, thin or stocky and the millions of variations of those features.
2) Be a good homeowner to the “house” you will live in for every remaining day of your life. Fortunately, after years of overlooking the essential role of a naturally aligned skeleton in providing support, we are beginning to recognize the relationship between aligned bones and basic laws of physics. These natural laws govern everything in our world—the biomechanical design of all creatures of nature, as well as engineering and architecture. Although there are obvious differences between a house and a human body, the skeleton shares important features with foundation posts and walls studs that hold up the walls and roof of a house. When constructing a house, builders and carpenters take great care to align weight-bearing posts (and joints) along the vertical axis of gravity. Only then, can forces of gravity be distributed directly through the “plumb line”, able to bear the weight of any upper stories and the roof that sits on top of it all. Human bones are designed to align around this same vertical line in a very particular relationship to each other, making it possible to bear the weight of a very heavy head that balances delicately on top of it all. You can think of putting your bones in order as “putting your house in order.”
3) Don’t be a “butt-tucker.” Cultures such as ours, with an emphasis on riding in cars, sitting for hours in front of TV and computer screens, as well as in strollers, car seats and classrooms, promote unnatural postural habits at earlier and earlier ages. Typically, this leads to the habit of “tucking the butt”, as if one were a sad dog tucking its tail between its legs. Although it can be remarkably easy to sit with comfort for long periods of time (when one knows how, of course), tilting the pelvis backwards disrupts the platform on which the spine sits, causing the spine to collapse. In an effort to counteract this sinking, we are taught to “pull” ourselves upward, either by using sheer effort to lift the chest, or by purposely developing muscle strength to keep us up there. Either way, collapsing or trying to counteract it, we are fighting against gravity, rather than living in partnership with it. Over time, we experience pain and a growing stiffness in our joints. Many people end up on a continuous quest for relief through excessive exercise, stretching, massage, chiropractic adjustments, soaking in hot water—the list goes on and on and includes pain medication and surgery in more intractable cases. You wouldn’t expect your car to run well if the engine parts were not properly aligned in relationship to each other. Insightful health professionals are now beginning to recognize that easy flexibility and authentic strength require, first and foremost, a natural interplay between aligned bones and elastic muscles that is only possible when the “working parts” are in order.
4) Grow up! Elongate your back, instead of lifting your chest. There’s hardly a person in America today who doesn’t lift his or her chest at the sound of the words, “Sit up straight!” This is because we were raised on a steady diet of this admonition, repeated to us regularly by our parents and teachers. When we succeeded in sitting “up straight” like this, straining muscles in our backs grew tired, and we sank back down again in a matter of minutes—or perhaps seconds. Over time, new “default settings” were set into place in our musculature, and we came to inhabit our bodies from alternative “home base” that is no longer natural or comfortable. Imagining that you are a marionette with puppet strings attached at strategic points on the back of the body, can be an effective way to begin your body’s return to the essential “center”. As you learn how to do this, you will discover how to open up and elongate your spine through the full length of your back, not by arching and compressing vertebrae, as is what happens you lift your chest.
5) Sit, walk, bend, lift and sleep your way to true fitness. While definitive studies that examine the relationship between postural habits and aging are woefully absent, there is compelling anecdotal evidence that people who exhibit serious postural collapse at an advanced age, have been chronic “butt-tuckers” over many years. In the same way that a building gradually collapses when its foundation posts veer from the vertical line, so, too, does the human body begin its gradual collapse when it loses the support of aligned bones. People who have never lost the support of aligned bones clearly demonstrate the easy flexibility, supple spine and authentic strength that result from never having lost their natural alignment in the first place. Learning to inhabit our bodies in this natural way—be it sitting, standing, walking, bending, lifting, and even sleeping—is the ultimate anti-aging medicine that will bring you “home” to the easeful, relaxed support that is made available to us by the living breathing skeleton that lives inside our skin.
