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- Hello, I'm Sara Meeks and I'm here with my husband John
who's our model today to demonstrate the next exercise
that I usually do with patients or people with osteoporosis.
And that is lying in the prone position.
A lot of people think that the prone position
means lying on your back, but that's incorrect.
The prone position is lying on your abdomen
and we've all spent many months now with COVID 19.
And I think probably most of you have heard the word proning
and what they were doing with patients with COVID
is put them in this position
because it's a gravity assisted position
for cleansing of the lungs.
So, and people will breathe better with it.
Research has also shown that lying in the prone position
on a regular basis will increase your vital capacity
and breathing.
The vital capacity is the amount of breath
that you can breathe out after you've breathed in.
And they have techniques for measuring your vital capacity
and there are norms for different age groups
and conditions also.
So it's an important thing to learn how to do.
So today what we're going to do is simply focus
on the positioning itself.
So you notice that John has his hands
underneath his forehead.
A lot of people will not want to do that.
Especially if they have arthritis in their fingers
it'll be painful for their hands.
So instead of his hands, we could take a folded towel.
And John, if you'll just lift your head,
move your arms out to the side and then put your forehead
on this folded towel that we wanna have a towel
or a fairly firm pillow that they can use
underneath their forehead so that they still have a space
to breathe.
Now, the first thing I use usually tell people
is to let your body relax into the position
let the front of your body just relax
onto the surface that you're lying on.
And I do have some props that I use.
One is called a hip crease support here.
What this is basically is a towel that's been rolled up,
I rolled it up and then I put it together
with some duct tape and there are other ways to make these
but we fit it right underneath what's called the hip crease
which is where your hip joints are.
And the hip flexor muscles,
the one that flexes your body forward,
moves your body forward at the hips tend to be pretty tight
in just about everyone I see.
And so lying in this prone position
without a support under the hips could be very uncomfortable
because it will cause more of a curve in the back
and may be painful for people.
Now, if you don't have a towel like this
it's pretty easy to make one.
You just take the towel roll it up and then tie it together.
So I had one person in one of my classes
tie it together with some ribbons.
So you could do that too.
You could do it however that you want to.
So at least the person has some support.
Now, some people may need more support than this.
And in that case you would use a standard bed pillow,
and I've had some people need two pillows for this support.
I know that a lot of times people hear
that if they have back pain
they should never lie in the prone position.
That is not true.
If you support the person, then they'll be able to do that.
Now you notice also I have a roller underneath his ankles.
Just pick up your feet a little bit.
I wanna pull it up just a little bit.
Okay, let your feet relax.
Because some people will not have adequate plantar flexion.
That's where you pull the heel up and the toes down
to have the feet on the table.
So I will put a foam roller.
This is a six inch diameter one,
some people may get away with a little bit smaller one.
You could also fold up towels or whatever you want
to support the ankles.
And if I was working out on this table
I would probably bring him further down on the table
so that his feet would hang off the edge of the table
because now we have his knees bent
and eventually we want to him to lie with his legs straight.
So those are some of the props that we use.
Now, John, if you could just bring your hands
out a little further so that your arms are more
in what's called the 90 90 position.
Like your elbows are almost to 90 degrees
and then you can allow your back to,
or the front of your body just to relax
a little bit more down into the table.
That's what the, I always tell people you wanna get as much
of the front of your body onto the table as possible.
Now you could begin this exercise on a bed.
It would help to have a firm mattress however,
because if you have a really soft mattress
then you're gonna be sinking into it.
And to get more support on your mattress
you can fold up a blanket and put it where you're gonna lie.
You can use underneath here I have a yoga mat
for him to lie on.
So you can use something like that on your bed.
So you don't have to get on the floor
and you might not have a nice treatment table like this.
And I put an extra board on here just for firmness
for anybody who can tolerate it.
Now, there are some people that I see
that can't tolerate being on the board.
So we take it off and the table itself
has a little bit more give and is a little bit softer.
So the first thing that we want to do
with the prone position is to get people used to it.
I mean, I have seen people in my clinic
who haven't been on their abdomen in as much as 30 years.
And that's what they tell me anyway.
So they'll say things like I haven't been on my back
in 20 years and I haven't been on my abdomen in 30.
So we may have to be very careful here.
And I remember one patient I had, and she was very fragile.
She had had eight or nine compression fractures in her back.
She just couldn't get into this position.
It was just too much for her to do it.
So she gave me an idea one day, she said,
well why don't I do prone on the wall?
And I thought for a minute,
and I said, oh, what a great idea.
So show me what you'd like to do.
So she walked over to the wall,
got her feet right up to the wall and her body is close.
I did put some support under her hips.
And also because she had a forward head posture
she had something supporting her head
but she could begin to get in that position
and then push into that position,
which is going to strengthen her back
because she's using the back muscles.
If you go ahead and press your breast bone, John,
your chest down into the table
press it down into the table, John, down into the table.
What happens is you begin to use the back muscles
to do that.
So that helps to strengthen the back muscles.
The other thing is that in this position
it's a good position for cleansing of the lungs
gravity assisted cleansing of the lungs.
And there is a yogic breath
called (speaking in foreign language).
Don't do it yet that you can do
while you're lying in this position.
I'm going to demonstrate it here.
And then I'm gonna ask John to do it on the table.
So (speaking in foreign language) is a forced exhalation
through the nose through both nostrils for starting.
And then there is a version
where you can do one nostril at a time,
and it goes like this.
You take a breath, you don't have to take a deep breath.
You take a breath in,
and then you do the (speaking in foreign language).
(breathing)
So it was 10 repetitions.
Maybe you could see some action in my abdominals
but I am using my abdominals
to help to force the air out of my nostrils, okay.
So John, can you do the (speaking in foreign language)
in this position.
You can see his body moving with that.
So that will assist, there'll be gravity assisted cleansing
of the lungs.
It has shown that this position can increase vital capacity.
And also what I find when I get in this position
and I do the (speaking in foreign language)
and I do another exercise,
breathing exercise in this position also,
when I get off the table, I feel at least an inch taller
than I was before I got on the table.
So it also lengthens out the front part of the body.
And you know what happens in people as they get older
they tend to begin to curve forward
not backward, mostly, but here what you're doing
is you're lengthening out in the front of the body,
especially if you have your arms like this
and then there's any number of exercises that we can do
because the primary muscle that you wanna strengthen
and people with osteoporosis and other spinal pathology
is a group of muscles that extends all the way
from your tailbone all the way up to the base of the skull
they're called your back extensors.
And they are the muscles primarily
that hold your body up against the force of gravity.
This has been a representation and a,
of the prone positioning and the breath exercise.
This would be the final video at this time
in a series of 20.
And so make sure you check them all because,
and you watch them all
because they start from the very beginning
of describing what osteoporosis is
and what we're going to do about it.
Thank you for watching, I'm Sara Meeks.
(upbeat music)