♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet ♪
- Hello and welcome to this video.
I'm Sara Meeks, and today I'm going to be discussing
some of the principles of positioning
and also the movements and exercise
for the realignment routine.
This routine focuses on primarily
the back muscles that we talked about in another video,
which support the spine in various positions.
And everything in the realignment routine occurs
lying on your back.
So I'm using the model of the skeleton here
to help explain some of the principles.
The idea is to isolate the back
from primarily the muscles and the structures
in the lower extremities.
So I have the model lying on the back
and we're getting pressure from below
on the spinous processes they're called
on the back of this bone
which result in a lengthening
of the front of the backbone
which is what we're trying to do,
is to keep this part of the body
in good alignment with the curves
that we've talked about previously
and also the positioning of the vertical spine,
as much as possible.
Now the alignment of the back
depends somewhat upon what's going on
in the lower extremities.
So when I have someone doing this exercise routine,
we have them bend the hips
and also the knees.
So the feet will be flat on the table.
That's what you'll see when we get to the models.
The idea is that two of the most restricted areas
in the human body that I have found
in my patient population are the hip flexors.
They're the muscles that bend the hips.
And then also the muscles behind the knee.
There are two muscles there.
There's the insertion of a group of muscles
called the hamstrings,
and the origin of another muscle called the gastrocnemius
which is the bulky muscle in your calf.
And so we bend the hip and the knee to relieve
the pull of those muscles on the back.
Most of the time, when people lie with their hips,
they straighten out their legs.
Then what happens is the muscles pull,
they pull on the spine, they increase the arch
in the back and bring the back out of alignment.
So that's the reasoning for having the hips
and the knees bent in this position.
The arms are turned out to the side in this position
about 30 degrees away from the hips
or about halfway between the hips and the shoulders.
And the idea here is this is the anatomical position
for the arms in every muscle,
every structure in the upper extremities.
When we talk about it in anatomy,
we're thinking about this position,
whether it's the front or the back
or the side or whatever it is,
we take it from this position.
So,
I've just shown you the model of the skeleton.
So the next part of this series, I'm going to have,
my husband actually is the model,
is going to demonstrate an exercise,
I call it an exercise because basically
you lie on your back and do nothing except breathe
in a certain position.
And he's going to demonstrate the decompression exercise.
So thank you for watching this video
and I hope you watch the next two
because they go in a series.
Thank you very much.
(relaxed guitar music)