there are some conditions that many people think are inevitable and are just
part of life and there's nothing that you can do to prevent it or reverse it
so part of the reason that I'm doing these videos is to disprove that and
correct that understanding and help you to realize that there's really simple
things you can do to ensure that your body is as pain-free as it possibly can
be so the condition we're going to look at in this video is something called
dowager's hump it's also called excess kyphosis and it's essentially that
accentuation of the curvature of the upper back is said to be a little bit
hereditary some people believe that they just have to have it because their
parents had it they have to go that way as well and that's simply not the case
so this is Sarah one of my patients now Sarah came to me in that situation she
was noticing an extension of that skirt that curvature in her upper back and
having looked at her her father who was pretty much a very curved forward she
was really worried that she was going that way so let's have a look at when
Sarah came to me she was have assumed your position that you were she was
pretty much here she's it's a fairly normal level that Sarah was at when I
first started treating her and but she was concerned it was going to get worse
and wanted to know if it was possible to correct it now with with the extension
of the kyphosis what you also get is when you lift your head up you get a
extension of this lordosis here in the next you get a tightening of the neck
muscles so you start to get a lot of headaches so it's not a nice condition
and it's it's that these headaches are also a condition that a lot of people
accept it's just part of life and it's just going to get worse and it's simply
not it is so simple to correct it so with Sarah we put her through four
osteopathic treatments just to get some movement through her back and at the
same time she did a yoga program she's now on a maintenance program so what I'm
going to show you now is the four or five main exercises that have helped
Sarah to correct Sarah can assume her position now so Sarah is a lot
straighter her heads a lot better position so and we're just we're still
working with it but basically I won't accept that sara has
to have a curved back and neither does she now she also now has a lot less pain
in her back and a lot less headaches so through some simple stretches we've
resolved lots of little things that were niggling her so let's start looking at
her first position - which is a spinal twist a standing spinal twist so Sara
just separate your feet and if you just want to take yourself through that
movement that's lovely so just make sure you stay straight and don't you know so
what you're basically starting with is a really good simple rotation through the
spine and adds the other side that's it very very simple just stay in the
midline head up lovely good targeted rotation to the area of the back causing
the problem we just want to lock out the rest of the spine and force this area of
the back to work okay and come back and we're going to a second exercise so this
is called the sumo wrestler so you start with your knees separated about
hip-width apart a little bit wider and you don't want your knees to drop
forward or backwards you want your knees to stay in complete alignment with each
other now as you're just going to drop you're gonna start with your spine
straight Sara that's it and she's gonna drop her shoulder and her elbow to the
floor and turn ahead to look at the ceiling what you can see here is by
keeping the knees in an alignment you're completely locking out below back here
and you're really targeting right into this upper back hip which is a very
difficult area to get to often if you let the knees drop you get the rotation
right into the low back and you lose 50% of the effectiveness of that exercise so
come back to neutral and just repeat the other side that's lovely now this is one
of those exercises that you don't know how amazing it is until you try it
yourself so those are two exercises that are
really good at getting the rotation movement into the spine but we need to
get the extension she's very very curved forward and I want to reverse that and
start correcting that so very simple exercise I've taught her is just to roll
the shoulders back clasp the hands together and extend the hands towards
the floor and the head just tips back chin towards the ceiling slightly so
what you're doing is you're just really getting a forced localized extension of
that spine so she just holds that gently breathing and then releases and she just
does that say five or six times in her own time you just really enjoy that
you're basically retraining these muscles to hold a new position that's a
very simple exercise another one we want to do though there's ball very well to
correct from this side but you also need to release the tissues from the front so
that the back can move backwards so we need to free up the pectoral muscles so
an exercise that Sarah's done for that is she places her hand against a wall
and then just generally turns to her left and what she's doing here is she's
opening up and stretching that pectoral muscles I have to keep reminding Sarah
to keep my head up because people who have our extended kyphosis do tend to
stoop with the head as well that's lovely and then she just relaxes and
repeats that so get a nice opening up of the chest the minute you free up the
pectoral muscles at the front you will find you'll instantly start standing
straighter and your back will relax and you'll get you'll start losing that
curve in the upper back that's it lovely okay
so we're going to move on to the next exercise now which is called threading
the needle so for this you need to get onto all fours make sure that your hips
are in line with your knees and your shoulders are in line with your wrists
and I'm just going to thread her right arm underneath her left arm that's it
now as you can see it can be a little bit of strain on the head and neck so
what you can do here just raise your head so you can just put your head on a
little pillow if that helps now again what we're doing here it just separates
her feet and her knees just a little bit then we're locking out the low back here
we're getting that fixed and we're getting a huge rotation you're
stretching out the rhomboids you're stretching out the thoracic spine the
erector spinae you're forcing all that area that is just that it's just fixed
and solid to move okay so to come out of that just push down that's it and just
come through to the other side that's fantastic just thread through
brilliant just hold that as long as you can and just allow those muscles to to
relax and stretch out to extend that you can push back with the shoulder and pull
forward with this hand getting a real corkscrew a bit of a stretch through
that thoracic spine so you push down through this hand and come up that's
lovely and then just drop your hips back and then we move back into what we call
the Halfmoon child now this you get a side bending movement through the spot
through the upper back and through the spine just to get some movement through
the whole spine because often when you're getting something like a
dowager's hump appearing it's often because it's compensating for other
areas of the back which I won't go into now but it's good just to get general
movement through the whole spine so just drop your head down and just walk to the
right sir so you just gently walk around so you're getting a nice side bending
stretch through the whole spine here and then when you reach your extended
position you just stretch with that with that inner arm that's good and then
round the other side that's a probably I need to about there that's enough it's
got a nice stretch through the thoracic spine and the lumbar spine here just
kind of getting the spine you want to get your spine working as a whole and
all the parts of the spine moving as they should you don't want some areas
that are really restricted and other areas that are moving too much so the
whole the whole ethos behind using yoga to
correct back pain is to get that balance back