Chronic back pain
We treat a lot of back pain in this clinic (Physic, Girton just on outskirts of Cambridge). I say ‘we’ because since I joined the practice 18 years ago, myself and Roger Giddings, the owner & senior osteopath, have developed protocols for using acupuncture & osteopathy alongside each other for complex musculo-skeletal stuff – a strategy enthusiastically embraced by some of the osteopaths here. Certainly justified by the results we get and by talking to the recipients of such treatment.
But so many times you get improvement up to a point, then just maintain it at that level.
I’m a back pain sufferer because of childhood (undiagnosed problem leaving thoracic spine weak & a bit misshapen), and subjecting my back to ridiculous overload when I was in my twenties and immortal. So I talk from experience. Acupuncture & Osteopathy have helped me hugely, I think I’d be in a bad way now without them.
But ever questing for perfection !!! how to take things further.
When I was at uni in London in the seventies, I studied (then taught) Yoga with an excellent teacher from the Swami Satyanand (Sivananda school) line. Then recently I took it up again, my teacher this time the unassumingly wise Alison at the ‘old red lion’ backpacker hostel and Yoga centre at Castle acre, in Norfolk.
It’s making a lot of difference. I won’t use superlatives here because the key is steady perseverance, but the rewards are there in flexibility, reduced pain, healthier muscles & joints, and I’m pretty sure this applies to many other people.
More on this in my next post.
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