We should all be able to do this exercise

The Healthiest Exercise on the Planet?

This is one of my favourite daily exercises to awaken all 600+ muscles, my internal organs and revitalize my mind!

Watch the video above and then read below for some additional insights....

Did cavemen have low back pain?
This is a great question I once heard Paul Chek, HHP ask. Just think about it for a moment. Now I have no doubts that they did suffer back pain but I firmly believe the causes of their low back pain were very different to ours of modern day. Maybe they just fell out of a tree. Injured it whilst wrestling a native tribe member or traumatized it during a hunt falling down a rock face. Let's put it this way I don't think it was from the 2-hour daily commute, 8-hour workday behind a desk and 3-hours of sitting on the couch watching TV, before retiring to bed and repeating the cycle!

"A  picture is worth a thousand words"
I've said this many times over that if we got up from being immobile and walked around on our hands and feet, as a pain therapist,  I'd be out of business! The challenge we face is that our body never fully returns to its fully upright posture and we tend to hold this pattern of bending forward (a.k.a. a flexion pattern) and then return to it time and time again - sitting in the car, sitting on couch, even sitting on the toilet!

Reversal takes time
My advice is either 1) start walking around on your hands and feet (good luck with that one) or 2) ensure that you are 'rebooting' your muscle patterns regularly. Briefly, this means that if you have spent several hours in a bent forward position then ideally you need to afford a similar amount of time reversing this pattern by doing an extended backward position. Obviously that isn't realistic, so at the very least 10-20 minutes of daily stretching focusing almost exclusively on all the flexors and the rest of your day should be absolutely dedicated to your awareness of good and bad posture choices. For example, that 2-hour commute to work can now be a 2-hour daily workout of some of your extensor muscles that hold your spine upright and your head square upon your shoulders. Do this for a week alone and you already have close to 12-hours of postural correction happening!

Remember that health is a choice and it's your choice alone.

Be Healthy,

Jason.