And after several months of teaching 2 regular pump classes each week, and the occasional fill in (still working full time in IT aswell), I am now off work suffering from a pinched nerve in my back. After a couple of days in hospital, nights of being unable to lay down and sleep and using strong painkillers to be able to get any sort of rest, I’ve had to take time off work. Due to the pain I’ve lost 5kg in just a couple of weeks (I bet it’s muscle/water loss…if only it were fat loss, sigh).
So it’s lots of rest, and can’t even do bodybalance. Haven’t been able to do a pain free down dog for a while now and doing lots of research on safe exercises. My chiro won’t give me many hints on what I CAN do, cuz he wants me to slow down and rest, lol.
But after 3 weeks rest I can feel I’m starting to feel slightly better if I move, and worse if I don’t move. Can’t sit or lay flat on my back, but apparently gentle walks is ok, and so are “pointers” (the pilates moves on all fours).
I’m also betting on using horse riding as a theraputic tool. I know I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve got my beautiful horse Kira and I know of many people who’ve had improvement from horse riding, including an old friend I’ve recently re-got-in-touch with after many years. She used just sitting on the horse walking, starting with 5 minutes per day and gradually increasing it.
Here’s why I think it’ll be beneficial. Our disc’s in our spine get compressed during the day, and it’s when we sleep that the disc’s decompress and the nutrients are able to feed the discs. Performing traction is the basis of using this principle, opening up the discs, decompressing them and getting much needed nutrients into the spine. I’ve also read about people recommending sitting on a fit ball and gently bouncing to get the same effect (my fit ball is deflated and in a box somewhere after we moved house 2 months ago). So, using this theory I could imagine that the gentle rocking of the pelvis while the horse quietly walks around would also achieve this effect………..as long as I don’t fall off! 🙂
I tried this yesterday afternoon, had the second night I was able to sleep through the night (since this has happened) and I only took regular Nurofen Plus for a painkiller. I was still sore in the morning, but not worse.
This is progress.