Customer Reviews

Back Pain Solutions : How to Help Yourself with Posture-Movement Therapy and Education

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In "Back Pain Solutions" author Bruce Kodish presents easy to follow techniques for helping with back pain problems. After a brief introduction into Posture-Movement Therapy he provides a section on how your back works, the physiology of the spine, discs, joints, etc. and how this relates to your posture, movement and back problems. Bruce Kodish covers everything that you need to understand in order to safely use the techniques on yourself.

For myself, I was having some problems with discomfort in my upper back and used the appropriate technique in the book. I found that I was able to completely relieve the problem. I would have liked more specific techniques and specific excercises for different situations, but then again it had all I needed to help myself so maybe it is complete. If you are having back pain problems and are tired of the constant regimen of pain-killers or the regular onset of back pain you owe it to yourself to read this book and see if it can provide the same benefit to you that it did to me.

Pros:
-Good verbal description of proper back posture for anyone with a normal spine.

Cons:
-About 260 pages of content, but the helpful parts could have been written in 3 pages or less.
-Though well documented, endless psychological studies described and cited that are scarcely applicable for the person taking the time to read the book.
-Only 4 exercises diagrammed in the whole book, and they're diagnostic more than therapeutic.
-Mention given of various parts of back that can hurt, but only solution for anything is posture.
-Almost no mention given of any special causes of back pain (example:relationship between mattress and back pain gets no more than a very general mention that firm mattresses are better)
-No mention of special conditions or treatment needs, such as being under 4'6", over 6'5", or having a malformed lumbar.


Summary: The emphasis and description of good back posture may help many people with healthy backs who suffer regularly from back pain during the day. It is good to be reminded of the need for good posture. However, little or no mention is made of special back conditions or other causes or practically applicable solutions for back pain. This book won't be of much help to someone who has any sort of special back condition, which would typically be the person who would buy such a book and take the time to read it. If you're an average person with a healthy back but suffer daytime back pain and don't mind reading 260 pages of mainly remote topic studies, this book may help you; any other situations, I wouldn't recommend this book.

As a back pain sufferer and doctor this is as complete and valuable resourse as I've ever found. Highly recommended.

I find the title "back pain SOLUTIONS" being totally misleading.
The text is all too general and provides "solutions" such as telling you to be posture aware and lie in a prone position if you are in pain...

The author keeps plugging the Alexander technique (he is a former teacher)and rambles on about Semantics (his Ph.D is in General Semantics)

All in all, this book didn't even give me any new nor helpful information on the subject. A good online search would have probably provided more.

Even aesthetically speaking, the text in poorly written and the diagrams are pixelated, giving out the feeling that this was a poor attempt to make a book out of notes from a seminar.

I would urge you to check the book out in a bookstore, before purchasing it !

As for exercising postural awareness, I would definitely recommend Eric Franklin's books.