About SpineFITyoga

Two primary purposes

I designed SpineFITyoga so that almost anyone can heal spine pain (neck or back) at home.

At the same time I wanted it to be a total body fitness program. And by fitness I don’t mean typical yoga flexibility, but rather strength, endurance, bone density, and joint stability. So SpineFITyoga is a different kind of yoga.

Why?

A brief history

Years ago, as a physical therapist who was particularly science-based, with long experience in strength and conditioning, I was blogging about spine pain. I was writing about the pros and cons of different treatments. And in doing so talking about my method of total body strengthening done with a neutral spine, incorporating what was then research findings of spine biomechanist Stuart McGill and others.

I found the combination uniquely effective. And although I intended my blog to be read locally, so that patients might come to my office, there were a number of issues.

1. I was blogging on the world wide web, so the questions I received on my physical therapy website usually came from people around the world who needed help but were in no position to visit. They would often say my treatment approach made sense but was not available where they lived.
2. It was not uncommon for them to say that the physical therapy they were getting, usually stretch oriented (Williams or Mckenzie based) was actually making them worse.
3. People could try to follow my principles and routines on their own, but only if lucky enough to have access, or time to visit a well-equipped gym. Most didn’t. So for them, my weights based exercise routines weren’t of much help.
4. And nearby there were issues. I had a feeling that as much as I wanted my local patients to join a gym after therapy and keep up their exercises after physical therapy was finished, I knew that many didn’t. This was for a number of legitimate reasons, such as time, cost, other responsibilities, or since I favored freeweights, venturing into the freeweight room of a commercial gym can be a bit intimidating.
5. Also everywhere physical therapy was getting more expensive. Over the years, people’s insurance deductibles were increasing substantially, as were their copays. So to go to physical therapy three times a week for a month was becoming like another car payment. And what if you didn’t have insurance? Oh well.
   
   And it’s not like higher patient prices were allowing physical therapists to live high on the hog. Insurance companies were not just raising costs for patient. At the same time they were reducing reimbursement to the therapist. So they couldn’t afford to waive out of pocket fees as was common practice in the days before managed care.
   
   The number of insurance approved visits were decreasing as well, so often people would be discharged from treatment only partly better. With insurance representatives claiming a full resolution of pain wasn’t a necessary outcome.
   

In 2016 I got it into my head to create a therapeutic exercise program as good as my weights; efficient, progressive, and total body, that could be implemented at home by virtually anyone. It took a lot of trial and error, not so much from the rehab perspective, as that was fairly easy, but getting bodyweight exercise as good as lifting weights? Not so easy. But in 2018 I had a breakthrough, resulting in my Level-3 exercises. Is it as good as lifting weights two hours per day on a 3 on 1 off split if you want to be a competitive bodybuilder? No. Or similar volume of training for a competitive weightlifter? No. But both are few people’s goals.

However, for all around total body strength and stamina, and being lean all year, around an ideal bodyweight, I honestly think it’s better. And it just takes a yoga mat, and for the ambitious, some place to do pullups. It turned out so much better than I expected that I made F5 my personal workout.

And let me tell you about yoga…

I was against yoga, for all kinds of reasons, that to this day are still not wrong. For example:

1. When you study what causes neck and back pain you’ll learn that many, if not most, yoga “poses” are flat out bad for your spine.
2. Much sideways stretching of the knees and hips isn’t doing their ligaments a lot of good either.
3. As for Big E Enlightenment, or that cosmic consciousness experience? Not… very… common… in a yoga class.

However…

As for that artist, hippie, music festival, Burning Man scene, that often overlaps with the yoga world?

I think it’s amazing!

I came to like yoga philosophy too, [insert books pic] I’m just saying the stretches are orthopedically unsound.

And by the way, if you read the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (the original yoga text) compiled around 200 BCE, there isn’t a single stretch in it. An asana, which later became yoga poses, was just a comfortable posture in which to meditate.

“Asana [later to become the name of a yoga pose] is a steady comfortable posture.”

Patanjali, Yoga Sutra 2:46

There were no stretches or contortions in any of the four Vedas or Upanishads either. In fact yoga scholar Brian Singleton, in his fantastically interesting book Yoga Body documents that when Krishnamacharya was coming up with his flow style (vinyasa) yoga, he was copying the poses of British contortionists he had seen in circuses touring India during the British Raj. His star student B.K.S. Iyengar later took those contortions to America and repackaged them as some sort of alternative medicine. He started a new craze, promising they cured just about everything, which of course they didn’t. Never mind that they had all but nothing to do with the OG yoga philosophy, nor that of famed yoga practitioners of more recent memory, like Ramakrishna, or Ramana Maharshi, both of whom I like a lot.

And while there’s no stretching in the Yoga Sutras, I did find this:

“Beauty, grace, strength, adamantine hardness and robustness, constitute bodily perfection.”

Patanjali, Yoga Sutra 3:47

I was into the whole thing enough to travel to Goa, India, to do my Yoga Teacher Training in 2017, and had the best of time. And outside of class, there was this one guy who I think was a bartender in Agonda, who ran up the beach, did one set of as many pushups as he could, form questionable, then stared/meditated over the ocean. I took a couple pics with my phone [insert pics], and I remember wondering if it was that easy. And I gotta think, kinda/sorta yeah, which became one of the principles I took, tested and optimized, to make F5.

Also in Goa, the school’s leader, who taught meditation only, suspected I might be correct about neck and back stretches injuring the spine. He had two herniated discs, and said that’s why he personally didn’t stretch anymore.

So, SpineFITyoga is my way of bringing these this all together. It’s a way of making accessible, progressable, and affordable the safest and most effective method of exercise for both fitness and rehabilitation of neck and back pain. At the same time, its physical rigorousness furthers yoga’s original aim of optimizing health and wellness, amongst other things, in the service of one’s mental faculties.

How SpineFITyoga works differently

First, SpineFITyoga works by raising awareness as to what causes spine pain. This removes the mystery, and thus helps you to consciously minimize damaging stresses, allowing the body time to heal. If you are wondering what is causing your neck and back pain, with about 90-95% certainty, this is overwhelmingly what’s causing your neck and back pain. The link is text heavy, but if you have spine pain, it’s worth the 31 minutes it takes to read the in depth version.

Second, besides verbally teaching what causes neck and back pain, SpineFITyoga teaches you to feel for yourself what the safe postures are with its 5-minute Posture-5 (P5) program.

Third, SpineFITyoga works by increasing total body fitness in a spine-safe way. Once you understand what the bad postures are, so you can lessen them, what the good postures are so you can feel for yourself how your spine is being held, then the total body is challenged to progressively increase strength, endurance, and while we’re at it, appearance (Sutra 3:47).

All of this part turned out better than I would have expected with F5 (Fit or Fitness-5), my 5-minute hybrid strength and conditioning program. With F5 I integrated wisdoms I attained from my years of bodybuilding, weightlifting, reading, in exercise science/physical therapy school, yoga, taking the best parts and combining it into a progressive fitness system almost anyone can do at home. Thus giving many reasons to continue the program long past when pain has gone away.

The factors work together synergistically. The awareness and application of good spine biomechanics provides an optimal condition for healing, so we feel better when we start to exercise. The right exercise increases strength and at the same time lets us practice good biomechanics. Increasingly strong core muscles brace and protect the spine, while strong hips, legs, shoulders and arms then do the bulk of active work, again minimizing damaging stress on vertebral discs and ligaments. The increased fitness makes every movement in life easier, and keeping the spine more neutral becomes a habit you don’t have to always think about.

The best is that SpineFITyoga was originally an hour long routine. And all the while I shortened it, it kept getting better, all the way down to 5 minutes of exercise (and yes I tested 4 minutes, and it wasn’t as good).

Of course there are other things that SpineFITyoga is good for, as staying fit, without wrenching yourself, covers a lot of bases.

Where next?

Sign Up for just $20 a year or $100 lifetime”¦

Or learn more about what, in fact, causes neck and back pain, or if your pain is the wrong kind of pain, and USER RULES to keep you out of trouble and give a good primer on intensity, progression, when to push or back off, what’s a good or bad pain. All of which are free.

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*The 5 minutes of F5 is, as of now, based on 3 exercises per day being 2-min, 2-min and 1-minute duration each. You will likely be tired for longer, and can rest as long as you want between exercises. Some do them all together, some hit each at different parts of the day.

If you are here for pain, when first learning the postural component (P5) takes an additional 5 minutes to complete. Unlike F5, P5 isn’t at all tiring, so is usually done all at once. However, when first learning these it’s best to take your time with these to ensure you are doing the P5 movements perfectly. P5, however, is like riding a bike, where once you get it you can stop, ideally continuing with F5 indefinitely, either divided or together.