What kind of activity is best for someone with a very, very bad back?
The
activity that helped me the most came into my life as a kind of lovely
fluke --a series of Feldenkrais sessions, the gift of a friend. This
bodywork program was thoroughly amazing in its effects -- incredibly
powerful -- but I have no scientific grounds for praising it or
recommending it. I hope to be able to resume some Feldenkrais now that I
have been through several revision procedures and look forward to
earning a better living than Social Security currently affords me.
Bicycling?
I could not balance on any kind of bike with the flatback. My head and
torso were heading swiftly toward the ground whenever I strove for a
quasi-vertical posture. I miss biking enormously, as I had loved riding
all my life from third grade on. It was just too dangerous for me once
the sagittal deformity became disabling, and possibly even more
dangerous once my spine was surgically rigidified, making it nearly
impossible for me to “break a fall” in the normal way. (Even on foot,
especially where pavement needed repair or was coated with winter ice, I
have fallen flat on my face several times, on one occasion giving
myself a black eye on the sidewalk. And just last week, while attempting
to descend a stairway at an el station -- the elevator was out of
commission -- I inexplicably lost my balance and landed flat on my
back.)
In
my last few pre-revision years, as my flatback deformity gradually
closed in on my life, hopes, and powers of concentration -- as I learned
firsthand the sheer depth and demoralizing chronicity of brute physical
pain that we humans must endure at times --- as the boundaries of my
life shrank to lilliputian proportions, sometimes confining me to my
small apartment till I had to break out or start feeling slightly berserk -- the activity I kept up intrepidly, stubbornly, obsessively,
devotedly, and with great and sustaining gratitude for what remained to
me even at the farther reaches of this infernal deformity, was regular
walking.
Those last few pre-revision-surgery years, I always had something to lean on, of course. As I traversed the streets and sidewalks of my city and a 'burb or two, I most often relied on one of those small walker-shoppers, outfitted for my idiosyncrasies, with its
incorporated compartment for my briefcase/spare shoes/Diet Mountain Dew
supply/latest writers' journal -- whatever tended to soothe my maelstrom
of worries and anxieties.
Once
I reached the end of a particular hike, at least one way, and decided
to stop off for printer paper, shampoo, or flaxseed cereal, I switched to the
assistive device most widely favored by flatbackers wherever we may roam
(at least if we reside in industrialized societies replete with
such emporia as Target and Home Depot): the blessed and salvific
Shopping
Cart. This ingenious invention provides every kind of support and
comfort a flatbacker could require, with the
possible exception of built-in speakers and a sexy crooner reminding her to "lean on me when you're not strong . . . ."
In
general I made a point of walking aerobically at least every two to
three days. I aimed for six miles a week and often doubled or
tripled that. This was literally the only exercise I remained able to
do, and I found it reasonable and helpful for me. It combined well with
everything from my own version of metta
(loving-kindness) meditation-in-motion, as I began to cull some of the
methodologies from Hindu and Jewish sources, to the related idea of
mindful walking, a kind of Vipassana meditation performed in slow motion
rather than seated on a cushion. The latter has been popularized most
notably by Thich Nhat Hahn, a Buddhist monk, peace activist, and founder
of the Order of Interbeing as well as of a minimalist community and
retreat center in France known as Plum Village. I’ve never been very
adept at his slowed-down, meditational version of walking, however;
somehow I find my energetic race-walking meditative and
generative in its own way. The more I speed up, perhaps because of
increased oxygen flow to my brain, the more easily I write many stanzas
of spontaneous poetry in my head, or visualize new collage themes or
assemblages to initiate back home in the dining room-cum-art-studio.
Someday
someone may make it possible to record such creative inspirations while
in motion. At present it seems to require just too much multi-tasking
to reap the physical and mental benefits of a brisk walk while
extracting some Smart device from one’s pocket and noting one’s
brainstorms on a tiny touchscreen. (This might be less of a feat for
seasoned teen texters.)
Interestingly,
surgeons I interviewed en route to revision rarely asked me about
exercise. When one did, I reported that I walked six miles a week. He
scoffed, “You don’t walk six miles a week!”
“Yes, I do,” I insisted.
I
suppose my walking stretched doctors’ credulity in part because it may
be hard to imagine a deformed person willing to exhibit herself in
public that way. But that was one inhibition I got over early. I
was already on every woman’s postmenopausal journey to deeper self-acceptance,
and I was not going to let some oddity of personal appearance or a few
shocked stares from strangers set me back.
Harvard researcher Lisa Iezzoni, MD, MPH, notes in her book When Walking Fails
that the disabled are typically expected to hide themselves away at
home for everyone else’s comfort. I figured if people were uncomfortable
at the sight of me, however, then they could stay home.
