The Problems with Lift

As you are probably aware lift is often the final component of a person's distortion pattern to correct. (Lift is the term Spinal Touch practitioners give to the forward lean that happens when a person's centre of gravity has slipped anteriorly, or forwards).

Why is this?

Apart from the fact that as a society we all seem to be rushing into the future, and perhaps subconsciously leaning forward into the rush, I think there is a physiological reason and a maintaining cause.

The physiological reason is to do with the relevant tensions in the muscles which maintain the balance of the pelvic tilt. All muscles work in pairs and groups of pairs, it's called dynamic tension. The muscles of the lower back often will get enough exercise just walking around. A sad fact of life is that in our modern lives there is no routine action which exercises the abdominal muscles; you have to specifically exercise them. So the back muscles are tight relative to the abdominals so to balance them the hamstrings have to tighten, but to stop the hamstrings from over compensating the quadriceps have to tighten to balance them. This results in a very common picture of people needing to stretch their back muscles, hamstrings and quadriceps while at the same time toning their abdominals.

Try this experiment.

Here's something to try to see if your abdominal muscles are affecting your own lift. Stand with you eyes closed and relaxed. Become aware of your body then simply tighten up your abdominal muscles. Did you sway backwards? If you did that's your lift correcting. Maybe you need to tone your abdominals too.

The maintaining cause.

The maintaining cause for lift is a bit more subtle but I think more far reaching.

We evolved to walk upright, barefoot and on a yielding surface. When this occurs the imprint of the foot in the sand, for example, will show that the heel imprint is deeper than that of the forefoot. This is the so-called negative heel imprint. Switch now to modern day Blighty and even if you are walking barefoot, because the surface generally isn't yielding, the heel and forefoot imprints are the same; the so-called positive heel imprint. This is compounded if there are shoes involved. Shoes were originally flat soled but the manufacturers found that the shoes would last longer if there was a slight heel… so one was generally added. It's even worse if the heels added are more than slight, as in most modern shoes.

This positive heel pattern throws the body forwards. The quadriceps shorten so to counteract this the hamstrings tighten. To stabilise the pelvis the back muscles have to tighten… Hang on, this is sounding terribly familiar. Isn't this Lift? Yes it is!

Look at this comparison.

Apart from Spinal Touch what else can we do?

There are now available wonderful shoes called Earth Shoes. These have negative heel technology built into the shoe so that even if you are walking on an unyielding surface the heel is slightly lower than the forefoot. They allow all the tight muscles to stretch which encourages the abdominals to tone. Over time the Lift starts to diminish.

We have several pairs of these shoes ourselves and they have made quite a change to our own postures when measured at the plumbline. Many of our patients wear them too and are seeing great results with their Lift.

You can find more information about Earth shoes here.

You may have heard of another brand of negative heel shoes called Masai Barefoot Technology. These can be very helpful too. We prefer the Earth Shoes though, for several reasons. The first is that they actually look like shoes and have lots of groovy styles (my MBT's remind me a bit of Mini Mouse's cast offs). The second is that they don't destabilise the gait the way the MBT's are designed to do, which often requires re-learning how to walk without turning your ankle. And the third is that they're cheaper, so it makes it more manageable for our patients.

The company is great to deal with. Every pair comes with a return label so that if they don't fit it costs you nothing to return them and get the next size.
Have a look round their web site. It has some great information about how they work and how they can help posture.

 

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