<story><title>For back pain, the subtle moves of the Feldenkrais Method can help some people</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-different-way-to-relieve-years-of-back-pain/2018/09/27/f3e663f4-b505-11e8-a2c5-3187f427e253_story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TaylorAlexander</author><text>I do wonder if the answer to my back pain is a lifestyle where I am simply moving my body more. As an engineer I mostly “get stuff done” at a desk. Both my work desk and now my home desk are motorized adjustable height desks, but still being so sedentary seems to the root cause of my slowly declining physical shape. My lower back hurts regularly and now my neck has been hurting again. I used to go to a chiropractor and I’m considering starting up again.&lt;p&gt;But the root of it is that I’m not active. I used to ride my bike, run, and lift weights and I weighed 40 pounds less than I do now. But I’ve found some personal projects to work on that I’m so passionate about I’ve wanted to stay inside on evenings and weekends to make progress. Really, I just struggle with a day job that perpetuates our capitalist system, and try to make up for it by doing good open source work when I’m at home.&lt;p&gt;But I wish it was more common to work fewer hours in tech. I’m happy to be paid proportionally but I want a job where it’s okay to work 20 hours a week at a high tech pay rate.&lt;p&gt;I think if I did that, I might get out more. Or maybe I need to find a lower paying job that lets me work on my passions during the day. Then in the evenings I could go play basketball or do night hikes or something.&lt;p&gt;Has anyone pulled either of these off? More specifically has anyone pulled this off in the SF Bay Area?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aasasd</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d just like to confirm that if you&amp;#x27;re noticing the sedentary lifestyle worsening your health, you&amp;#x27;ll want to get out of it asap. Muscles do wither away from disuse, and hence they stop supporting your posture (for which they are surprisingly important). On top of that, you lose the muscular memory for proper posture and movement, and become constantly hunched instead. Then chronic cramps (tenseness) set in, blocking blood flow and causing nerve stress, which feeds back into the poor posture. Basically it&amp;#x27;s a cluster failure of factors feeding into each other.&lt;p&gt;And it&amp;#x27;s not only posture—if you just browse through topics on general health on Wikipedia (i.e. not acute diseases), you&amp;#x27;ll notice they&amp;#x27;re pretty much all linked to exercise. E.g. anti-inflammatory function is linked to muscle work. And of course, you see articles every week saying brain health is dependent on exercise.&lt;p&gt;Instead of a chiropractor, you might want to consult a physical therapist who can recommend daily exercise and regime for the back. E.g. Nordic walking with sticks, which puts load on upper back and shoulder muscles.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know how others live with just walks to and from work, but for myself I highly doubt that even a couple hours of exercise could offset being propped at the desk for the rest of the day.&lt;p&gt;For the work hours, you could look into contract work (freelancing), where you could choose your hours and set the rate instead of being locked into the terms of your job. But of course, other considerations also apply.</text></comment>
<story><title>For back pain, the subtle moves of the Feldenkrais Method can help some people</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-different-way-to-relieve-years-of-back-pain/2018/09/27/f3e663f4-b505-11e8-a2c5-3187f427e253_story.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TaylorAlexander</author><text>I do wonder if the answer to my back pain is a lifestyle where I am simply moving my body more. As an engineer I mostly “get stuff done” at a desk. Both my work desk and now my home desk are motorized adjustable height desks, but still being so sedentary seems to the root cause of my slowly declining physical shape. My lower back hurts regularly and now my neck has been hurting again. I used to go to a chiropractor and I’m considering starting up again.&lt;p&gt;But the root of it is that I’m not active. I used to ride my bike, run, and lift weights and I weighed 40 pounds less than I do now. But I’ve found some personal projects to work on that I’m so passionate about I’ve wanted to stay inside on evenings and weekends to make progress. Really, I just struggle with a day job that perpetuates our capitalist system, and try to make up for it by doing good open source work when I’m at home.&lt;p&gt;But I wish it was more common to work fewer hours in tech. I’m happy to be paid proportionally but I want a job where it’s okay to work 20 hours a week at a high tech pay rate.&lt;p&gt;I think if I did that, I might get out more. Or maybe I need to find a lower paying job that lets me work on my passions during the day. Then in the evenings I could go play basketball or do night hikes or something.&lt;p&gt;Has anyone pulled either of these off? More specifically has anyone pulled this off in the SF Bay Area?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>az123zaz</author><text>How about looking for a day job that has a quality gym in the building where you can workout and shower during the day?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure you can find this in SF tech. During your interview process, just make it clear that you value being able to exercise during the day.&lt;p&gt;It doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be crazy stuff, even just walking on a treadmill, running, or stretching. It&amp;#x27;s more important to build the habit of doing anything than doing something crazy.&lt;p&gt;There is strong evidence that exercise improves learning and memory (personally I feel it improves focus as well) so in my opinion, you don&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;lose&amp;quot; this time as you are more effective the rest of the day [0]&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kurzweilai.net&amp;#x2F;how-exercise-improves-memory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kurzweilai.net&amp;#x2F;how-exercise-improves-memory&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>