Not sure where to start?
Try the Personal Concerns Inventory (PCI) to clarify what to focus on, or start with Relaxation Therapy for guided meditation.
The Back Safety Zone
The Back Safety Zone is a practical Backcare skill taught by Dr. Reaume Carroll Mulry to help you maintain strength and protect your back when reaching.
Dr. Mulry defines your Back Safety Zone as the distance from your elbow to your chest. Imagine that distance forming a cylinder around your body from the floor to the ceiling. This is your Back Safety Zone, the area Dr. Mulry describes as “where all of your power comes from.”
Reaching Within Your Back Safety Zone
Dr. Mulry describes reaching as one of the most subtle movements we make, but also one of the most dangerous.
In The Centered Human Being, Dennis and Sam demonstrate the Back Safety Zone using the martial arts. Sam has been trained not to leave his Back Safety Zone. When he stays within it, he maintains his power. When he reaches outside it, he loses that advantage.
The lesson is to stay within your Back Safety Zone when possible. If something is beyond the zone, move closer rather than unnecessarily reaching for it.
Reaching Outside Your Back Safety Zone
Sometimes you have to reach outside your Back Safety Zone. When you do, Dr. Mulry teaches you to tighten your stomach muscles and breathe, inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth without releasing the tension in your stomach muscles. He calls this Prolonged Power Breathing.
This applies the use of the stomach muscles and breathing taught with the Position of Strength to reaching beyond your Back Safety Zone.
To see the Back Safety Zone in action, watch Dennis and Sam demonstrate it in The Centered Human Being, part of the Freedom From Back Pain Backcare Programs.