Dubious Quality

Houdini used to put his foot in ice water for long periods of time to sensitize it when he was exposing mediums. His foot became so sensitive that he could feel the slightest movement, which gave him a huge advantage in detecting a medium's tomfoolery. Similarly, my back had so much inflammation and pain that it helped me understand which movements stress it more than others.

The biggest thing I learned is that when leaning over is a no-go, going down on one knee is significantly easier. The injury is too the right side of my back, so I go down on my left knee, retrieve whatever I dropped, and push up with the left leg. It causes minimal pain, when leaning over would lock me up completely. I'm going to keep doing this because it seems like it will put much less stress on my back in a long-term sense.

The second thing I learned is that mattresses genuinely make a huge difference. Our mattress, I've learned, is somewhat soft, and the difference in that and the ultra-firm couch (when pulled down into a bed) is enormous in terms of how stiff I am when I wake up. 

The third thing is a Shakti mat. This is the contemporary equivalent of a bed of nails, only the nails are plastic and don't penetrate the skin. I've written about this before, but the first 2-3 minutes of lying on it cause significant pain and discomfort, and then your body relaxes and goes into a deep flow state for the rest of the time. After I'm on this for 20 minutes, I get up and have almost no pain at all for about a half hour. 

My theory is the pain coming from so many individual points on your back/butt shuts down whatever primary pain you're otherwise feeling (in this case, my back). When you're in so much pain for most of the day, having even a little relief makes a huge difference.