Lie on the sofa, legs out straight, bring your right foot up along the inside of your left leg until it's touching the side of your left knee and your right knee is sticking out to the right, flush with the sofa. Now move your right foot about four inches away from your left knee - still flush with the sofa. Finally, lift your right knee up in an arc as if you were trying to get it to touch the top of your head.
Does your lower spine make a huge 'clunk' ?
Donald Trump needs kicking out of a helicopter
Offset "(Emp) - a little heavy on the hyperbole."
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Is it still under warranty?
tried your manoeuvre Emp.....
sent from my mobile at local accident and emergency
In all seriousness, no my spine makes no noises. But it's pretty screwed up in terms of shape - my posture is terrible, and I'm starting to look like a hunch back. Gotta get some yoga and stretching on the ball I suppose!
No pseudo-religious garbage and it is evidence based.
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Chiropractors, osteopaths, physios, and the village bone setter have been doing that for yonks and it can be a treatment and it can be completely ineffective too. It's knowing when to do manipulation and when not to which is the real skill.
If you are getting the clunk every time you perform the manoeuvre then it's not a joint manipulation spinal clunk because you need a bit of time to get those again. It's much more likely to be abductor tendons rolling over your greater trochanter. (This is what I noticed when I followed your instructions!) And sometimes that can make a hell of a clunk.
It's also possible that you've got a bit of relative spinal laxity which, before you start googling it and head off to the orthopods for fusion and god knows what else for a putative spondylolisthesis, is a fluffy concept and a bit controversial but here's my take on it. There was/ is a lot of guff talked about "core stability" yet there is something in it. Because for some people they are so slack in their resting muscle tone down there that things do slop about with the odd clunk.
On a personal level I used to have something which would fit that description and a pain pattern which fitted it too because my lumbar spine had a bit of slop especially into flexion. The answer was exercise. Specific exercise. And @octatonic 's suggestion of Pilates was basically the type that worked for me.
Offset "(Emp) - a little heavy on the hyperbole."
I did 4 x 1 hour one-to-ones and then was given daily exercises to do which I've kept to 80% of the time.
The focus is on elongating the spine and mobilising the pelvis.
I feel like a different man (no jokes... ok, just one).
I felt sort of crunched down, hunched- I didn't really realise exactly how much until I started doing it.
After a month I was definitely feeling better.
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Because people's goals are so different -- from reducing back pain, to getting a more aesthetically pleasing posture, to getting a flat tummy, to meeting cute women down the local Pilates class.
For pain, assuming that the pain pattern is one for which a core stability exercise program would likely to be effective then so long as you're doing the exercises correctly (and that's a massive assumption because you would not believe the incorrect ways that people can do exercise) then I'd expect the exercises to make a difference in someone of something like average stature in anything from a fortnight to 16 weeks. But there are so many caveats.
E.g. one of the the commonest ones I encounter is people who are so physically large and/ or physically de-conditioned that they cannot move their body in a way the exercises demand.
But you Drew are a fine figure of a chap so all other things being equal then with a 10 minute daily routine and a proper work out once or twice a week then about a month would be in the right ball park for alteration of pain symptoms. Because you're basically assuming that the driver behind the pain patten which you're going to modify with exercise is postural, movement based, and a lack of core strength.