The Inversion Revolution: Beyond Back Pain to Wellness

By Michael James McKay

The Inversion Revolution, Beyond Back Pain to Wellness, presents an introduction to Self-Care and gives a deep understanding how inversion can be used as a central tool that can take a person beyond back pain – to Wellness.

Millions of people have seen TV commercials selling high angle inversion tables to alleviate

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quality Direct Products
• Release date: Oct 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780982661543

Michael James McKay

Licensed Massage Therapist. Certified Zero Balancing Practitioner Owner of McKay Center of Health & Healing Inventor of Gravity Pal low angle inversion tables President of Gravity Pal, Inc

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

MY STORY – HOW I OVERCAME A LIFE OF BACK PAIN

My personal search to alleviate severe pain is how the Gravity Pal® story began.

I remember even as a kid having back pain but I dismissed it to youthful sports injuries and the occasional weekend warrior overuse. But I was wrong, very wrong. Many years later, my doctor told me the root cause of my lifelong back pain problem was a congenital birth defect where the facets in my lower back area had not developed correctly in the first place. Who knew?

So, one day in 2000 at age 49, while merely getting out of a booth in a restaurant after lunch the top of my spine at L4 slid forward from my lower spine at L5 thus severely pinching and stretching the nerves bundled there. The shocking pain in my back and legs was breathtaking and indescribable. I couldn’t walk more than a few steps before I had to stop and I couldn’t stand for more than several seconds at a time. It was all I could do to get home that day and see straight.

X-Ray of my spine after my surgery

The term brought to my knees was, for me, what actually happened.

After reviewing the MRI, the neurosurgeons said I had a condition called spondylolisthesis. They quickly set me up for spinal fusion surgery and I thank God they did. This condition can quickly wreck the nerves and they wanted to move fast. But, unfortunately for me, it was not fast enough.

Even though the surgically installed titanium cage stabilized my spine, extensive nerve damage had been done. I was left with intense 24/7 pain down both of my legs. I came to appreciate many different kinds of pain: biting, burning, sharp, stabbing, shooting, tearing, piercing, throbbing, and aching. It was a tough time and a very fearful one for me and my family.

One compassionate doctor told me that this was called peripheral neuropathy, that there was no cure, and that all I could do was to manage it with (a lifetime of) prescription drugs. He kindly said that I should simply shake hands with my pain.

I said, No thank you and that is when my real journey began.

I decided to become an expert in how to not only minimize pain, but to overcome it.

My journey has led me to extensively study and engage in many excellent modalities and activities that have assisted me to become mostly pain free today. These include Pilates, Rolfing, Gyrotonics, Myofascial Release Therapy, Five-Element Acupuncture, Zero Balancing, chiropractic, massage, weight training, yoga, rock climbing and, now, low angle inversion with Gravity Pal®.

As with many journeys, mine has many chapters and adventures. I did not know (and do not remember anyone telling me) in 2001 that the surgical fusion of spinal vertebrae together can require OTHER spinal fusion surgeries later on, due to the additional stress put on the other nearby joints by the initial surgery. Holy cow!

I did not know that it is very common to later need to fuse the vertebrae above and below the original spot. So, several years after my initial surgery, in spite of all of my efforts and improvements, I found myself suffering again and scheduled for a second back surgery. While at what I would call my peak recovery fitness level I was simply putting something in my car and BAM I was on my knees again.

It was pretty depressing.

I had worked so hard and made so much progress. I went from barely being able to stand in the kitchen to make a meal in 2001, to rock climbing in Yosemite, California in 2006. My biggest dream in 2001 was to be able to stand and walk long enough to take my (then) 7-year-old daughter to Disney World. Only a few years later I felt I had beat it and had truly transformed my life.

Truth is, I had transformed my life. But I now had to overcome a new challenge, a setback, a new obstacle that I did not see coming.

But just then a fortunate thing happened.

About a week before this new surgery, while I was using an early version of Gravity Pal® – which was the only thing that was giving me any relief at all – I felt something positively shift in my back and felt much better upon getting up off of it. It was a delightful surprise, but I was still wary.

I called my neurosurgeon and we postponed that surgery, first week by week then bi-weekly for a couple of months, then we simply put it off altogether.

It was then I knew that I had to further develop and bring Gravity Pal® and low angle inversion out into the world.

While I cannot promise anyone will have the same results as I did, I do know that Self-Care is what is working for me and my Gravity Pal® is a big part of that equation.

Years ago, my wife and I – together – went back to school and became licensed massage therapists and obtained advanced training as integrative bodywork therapists. Our original motivation was so that we could take better care of each other as we were getting older.

But now I had a new motivation; I started to more deeply study. I wanted to REALLY understand what had happened to me and to figure out how to better treat myself to have the best level of health possible. I wanted to understand as deeply as possible how low angle inversion could benefit me and others.

As I studied the long history from over 2000 years ago and many recent invention ideas since 1890, I found that inversion as a therapy is a very old idea, and that there have been many, oftentimes questionable ways that it has been attempted throughout history. Significantly, the recent infatuation with high angle approaches has been so successfully promoted that the public and even the Mayo Clinic equate inversion as a potential therapy with high angle.

This is a mistake.

For me and many others, higher angle options are simply too scary and impractical for multiple reasons. I wanted something different from high angle inversion that was not scary, that didn’t take 15 minutes, did not require a spotter or person to make sure I did not get stuck upside down.

Instead, I wanted something that was not scary yet effective, that was both quick to do and convenient for my life.

I knew I needed something with which I could travel and was therefore lightweight and portable.

It was obvious that high angle inversion options were not portable. Mine has been a journey of humility, setbacks and exciting discoveries. Today I am pain-free most of the time. I use my Gravity Pal® 2 to 3 times every day for only 1 to 3 minutes at a time. Occasionally I use it only once or twice in a day and occasionally I use it for only a single minute as a session. Over and over again I have been impressed with how a little of this technology goes a long, long way in providing me with immediate compression relief.

After several months of consistent, daily use I started to discover something else – that regularly using my Gravity Pal® on a daily basis was improving other areas of my health I wasn’t even looking for.

I started to notice that my thinking was becoming clearer. Believe me, after dealing with persistently high levels of pain for many years it was a real contrast to be able to think more clearly.

After numerous other Gravity Pal® users reported that they, too had started to experience greater mental clarity, my wife and I started to research how using a Gravity Pal® might contribute to that experience.

For now, even though these reports are very exciting and we think there are sound scientific reasons why there is a connection to regularly using a Gravity Pal®, all we can provide are anecdotal reports.

If anyone reading this is a legitimate scientific researcher working through an accredited university or research institute who would like to conduct objective tests on this phenomenon, please contact me. I would like to see if these reports can be objectively verified and would be happy to supply, free of charge and without restrictions or any request for attribution, the low angle inversion tables needed to conduct this research.

I started this journey searching for relief from debilitating back pain. Many people – too many people – today are searching for that same relief. As a tool, Gravity Pal® started out as a re-discovery and further refinement of the ancient human quest to escape the compressive effects of gravity. Along the way the bigger surprise has been to discover a tool that appears to have a broad spectrum of Wellness benefits that I wasn’t even looking for.

Now I look beyond my initial need for back pain relief which I happily manage every day. Now I look forward to better health and a better quality of life in many different ways – much more than I thought possible only a few short years ago.

CHAPTER 2

I DISCOVERED AN EMPOWERED MODEL OF HEALTH & WELLNESS

What is Health?

A Short History and a New Definition

What is Health? What is Disease?

It may be shocking to hear but Western healthcare does not provide a precise and widely accepted definition of health. How can this be?

Even though healthcare occupies 18% of GDP in the United States and a large portion of most Western economies, there is considerable disagreement, confusion – and downright denial – over defining the word health.

And this has consequences for all of us, physicians and patients alike.

On the surface, such a definition might seem obvious but a battle has been raging for hundreds of years over defining this simple word.

Let’s start with the common dictionary definition which states: Health is simply the absence of disease.

If that is so, how do we account for healthy blind people who are totally functional and maybe superlatively productive in the world? Are they unhealthy?

And how are we to think about elderly athletes who run marathons even though they may have pacemakers or may be dealing with any number of health