- Home -

WHY GET OLD WHEN YOU DON'T NEED TO ?

It is the title of a book I have written.

First of all, I have to tell you that I am sure that we do not have to grow old. I think I know an easy way to support the burden of old age. So, I don't want to do a dogmatic lecture about "eternal youth". But, I have discovered something and I would like you to listen to my story which explains my discovery.

I used to be very fond of sport.
I fell from an horizontal bar when I was thirteen and I hit the middle of my back on a big stone.
For ten years, I was unable to straighten my back after bending , without pain in the middle of my spine.
It was a short but a violent pain.

I lived with this for ten years.

Suddenly, this pain disappeared and was replaced by a pain in my left knee followed by another pain in the right achilles tendon.
At this time, I was playing basket ball.
I was thirty three.
Once, I had to stop during a match because my left hip blocked. I was unable to move.

I had many X-rays and doctors found a lot of arthrosis in my body :
"Left knee, left hip, three vertebras in the middle of my spine were I was hurt when I was thirteen.
To say nothing of my achilles tendon which was made thinner from cortison injections."

Doctors forbade me to do any sport.

I wanted to ride a bicycle or at least to take long walks but they told me my joints were degenerating prematuraly, and, if I didn't want to be in a wheel chair at the age of fifty, I shouldn't exercise.
I was really disappointed, quite desperate because I had been practising sport for ages and I needed to carry on.
I obeyed the doctor's sentence for two years.
I was feeling depressed over these two years, almost to the point of a mental break-down.
So, I disobeyed and went for a long walk with some friends of mine, shooting partridges in the Haut Var.
I discovered something : that day put me in a very good shape.
Then, I decided to practise shooting in the Corsican and Varoises mountains.
I did this, for ten years and discovered something else.
After ten days walking up and down in the mountains, my belt was loose.
I gained two holes on my belt but, after a fortnight's rest, again the holes went back to the same place.
So, ten years after this discovery, I was in such good shape that I went for new X-rays which showed no difference with those done ten years before.
It was a pleasant surprise and I felt less degenerated.
I went to see the doctors who sentenced me so wrongly : They said : " Disregard it! You are a lucky man ! There is nothing to understand !
This explanation wasn't satisfactory and I wanted to understand what had happened.

First of all, I realised two things :
- Basket-ball had hurt me !
- Walking, up and down, in the mountains , on the contrary,had cured me.

Then, I studied many things like acupuncture and osteopathy. So,I approached human anatomy differently.
At the university, I learned about muscles on dead bodies and dead body don't move generally.
So, I began to learn about muscles on a moving body.
Muscles never move alone, they are connected like chains and they work together.
I made a personal comparison between muscular chains and acupunctural meridians.
I found a lot of common points.
Chinese acupuncturers have been studying the human body for three thousand years and discovered a lot of points along the spine, which are able to cure a lot of diseases.
The whole chinese physiology is located along the spine which they called " the bone of life " just as the Egyptians called the vertebra, the "key of life", four thousand years ago.

My first discovery was : If the muscles, along the spine, are contracted , the vertebra can't move and the organ which corresponds to it, can't work.

You should know that in chinese acupuncture as in osteopathy, each vertebra corresponds to an organ like heart, liver, lungs, kidneys and so on.
So, in that kind of medecine, if you could relax the spine muscles, you could make the body free and cure a lot of functional diseases.
Functional diseases represent ninety per cent of all sicknesses.
So, you can understand why I was interested in this life-bone.
I read many articles about it and I found one by Professor Kapandji, a french anatomist who made a hypothesis about "the particular role of the third lumbar vertebra".

I felt it moving in my body . My second discovery was :
"This vertebra works in the place the japanese call the HARA".

Hara means belly in japanese language and is located five centimeters under and behind the navel.
That corresponds exactly to the third lumbar vertebra.

The oriental ZEN masters have written something like this :
"The man who has lost his ROOTS should look for them in the hara. Then he walks along the PASS to reach the BEEING".

ROOTS, PASS and BEEING are the words you'll find in their writings.
I'm European and cartesian too, so I see the same things in occidental anatomy.
The man who has poor posture, with no good ground support (ROOTS), look for it in the third lumbar vertebra (HARA).
When he anchors his lower body to the ground, he is able to unwind the spine towards the sky(PASS) and stretch up his body to have a good head-position( BEEING).

To have the ZA ZEN posture you must have :
- the ears in line with the shoulders.
- the nose in line with the navel.

Try to do it while stretching your spine towards the head. If you succeed, you have made your third vertebra work properly

BUT WHAT ABOUT MY OWN PROBLEM ? WHAT ABOUT ARTHROSIS ?

When doctors sentenced me thirty years ago, there were two hypothesis :
-Arthrosis was a 70% degeneration of articulations.
-It was a 30% mechanical problem.

Now, doctors believe it is 7O% mechanical and 30% degenerative.
In my opinion (in my own problem) it was one hundred per cent mechanical.
If so, I had not degenerated.
I experimented with this idea on my own body first and later on my patients's bodies.
I concluded that arthrosis was primarily a mechanical process and secondly a degenerative one.
Now, I a'm sure you would like to know some ways "not to get old".

There is only one recipe : " Do your hara work properly ! "

You must have a good head-position.
To have a good posture, you need a large sense of separation between the lower body and the upper body, at the third lumbar vertebra level.
First of all, you have to know why you are growing old wrongly : you grow old from an internal rotation of your body.
In internal rotation, your body is a block.
You can't separate the upper body from the lower body.
So, you let your chin go forward in order to have a correct horizontal sight.
Then, you walk dragging your feet. If you want to stay young, you must always express your body in external rotation.
In that case , you'll make your hara work properly and have an energetic life.

ANATOMIC EXPLANATIONS.

There are two essential things in life :
1. a good stance = a good ground support
2. a horizontal sight.
These two things are controlled by the "life-bone".

In the spine, you have thirty three vertebres and one hundred articulations.
So, you may have, mathematically, one thousand milliards combinations.
With that many combinations, you are always able to adapt your body in order to have the two essential things :
- a good stance
- a horizontal sight.

But, if your third lumbar vertebra doesn't work properly, your spine will work like a broom handle and troubles will begin.
The essential way to make the spine work well, is found in the activity of this vertebra.

Look at this vertebra on the drawing : it has
- two transversal processes
- one posterior process.

On the transversal processes, the muscles are connected to the pelvis and pull down the vertebra.
So, the lower body becomes a block and the muscles starting from the posterior process is able to pull up the spine making it unwind towards the head.
You'll notice that, while stretching up your back, your belly is getting flatter.
You will have your nose in line with the navel and the ears in line with the shoulders.
If you stretch up your back without using the third vertebra, the belly will go forward.

I would like to tell you now, how you're getting old !
1. You should know that when your muscles are unused for three days, you will have to make them work for thirty days to recover their strength and elasticity.
2. Breathing is very important : Theoratically, the rib cartilages are hardened about the age of sixty. I think it is only partially true. If you don't make them work, they harden. But if you train to exhale as often as possible , the cartilages will maintain more flexibility. This is very important because each time you exhale, you relax the muscles which lock the third vertebra. " Remember how Monica Seles shouts when she plays tennis ".
3. You are getting old with the body in internal rotation and blocked when inhaling.

When this happens :
- you can't stretch up your back
- you can't exhale and as you need a horizontal sight and a good stance for living : "You drag your feet and you let your chin go forward".
So, if you want to get young :
- stretch up
- exhale
- and walk with elegance.