Transcript #502 Easy Solution for Reducing Back Pain and Fixing Posture with Eileen Durfee
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- On today’s Dr. Myers Podcast, we’ll hear from Durfee, a nuclear engineer who has ingeniously devised a system to restore the natural S-curve in your spine, effectively alleviating back pain and rectifying posture. In a world dominated by hunching over screens, Eileen’s system offers more than a mere adjustment of shoulders—it targets the core issue by realigning the spine’s curve and bolstering the muscles that hold it in place. Eileen passionately shares her insights, presenting her groundbreaking back shaper system and the complementary neck shaper system, both designed to revolutionize your spinal health. If you’ve ever grappled with back pain or find yourself concerned about your posture, this episode is a must-listen. Prepare to be enlightened about the transformative possibilities Eileen’s system can offer you and your loved ones.
- Hear about the experiences that led Eileen Durfee to develop a system to improve posture and reduce back pain.
- Discover how these simple rolls that you lay on restore the curvature of your spine and provide pain relief.
- Hear how the Creatrix back and neck foam rollers have helped athletes.
- Learn why an S-shaped spine is so important and the science behind achieving it.
- Learn a little about the Back Trac and its purpose.
- Grasp the importance of patience and proceeding slowly to get desired results.
- Hear about the impacts of poor posture, including pain and dependence on medication.
- Learn how using the neck shaper can alleviate both back and neck pain.
- Read how the neck and back shaper may prevent the need for surgery and improve results even if surgery is necessary.
- Hear about using the neck and back rollers while doing low-impact and regular exercises.
- Hear how long to expect results, depending on the current state of your posture.
- Learn about introducing children to back rollers to prevent poor posture and back pain.
- See what Eileen Durfee recommends to get started and where you can get the solutions to restore your spine.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Hello everyone. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast. Today I’m going to talk to you about how I reduce back pain and I’m fixing my posture. I have my friend Eileen Durfee on the show, and she’s amazing. I love her brain. She’s a nuclear engineer and she’s designed this system that helps to replace that S-curve or restore that S-curve in your back, and that fixes your back pain. It puts your spine back to the shape it’s supposed to be in and this also fixes your posture. I think so many of us are kind of hunched over, looking at our phones, on our computers, and it’s not enough to just put your shoulders back.
You actually have to fix the curve in your back and strengthen specific muscles in your spine. And so Eileen talks about how to do this and all of the different benefits, and she goes over her back shaper system and her neck shaper system. And this is something that I’m using every single day. I am absolutely obsessed with this back shaper system. It’s amazing and I highly recommend it to everyone. So if you have back pain or you’re worried about fixing your posture, for you or your loved ones, so stay tuned to the show. It’s really, really, really good.
So I know you guys listening to the show, you’re concerned about toxins, your body burden of toxins and how to reduce them to restore your energy and to reverse the clock on aging, and all the many benefits of detoxification. So I created a quiz where you can get an idea of your body burden of toxins. You can take the quiz at heavymetalsquiz.com. It only takes a couple of minutes and you get a free video series after you take it.
So our guest today, Eileen Durfee, she’s a former nuclear engineer, auditor trainer, land developer, home builder, and inventor with 10 patents. And she’s a CEO and founder of creatrixsolutions.com, which is an innovative … she’s also an innovative health specialist and an expert in spine health, reducing pain and improving overall wellness and increasing athleticism. She works with a lot of professional athletes. Eileen became sick due to chemical exposure, endured injuries, and had poor posture from growing nine inches in three months when she was a kid, and then being run over by a car. So on a quest to heal her body, she discovered what solutions worked and wanted to use her knowledge and experience to help others. Eileen’s mission is to revolutionize the physical fitness and wellness industries to give everyone that S-shaped spine so that people can avoid injuries and surgeries and live longer, solving America’s 100 billion a year low back pain problem. And you can learn more about Eileen and her amazing products at creatrixsolutions.com.
Eileen, thank you so much for joining the show.
Eileen Durfee: Oh, you’re welcome. And thanks for having me. It was nice seeing you in Mexico.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yes, you came to visit me here in Playa del Carmen. It was amazing. You came over and you did a whole session with me showing me how to use your back shaper kind of toolkit, and it has been such a game changer for me because one thing I’ve been wanting to focus on is changing my posture and improving my posture and I’ve dealt with a lot of hyper mobility in my lower back and my hips, and lower back pain, and just lots of stuff going on that has really plagued me in preventing me from the workouts I wanted to do and whatever.
And I’m getting older, I feel hunched over sometimes and I’ve been wanting to fix these things, and I just feel, honestly, I feel so hopeful and so excited to have a solution in this protocol that you’ve developed in finding a solution, like a long-term solution. Because it’s not enough to just stand up, to just sit up straight and put your shoulders back and that’s just not enough, because if that worked, that’s what everybody would be doing. So why don’t you talk a little bit about this back shaper protocol that you developed and why you developed it.
Eileen Durfee: Well, the main thing is we live in gravity and we can’t change where our muscles attach to bones. And so when we experience tight muscles, we definitely need to be thinking posture, but there really haven’t been many solutions. And after I was run over by a car and I met Dr. Scherger, one of the things that he had me do was lay over some towels that were folded with a groove in them. And it was amazing how much those helped me. And as the years went on, because that was like what, in 1978, ’79 when that happened, and working with Dr. Scherger up until his death in 2016, we wanted to have something that would help the body as gravity let go when you’re laying down, let the muscles relax to be able to guide bodes into a better location. Because once gravity’s not tightening everything down and the muscles release, the body can do some amazing things.
So I came up with rolls in five different diameters. You can kind of see in the picture here the different diameters, and the difference between each one of those rolls is only a quarter of an inch, which really doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is a lot, with different densities because everyone has a different degree of muscle tension, or pain, or posture abnormalities. So with the rolls with the groove, we’re able to lay down. And there’s a lot of the chiropractors that I work with now, they say, “Eileen, it’s segmental traction using your own body weight.” So they’re saying it’s like genius because it lets the body adapt. So that was the main reason why the rolls, because a lot of people can’t even start with the more advanced spinal fitness exercises.
And one example is there’s a lady that is here locally in town and she had such neck pain that the doctors took electrical instruments and deadened her nerve’s ability to send that message to the brain so she wouldn’t experience pain anymore. She was still having severe low back pain. She was going downstairs hanging onto a handrail with two feet on one step, just edging down. And she was so bad that I had to have her start out the softest, the smallest diameter rolls to lay down and I said maybe only five minutes to start with, just baby steps. Three days later this woman runs up and down 13 steps of stairs and has no pain just from laying over these rolls.
Dr. Wendy Myers: It’s so simple because all you do is lay down on them. That’s all you do. You have one on your neck and one on your lower back and you just lay down on them and they reshape your back, essentially. It’s amazing. I love it.
Eileen Durfee: Part of the exercise, you know, and it really depends where someone should start, because some people are in so much pain, they can’t even do like a twist because our discs between our vertebrae as we’re older are like a dried out kitchen sponge. And what we want is we want them hydrated. We want them to be more like a gel so that our vertebrae can actually flex and move in a good way. So that’s why we have people do the twist before laying down on the rolls. And then the goal is to work up to 20 minutes laying down, because then your muscles completely let go. And it’s a weird phenomenon. You will literally hear your bones crack as you’re laying there, but then at the end of the session, after 20 minutes, that disc reforms itself, it goes back to that sponge state, but that’s after your vertebrae have actually moved and then we systematically increase the diameter and the density of the rolls to restore the curvature.
So it takes a while and people need to be patient. There’s a MMA fighter that I work with, he sent me his x-rays, and when I was doing the FaceTime with him, he could not even use the smallest diameter softest roll on his low back. So I said, okay, take a hand towel, fold it and kind of roll it. So you just have a little tiny lump there. And some people, that’s where they start, and after 10 days he texts me back and says, I’m 200% better. You’ve changed my life. I can now lay over the actual rolls for 15 minutes. And so as long as people are willing to go really slow with this, it’s amazing what it can do for the spine.
Dr. Wendy Myers: And you work with a lot of professional athletes. I mean you work with NFL athletes and baseball athletes, and professional athletes are seeking out your counsel to improve their posture and improve their performance.
Eileen Durfee: Yes. Now besides the rolls, we have the neck shaper where you can do a neck flexion, but we have other equipment that’s not for sale yet that’s part of this, where we do a sit-up, we do a pelvic tilt, and literally with athletes, there’s a video on the YouTube channel with Jacob Johnson, the fullback from the Las Vegas Raiders. I just have him hinge at the hips to bend over because most everyone standing up not running has tight hamstrings, but hamstrings are not meant to hold your body erect. They’re only to be used for motion. Running, jumping, hitting, launching. So when you have tight hamstrings, you know your posture’s bad. And so he starts out, bends over, he’s like 11 inches from the ground and he’s uneven. One side he can reach a little bit farther than the other. I have him turn his neck and I just have him do four of the five movements, only 10 repetitions.
So in less than 10 minutes, this guy’s hamstrings are completely loose. He can reach and bend over nine inches more than he could before and turn his head. And so these athletes are amazed because it causes them to run faster, because when you have tight hamstrings, it shortens your stride length, so you’re not going to be able to jump as high, run as fast, because the body has this hierarchy. We always talk about this, the body’s so intelligent. When our short pastoral muscles fail, the body grabs the muscles meant for movement to help out with that job. So when you do go to move, it will not let you have that fast muscle twitch recruitment fibers to do the job because it’s trying to hold you erect. And so with that-
Dr. Wendy Myers: Those hamstrings pull the lower back out of whack, also. That’s why it’s pulling on one side. Then your hips are out of whack and their lower back muscles start hurting. And I think those mechanics, people don’t understand.
Eileen Durfee: Right. So it’s really critical to have the S-shaped spine. There’s a lot of functional trainers now. You see them on Instagram, the stories where somebody will have an excessive lordotic curve in the low back and they’ll have a forward head posture, and they’re in a lot of pain. So what they don’t do is restore the neck curvature. They flatten out the low back, so they’re more of a straight spine, so the person’s in less pain, but that is still not the ideal posture. And so why do so many people have a different mindset as far as what good posture is?
I see a lot of things on the internet where it says, oh, if your head is this far forward, you have X amount of pounds on the head and everything like that. And the only study that went through every vertebrae and calculated sheer forces and pounds of compression was done by Dr. Scherger and his team. And before that it was just Leonardo da Vinci and Borelli. So since Dr. Scherger died, my writings have been rewriting his information. I’ve hired a medical illustrator to be able to see the difference between ideal posture, what we want to have, and then different shapes of posture. And so it’s definitely, if you search benefits of the S-shaped spine on Google, you’re going to see Mount Sinai Hospital come up and they’re going to talk about how that’s great because it causes the spine to be like a shock absorber.
There’s so many people out there that have been told that they have degenerative disc disease. So what is degenerative disc disease? It’s when you lack that S-shaped spine and you just have more compression transferring from vertebrae to vertebrae and you’re squishing the spinal disc. And so it takes 18 years from birth to adulthood to form the bones the right size, the density, the spinal discs, and then your body stops supplying the nutrients to it, counting on the fact that you’ve developed this S-shaped spine. And then when you walk and you move, there’s this pumping action where it hydrates your discs and it brings products out, nutrients in.
But also at that angle, when Dr. Scherger and his team, even the National Strength and Conditioning Association went through the math on this, so it’s validated, it’s correct, that there’s less direct compression on the disc. So we know, and some of the writings that I have now on the website are proving that the S-shaped spine is best, but nobody can tell you how to do it. There’s a few references to doing a standing pelvic tilt supposedly to put the low back curve in. And so this is a whole new education, spinal fitness, the things you can do to restore the curves, which reduces nerves being pinched. And the other thing, even if we’re both into nutrition and health, and we all know about energy production in the body, so one of the most important things that we can do is stop spending energy.
The body, to tighten those muscles … For example, good posture standing up at the lumbar L2, L3, there’s the inner spinalis muscle right here. So when you have good posture, that’s [inaudible] at like 25 pounds per second. But if you have a little bit of a flat low back and the head’s like three and a half inches further, that goes to 200 pounds per second. And then the compression from good posture is 125 pounds, it goes to 300. So you can imagine how much energy the body is spending and that’s why when people have any kind of tight muscles or back pain, that feels so … how drained you feel? It’s just like you just can’t live a fulfilling life.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And then so many people are dealing with back pain and they go to their doctor and they’re literally given no solution whatsoever except for some sleeping pills, and/or pain medications and things like that offer no hope of ever addressing the root cause. And even going to the chiropractor is, well great, I love my chiropractor and I get adjustments. People don’t have the time or the money to be doing that every single week. I used to go a couple times a week because I was constantly getting out of alignment. And so I love that you created this system to be able to do this at home. And you have this, so you have the rolls, you could do a roll in your neck and a roll in your lower back. And I am so crazy about this system, I love it so much because it’s helping me so much. So there’s also this-
Eileen Durfee: Back Trac.
Dr. Wendy Myers: The Back Trac. So you lay on this and you roll like a foam roller, but it has this groove in it where you put your spine, so that just adjusts your spine. You just roll it on your back, you do a foam roller and it just adjusts your whole spine. It’s amazing. I do this a couple of times a day. I don’t have any more back pain. I don’t have any more kind of my back feeling weird when I’m walking or I’m working out. I can address it every single day on my own at home.
Eileen Durfee: So which density is your favorite now? We have the orange, which is a medium and the one that you’re holding is a hard.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, so this is the hard red one. So I use this on my back, but when I’m doing the back shaper, I was using the orange, which is the softest I believe.
Eileen Durfee: Well, the orange is the medium. The blue is the soft.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Okay, great. So I’m still on the blue. I think I went from the orange to the blue. I forgot which one was which, but I thought I was graduating to the next one. Maybe I’ll go back to the orange. But I’m on the 3.25 on my lower back and I do, I’m sorry, this is for my neck. And then I think I do the 3.25 for my lower back, as well. But I’m going to go back to the orange. And then after that you can go to the red, which is even more firm.
Eileen Durfee: Right. And the laying surface really matters. If somebody is really more injured in pain, I recommend starting on laying like a soft bed, or a massage table, or a couch or something that has some give because you’ll be able to get away with a larger diameter roll. And if you’re in so much pain that the smallest rolls are hard for you, that’s a way to introduce them. And then you’re doing the 3.25, I don’t know, are you laying on the floor when you do those?
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, I have a really thick yoga mat, like a super thick yoga mat. And so it has a little bit of give, not much, but I really want to dig in there and get that traction and get my back fixed.
Eileen Durfee: And the thing of it is that people need to be able to go slow. And it depends on your activity. Let’s say you were out doing yard work, or canoeing or something where you’re paddling and doing a bunch of activities, the diameter of the roll that you need to use will change, because the idea is when you lay over these, you want to be relaxed so you get the muscle released. If you’re laying there and everything’s so tight that you can’t relax, then we’re not going to get that movement that we need. So a person needs to realize … I go through three different diameters for both my low back and my neck at any given time, depending on my laying surface, what I’ve been doing. I flew down to Mexico, was there and saw you. I was there for 10 days. I came back home for four days and then I flew to Chicago, and then I flew back.
And with all the planes, I’m tall, I’m six foot. It’s like those chairs are meant for short people, and just all the sitting. So my back was out of whack and I wanted to go into my chiropractor. I go, okay, so I’m going to practice what I preach. So I did the rotation and I laid down on the rolls and I literally fell asleep on them. And when I woke up, my whole spine had realigned itself. And because I have congenital issues from being born, my hips were twisted. So my fascia really, literally my dura squeezes the right side of my head. So I still have those issues that I fight with, but literally gravity, I mean it just let go. Everything went back into place. And so they’re just such an amazing tool as long as people are willing to start slow.
I’ve had these people that are pretty athletic going to the gym, so they want to of course do the hard rolls or the medium rolls right away and they want to stay on there for the full 20 minutes. And I had this one gal where when I recommend to start with five minutes, and she does 20 minutes because she’s athletic, so she’s laying there and she feels like she can’t even get up because the bones move and your muscles release, and so you kind of have to roll on the side. So that’s the thing about these rolls is people really should follow the directions, start very slow and work up and be willing to go down a diameter, go down a density, because just part of the fluctuations that we go through.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, for sure. It definitely opens you up, up your lower back loosens things up, so it’s not something you want to do before you work out. And I realize that’s not something I want to do before I go walking. It’s just something I want to do after I work out or at the end of the day. And definitely I realize I could only do 10 minutes to start and things are really kind of loosey goosey and opened up and it can feel kind of unsteady, but it’s part of this process. I think people are so tight and it really pulls their lower back and their hips out of place, that they have to create this space where they’re able to do something like the back shaper and do something for their back to open it up, relax it, and get it in the right alignment.
If you don’t do that, if you’re not doing something for your back to correctly align it, no matter what it is you’re doing, you’re stretching or going to the chiropractor, you have to be doing something or at some point your back is not going to work how you want it. I had a slipped disc and I’ve had other stuff going on. I used to pop my back all the time just for fun. And so I created this hyper mobility in my back, and every time I’d bend over my back would hurt or I’d have really acute pain when I’d bend over because of that slipped disc. And it was just really because I wasn’t taking proper care of my back, even though I was going to the chiropractor.
So even with someone who’s taking care of their back, you can still have back problems. But I think with this, I feel like I finally have found a solution to one, permanently correct my back issues and correct my posture, which is a big theme for me right now. I think so many people are bent over on their phones or bent over on their laptop, and they don’t realize it over time they’ve just become hunched over and have this hump on their back. And for me, I’m really wanting to, I want to get straight again. When I met you in person, your posture was so straight, your posture was unbelievable. And I was like, wow, that is what I want. I want to have this beautiful, elegant posture that’s effortless. I finally want to try to sit up straight. My back hurts because the muscles are weak, but it’s more than that. It’s just I don’t have the right alignment to hold myself erect and straight for long periods of time, and that’s always been my frustration.
Eileen Durfee: People are so much in flexion, like you say with electronics and everything, that our muscles are imbalanced so the muscles on our anterior side of the body are tighter. So it is really hard. I remember I had terrible posture growing up and my parents would always tell me, put your shoulders back, but the shoulders weren’t my problem. My head was so far forward that it was impossible for me to put my shoulders back. So these exercises are teaching us for our body to recognize where our head should be over our hips. And then it’s that S that goes in between it that alleviates the tension and things like that. And posture is important because when you don’t have that S-shaped spine and you experience tight muscles, then the nerve canals where these nerves come out are impinged. So even if you have the best nutrition in the world, your organs are not getting the signals that they need to be the healthiest.
And then your body’s so smart that it begins to help out the muscles on the back that are so tight. So it’ll start calcifying the anterior side of the vertebrae so that there’s more support here. And that’s where aging happens. We’re all born as a C-shape, and it’s the riddle of the Sphinx. What crawls on four, walks on two, then on three? So it’s a baby, it’s a human, and it’s a man or an elderly person on a cane. And what we don’t want to do is to have natural fusion occurring on our vertebrae, getting the spurs, because that’s all going to impact our disc health. And then that of course affects our range of motion and in our movement, and all increases pain.
So posture is so much more important than people realize because we become accustomed to all those tight muscles. Not so much the people in the health and wellness industry, but there’s a lot of people that just constantly take ibuprofen for pain, or muscle relaxers, or are even using medical marijuana to reduce their pain. I think that’s a lot better than being on hydrocodone. But still the effects of the accelerated aging, the disc degeneration, the aging from your nervous system not getting the signals to your organs, all that is because of posture.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, exactly. And I found that when I was taking pain medication that it would actually make my back worse because I couldn’t feel my back, and feel like I would just take pain medication to just deaden those pain signals, and that I wasn’t able to be as careful with my back and I’d hurt it even more. And it was just like this constant never ending cycle of never getting to the underlying root cause of why I had that back pain. I had years of physical therapy. It’s incredibly expensive, and for me I get kind of emotional about it because I had so much pain and so many years of being overweight and not being able to do the workouts that I wanted to do, and all I wanted to do was go to yoga or go lift weights or something.
So I think for a lot of people out there, they’re very, very frustrated looking for answers. And this is the answer, this doing the back shaper is the answer to back pain on a long-term basis. And for me it’s a wonderful way where I end my day doing this and I know that over time because I just started doing this maybe three weeks ago. Over time, I’m so excited about getting the shape of the posture that I’m looking for in long-term back health and back function, as well. And so for me, my goal is I want to stay mobile, I want to continue to do the workouts that I want to do. I don’t want to get that hunched over, I don’t want to have that osteoporosis look and I want to stay healthy for as long as possible.
And so you mentioned earlier the neck shaper. And yeah, so can you tell us a little bit more about that? I think it’s really important for people to hear that a lot of their back problems stems from not having a strong erector spinae muscle, correct? And so tell us what that is and how we can work out that muscle.
Eileen Durfee: Well, because most, I mean I can be in airports for a whole weekend going to and from, and it’s trying to find Waldo. Where’s Waldo? Where’s the person with the S-shaped spine? I can be gone a whole weekend, see thousands of people and only see three people with the S-shaped spine. It is totally epidemic. And so this neck, we need to strengthen the multifidus and the inner spinalis muscles. We need to change our ergonomics. And as we begin doing this, your body starts remembering that position and you’ll catch yourself.
I’ll be walking around and I’ll be tired and I’ll just go like this and it’s like, oh, this feels so much better. I’m actually to the point now where I’ve been really diligent this last year on my spinal exercises where, like you said, your posture was so good. Well, it’s not always been that way, but now more than not, I am standing with good posture. But with our head and the weight of our head and our neck, when you nod at someone that’s C5, and this is all the exercise we want to do is strengthen those muscles.
And so with the neck shaper, usually you do this standing. Because if you stand up, we can have everybody stand up and then have the person next to them feel the low back muscles and they’ll be tight. And then we can do this neck flexion exercise where we end in this position. Then you touch their low back muscles and they’re all loose. So it’s like a lot of people’s low back pain, tight muscles is because it’s their head, their neck. And so chiropractors that I work with said, “Eileen, this is not the neck shaper, it’s a spine shaper because when you do this exercise, it will fix your low back and your neck.” But it’s a simple exercise, you just look up.
Now, some people literally can’t even look up without pain. So wherever that is without pain, that’s where you start. But if you look up, then you put pressure, and it’s not pushing your head forward, it’s just that nodding. I’m going to agree with you. That’s C5. So it’s just like to chin down, a little bit below level, then you totally relax everything, and then you just push your head back. And your whole spine will flex and the head will go over the low back, and then those tight low back muscles that have been bothering the person just are completely loose.
Then they’re like going, oh my gosh, I didn’t know that it was me like this all the time that was causing this. And so it’s super simple. The protocol for this is keep this at your desk. Every time you get up to go to the bathroom, to get water, or to eat, you stand up and do five of those exercises. So less than 10 seconds throughout the day. I had a man had been on hydrocodone medicine for severe neck pain. He was scheduled for fusions, complete fusions, C1 through C7. He did this for two weeks, his pain completely disappeared and his doctor canceled the surgery. Now that’s what I’m talking about. That’s the kind of results we need.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, I mean I think anyone that’s thinking about doing back surgery, you want to do everything that you can to avoid that surgery because while that can be necessary for some people, I think there’s a lot of things that people can do that maybe they’re not getting at their doctor. If you go to a surgeon, they’re going to tell you to do surgery. If you go to a chiropractor, they’re going to adjust your back. You have to look at who you’re talking to, but I think a lot of people have unnecessary surgeries. They don’t have relief of their pain, they don’t get the results. They can have even more complications with nerves being cut or losing feeling and numbness, and really not have the results that they’re looking for and still have their pain. So I think people need to do everything in their power like the back shaper and neck shaper and explore other options before they’re going under the knife.
Eileen Durfee: I’ve been in contact with Dr. Stefano and he has five spine surgery centers in Minnesota. And he indicated that for a spine surgeon, the success of a surgery, no matter what spine surgery it is, is dependent on the posture of the individual. So he is so excited about the equipment because of how quickly it promotes good posture. And unlike most people think, if you go to the hospital and have any kind of surgery, you pay the anesthesia, you pay the surgery center, and all of that. And when it’s all said and done, unless the doctor owns the surgery center, they’re only, for that surgery, making less than a thousand dollars. So a doctor doesn’t really make money from the surgeries and the good spine surgeons realize that unless you can do something to help with that posture, any surgery that they do isn’t going to be that successful.
And so this is something even if someone can’t avoid surgery, to be able to start doing something, and the rolls are like a passive maintenance. If you have to start with a soft towel, like that MMA fighter I work with that couldn’t even lay down, that he was so flat and so tight and so injured, there’s a starting point. But then if you are patient and you take time, just like you said, the best time to do it is at the end of the day. Now if there’s athletes involved, after a game also, because of the motion injuries and the things that can happen to them. But yeah, posture is so critical and you really feel more energized, too. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that since you’ve been using the rolls, how your energy has been impacted.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, I mean I just feel amazing when I’m doing it and after I do it. I just feel like … it just feels so right, where I just feel like I’m melting into the rolls and you do have that increase of energy going up and down your spine. It’s more aligned, it’s more like in alignment and you’re getting S-curve going, I feel so good. And when you take them out, you’re a little bit tender and you just sit there and you breathe and relax into it and let your muscles go back to normal after they’re being stretched out. But yeah, it just feels so good. It’s a great way to end your day.
Eileen Durfee: So I also use them with lifting weights because I’m a big proponent, especially with being 60 years old now, maintaining my muscle mass is so important for me. And historically my whole life I was like you where I’d be hyper mobility and my back would be going out, and I’d have to be very careful when I lifted weights.
And so what I do now is I use those blood flow constriction bands so that my body will carry blood to the muscles and that it’ll stay there. So I can use a lot lighter weights, which is easier on my joints, but then I can get the muscle definition going. But also I’ve been doing some experiences. I have a hack squat, because one of the things that Dr. Scherger taught me is about what exercises to do and not to do, because if you’re exercising your biceps, for instance, if you’re standing up with dumbbells and doing a curl, you’re actually using a lot of your low back muscles. And so he said don’t do that. Just body muscle overload training to make muscles does not make a strong joint, and if you’re stressing and reducing your low back curve, you need to change the type of exercise you’re doing. So he said, sit down and do a preacher curl. So the tension off the low back is removed. And likewise, when I do a bench press, I have a roll under my neck and my low back.
Dr. Wendy Myers: I’ve seen videos of you doing that, and that makes so much sense to have your back in the proper curve and building muscles in the shape that your back is supposed to be in. And I’m like, that just makes so much sense because I’m a weightlifter, too. I lift weights three, four times a week when I’m not injured. And that just makes total sense that you want to build the muscles in the form that they’re supposed to be in.
Eileen Durfee: Well, I’ve got an injury on my right shoulder when I was building a cabin, debarking logs with a draw knife for hours, and the tendon that goes from my bicep into my chest went out of the groove. And it’s just like this shoulder still is sensitive to that. And when I’m in a bench press, I compensate, so I’m pulling more on one side than the other, but when I have the right neck roll underneath me, I can’t compensate. And then when I do the blood flow restriction bands, I’m still getting a workout where my form, I’m concentrating perfectly on my form and my spine is braced. And then on my hack squat … I tried something because you’re on a 3.25 roller, that’s like what I’m on, as well.
And I had one of the larger rollers in the garage, and I’m on hack squat, so I was using the standard roller that I always do and had my weight on there and going down as far as I could. Then I switched out and I go, I wonder what’s going to happen if I do the bigger roller? So I put the bigger roller underneath my low back, so I’m supported and I’m not there laying down trying to relax, but it’s just really making my low back curve the ideal shape. And I could go down, squat deeper, do more weight, and my knees didn’t feel the tension on them. I was so blown away that I switched the roller back to the smaller one, and I lost all those gains instantly. And I switched rollers again and I got the gains. So it’s like, oh my gosh, the depth of squat, the shape of the spine, getting the tension off the knees, I’m just so amazed at how you could use these even during your regular workout.
Dr. Wendy Myers: I’m actually going to start doing that. I was trying to get my back in a little bit better shape, so to speak, before I started doing that. But yeah, I’m excited. I’m going to start incorporating the rolls into my workouts whenever I can. And so how long does it take to change your posture when you start using these, using the back shapers? How long does it take?
Eileen Durfee: Well, just like you, you’re going to notice results right away. But to have lasting change where you’re going to notice it’s more comfortable for you to have this nice posture you saw me in, if you do this three to five days a week for eight to 12 weeks, you’re going to be transformed. Now each person is different. Like the lady that could barely walk down the stairs, she’s just doing baby steps with maybe 10 minutes over the rolls. It’ll be a while before she’s in the gym lifting weights, or doing our specialized sit-up, or things like that. Each person is different. And I do spend time with people if they want a consultation. And I’m going to start a Facebook group so I could get on there once a week and then we can all talk with each other and answer questions, and I can help coach people. I’m coming out with a book and a whole certification protocol with more detailed videos. I have some videos and I’m going to create more.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Fantastic. Yeah, I think you are an expert on detoxification, and you’re a nuclear engineer, and you’ve re-engineered so many different detox products. And so when you told me about this, and I mean just the fact that me personally and so many millions of people deal with lower back pain, and just back pain and general neck pain, this is just … I just love that you’ve put your brain to re-engineering these back products and creating the back shaper, because it’s so needed.
And I think even children can use this. I want to start using this with my daughter so that she will prevent some of the back injuries that she could potentially have, and reshaping her back and just … I think that these are just amazing. It’s an amazing tool for people to be able to maintain their health, maintain their mobility, and maintain their ability to exercise in the way that they want as they age.
Eileen Durfee: Right. Yeah. So I mean, this fits my five-year-old grandson and it fits some of the biggest heads, because as long as you’re catching the chin and the forehead, so this is just the right size. And the rolls, we sell them in complete kits with all the density for a little bit less money. And the starting point that I recommend a person to get is at least the complete set of the soft rolls, because I use three different diameters for different things. I use a different one when I’m supporting my head sitting in my LA-Z-Boy chair. I use a different one in my car. I use a different one when I’m on my exercise equipment versus just laying over the rolls.
But these things with children, remember this is missing from childhood development standards. We measure all kinds of things with children, but we never measure spinal development. And we’re having children do exercises that destroy the ability to get the S-shaped spine. So any parents out there that have children, the sit-up is very damaging to the body. And there’s a way to do a sit-up that isn’t, but when you sit up, these facet bones no longer lock on each other and it’s posterior shear and you can have some dislocation, but it will flatten out the low back curve, which you don’t want.
So there’s a free download guide on my website how you can actually take a sleeping bag with duct tape to make this roll, because the exercise balls are the wrong diameter. So it won’t induce a low back curve, but you need to be doing a sit-up over this fulcrum. And so then gently as children age and we let them use the rolls, we teach them to do the neck shaper, and they start doing a sit-up over a roll, then they develop that S-shaped spine.
It’s like you look at every Olympic athlete, look at their curve of their spine. It’s no secret why they’re good at sports, it’s because they got the spine. So that’s what we need to do for our children, is we need to take things into our own hands and make sure that our children develop the correct posture. And it’s so bad today with all of our electronics. And so if you don’t do something for your spine, Dr. Scherger said you brush and floss the teeth you want to keep.
So what you got to do is you got to do your neck flex and your pelvic tilt in your sit-up, and use the rolls to get that S-shaped spine or to keep it, because gravity just has such an impact on us. Our work environment, our repetitive motions, it’s like eating candy and going to bed without flossing and brushing our teeth. So like I said, what did I say? How to use this? Just use it when you get up to go to the bathroom, get something to drink or eat, and only five reps are like … do you have 10 seconds several times a day? That could mean the whole difference of you having headaches, or tight muscles down the arms, or having low back pain. So we do have something now that we can do ourselves in our own homes, and help our families.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. So I absolutely love this. I use it myself. I highly recommend people doing it, especially if you have low back pain or you just want to … or you have a family member that has pain and you want to retain your mobility. Or you’re an athlete and you want to improve your game, improve your performance, you want to check this out. So Eileen, where can we get the back shaper kits and the neck shaper, as well?
Eileen Durfee: At creatrixsolutions.com, or it might be easier to type in spinalfitness.com, or I’m sure you’re going to have a link for the viewers in this episode where they can go to. And you can buy a sizing kit if you just want to buy your one neck roll and your one low back roll. I do recommend just getting a complete kit because you will use them, and especially if it’s more than just you and you have a spouse, or significant other, or children, that they’ll just be used.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, I recommend the kit, the whole kit too, with all the different sizes and firmnesses, because I’m constantly using different firmnesses and you’re going to start graduating up to more firmness as your back gets in better shape over the next couple of months. So I just don’t see how I would really get the most out of the system if I didn’t have all of them. And I’m also, I’m traveling this summer. I’m going to go to Japan and Seoul, Korea and Thailand and Indonesia, and I’m bringing these with me. I guess I started using it and I’m like, how am I going to function if I’m not able to roll out my back and do the back shaper? Because I’m going to be walking all the time and doing all kinds of things, so I have to bring it with me. I can’t live without it. My boyfriend’s going to think I’m nuts, but I don’t care because I don’t want to have any back pain or any back problems when I’m on my trip.
Eileen Durfee: Yes, it’s just amazing. It’s changed my life and that’s my biggest passion. Out of everything that I’ve invented or created, this is my biggest passion because of all the pain and suffering that I’ve gone through. I grew nine inches over a summer. Then I was walking in a parking lot and run over by a car, and they said I’d never be normal. And this is what has restored me. And now at 60, the x-rays of my spine, I don’t have any disc degeneration. I don’t have any bones wore off.
And the one thing I wanted to say, is even though we can increase flexibility right away so your muscles get loose, the other thing that this does, this improves our joint capsules. So that’s where real mobility, a lot of people talk about flexibility, but more people want to know about mobility and it’s dealing with these joints. And so this is going to enhance your joint health and improve it even if it’s compromised now.
