Excerpt from Bragg’s Back Fit­ness Pro­gram Book — Chap­ter 4


Speak­ing of rest­ful relax­ation, your spine must be in proper align­ment while you are lying down, whether for a rest, nap or good night’s sleep. After all, we spend about a third of our lives sleep­ing! Sleep­ing on the wrong kind of mat­tress can throw your spine out of align­ment. A soft, sag­ging mat­tress fails to give proper sup­port to the heav­i­est part of the body, the pelvic region and thus causes the spine to curve toward the side on which the per­son is sleep­ing. A com­pletely rigid mat­tress causes cur­va­ture in the oppo­site direc­tion because it does not give suf­fi­ciently to accom­mo­date the wider hip and shoul­der areas. Nei­ther gives the back or spine the proper kind of sup­port when lying on the back or stom­ach. Before buy­ing a mat­tress, lie on it – see how you like it. You don’t need box springs; just put your mat­tress on a wood plat­form. An egg-crate foam mat­tress cover can also greatly increase com­fort, I just got one. It’s great!

Look for a semi-rigid mat­tress, firm and flat (one with suf­fi­cient resilience to allow shoul­der and pelvic bones to form their own nat­ural hol­lows), that will help keep the spinal col­umn in nat­ural align­ment. Plac­ing a wide, smooth bed board between mat­tress and springs will con­vert most any mat­tress (except an inner­spring mat­tress) into the semi-rigid type that your spine needs. Not­ing that one doc­tor called the inner­spring mat­tress the devil’s own work and a mis­be­got­ten gift of civ­i­liza­tion. The well-known ortho­pe­dist Dr. Philip Lewin, in his book The Back and Its Dis­or­ders, rec­om­mends a mat­tress of felted cot­ton, hair or sponge rub­ber. He also advises to stand tall, sit tall and adds, lie tall and on back is best to align spine. Sleep with slanted, cra­dle pil­low that ele­vates the head (it’s health­ier). Let all mus­cles be relaxed when you go to sleep. Go limp and let your­self feel heavy on the bed. Never let one part of the body press on the other as this will impede cir­cu­la­tion; keep arms and legs apart. Neck ten­sion is often due to tensed facial mus­cles, so think pleas­ant thoughts that make you feel like smiling.