Lay, Lady, Lay ... On A Bed of Plastic Spikes
When you have sciatica, you will do just about anything to fix the blinding pain that shoots down the back of your leg. I should know because I’ve tried the following:
- Physical therapy
- Chiropractor
- Hanging upside down on a Glute-Ham Developer machine (to be fair, this did feel amazing)
- Massage
- Pressure-point therapy
- Icy Hot
- Yoga
- Made a list of people who’d likely constructed a voodoo doll of me and thought of ways I could apologize
After two years' worth of flare-ups making my life miserable, yet giving me a sassy 'Mae West walk' to hide the accompanying limp, I decided to consider acupuncture. Despite my fear of needles, I was in so much pain that I would have paid George Foreman to put the grills down and punch me square in the sacrum.
In my Googling for this alternative medicine, up popped a picture of a woman lying on something called an acupressure mat that was covered in thousands of little plastic spikes. She looked serene. I was jealous. At $20 for the mat and neck pillow, I was sold. The going rate for traditional acupuncture is anywhere from $75 to $95 and with my limited budget for Oriental medicine, I didn’t hesitate to click 'Add to Cart.'
After my mat arrived, I flipped through the information pamphlet that was tucked in the package. I was a bit wary at their suggestion of bare-skin-to-mat contact, but I was in no position to argue.
I laid the acupressure mat and neck pillow down on my floor, put on some Enya, and set a timer for 20 minutes. Sitting at the base of the mat I gently rolled backward until my neck was resting on the prickly pillow.
OH JEEZ.
I’m supposed to lie on this for how long?!
One minute passed. Then two. I realized I was breathing in short, shallow bursts. I began breathing deeper. I breathed into the pain. I could feel my back massaging itself from the inside out. I closed my eyes and focused on my breath, keeping it slow and deep. When my 20 minutes was up, I rolled over and stood up. My back felt warm and the radiating pain had subsided. I turned my back towards a mirror and was stunned to see redness and the indentations from the spikes embedded in my skin. Eh, at least it wasn’t a needle.
My mat, now known as Prickles, and I have continued to be quite the pain-busting duo. As it turns out, acupressure mats do more than just relieve back pain. They increase circulation, improve sleep, and reduce stress and chronic pain. Call me crazy, but when you have crippling back pain, you’ll do anything for relief. Even if it means lying on a bed of spikes.
