The miracle of motherhood is eloquently expressed when observing how perfectly the female body is designed to conceive, birth, and nurture a child. Following conception, a woman and her unborn baby unite in an oceanic blend of energy and identity. Where one ends and the other begins no one knows (see Figure 1, page 38). However, there does appear to be an innate wisdom that uses the nervous system as a conduit to transmit electrical impulses of intelligence to all the body’s systems that maintain mother and fetus in a state of homeostasis and balance.

No therapeutic approach to pain management is satisfactory until body posture is generally improved. Whatever the cause of the client’s problem, special focus should always be given to posture. Overall body alignment may seem time consuming and is therefore frequently neglected because both therapist and client are often content with immediate symptom alleviation. In recent years, however, the manual therapy community has been blessed with scientific advances spearheaded by researchers such as J.

I’m resting on my knees, rib cage indenting the soft lip of a plastic pool that could be mistaken for a kiddy pool. Colorful designs of cartoon animals dance around the outer circle, and a nervous husband pours water from a teakettle to rewarm the pool’s contents.

I am not outdoors under the sun, on a lawn in a backyard, but rather on a hardwood floor in the dining room of a small house in West Los Angeles, California.

It is four o’clock in the morning.

Contemporary treatment for low-back pain runs the gamut, from the conventional to the alternative, with sufferers seeking relief any way they can. What if it were simply a matter of mindfulness and attention to the breath? In a small pilot study from the Osher Center of Integrative Medicine in San Francisco, California, a research team led by Wolf Mehling, MD, used just such a concept for comparison of breath therapy and physical therapy for treatment of low-back pain.