So I have a new bed partner. One that my husband doesn’t actually mind me having. Remember when I said my back was in pain, but it wasn’t muscle pain? One day I couldn’t even lift my elbows up out to the side. I was worried about how I was going to teach my Thursday morning Nia class. Doing Nia and using the foam roller helped. So I did a post about using a foam roller to roll it out so I would remember to use it. Click HERE for that. It worked great. I had to roll it out or roll on the foam roller often, but it worked. Then I started thinking . . . “Why is my back bothering me in the first place?” I started paying attention. I noticed that after I slept in a specific position was when my back hurt. And that same position also hurt my shoulder. I think my hips were being effected by this position too! It is a cross between an on-your-side position and an on-your-stomach position. Where I kind fold my upper body in half. I came to the conclusion that I needed to stop folding in on myself. I thought if I slept more on my side with my upper body “open” instead of the half-side-half- stomach-fold it might help. So I am sleeping with my foam roller.
🙂 Yes, I know they make body pillows so that might work, but why get ANOTHER thing when I can use something I have? Plus I think a pillow might be soft enough to still allow me to fold more than I want, whereas the roller keeps me propped up. I don’t fold at all. So I slept with my foam roller for a few nights and my back pain stopped.
So, now, I sleep on my side with my leg on the roller. The roller keeps my hips more in alignment. I say “more” because I don’t think they are IN alignment but more so than when I let my leg rest on the bed. And I have the roller down low enough so that the arm on the side I am lying on has a place to be and I actually use the roller (almost the “top” of it) to keep my body propped up. My “top” arm which rest on the roller doesn’t allow me to fold in on myself and rest my shoulder/arm on the bed.
Honestly the roller is not all that comfortable and so the hardness of it would keep me awake at first. But not having my back hurt all day was worth it. Plus the first few nights I would actually wake up a bit to move the roller to the other side when I switched sides. Now . . . since my back feels better, if I want to turn over I have been leaving the roller only on one side. I think that not folding over on at least one side is helping.
I am now using my foam roller as a preventative tool and not just a restorative tool. Nice.
How do you sleep? Do you have a lot of pillows? Do you have a body pillow? Do you wake up sometimes with a crick? Do you wake up with pains in your shoulder(s)/hip(s)?
Terre Pruitt's Blog 