14 Nov 2011 - QA 4

Jai Gurudev. I have just done the part 1 course for the first time and since the past few days I have been getting back pain. What should I do?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: You talk to the teachers and doctors here they will tell you what to do. Are you sleeping on a hard surface? (Answer – yes I do sleep on a hard surface but since I have come here I am sleeping on a bed) Yes, that is it. You use a soft bed you will get back ache. I have seen many times they keep such thick pillows in hotels and other places. You put your head on the pillow, the next day your shoulders and neck aches. Most of the people have this experience that is why I started carrying my pillow. A very soft pillow is no good for your head. And once our cranial gets disturbed, the spine gets disturbed. That is why it is there the cranial sacral treatment. The cranium and the sacrum, the whole thing needs to be taken care. You have to sleep on a hard surface, have the right thickness of pillow which will suit you and make you feel comfortable. A hard pillow, not the foam ones, those soft pillows are the worst. It should be not too hard like a rock and not too soft like foam but somewhere in-between, like cotton pillows. The old system is the best! Or there is this new pillow that has come and that’s also good. Yes, but we don’t want to do any more pillow marketing here. Take care of your sleeping postures and in the morning do some Yoga asanas, that would help and shavasana will help.