Originally Posted by Ken Cox

I've done chiropractors and neurosurgeons, and they made a lot of money repairing me.
However, I finally got steered by a Nurse Practitioner, who had a bad back himself, to a Physical Therapist who practices the Feldenkrais Method.

Moshe Feldenkrais developed a program of becoming more aware of how we use our bodies and learning new ways to move, work and play that don't constantly re-injure the body.
He specialized in stroke and head injury patients, but the method works very well for aging atheletes and normal aging people.
I would compare it to the gentlest yoga imagineable.
I now consider regular yoga and chiropractors way too violent.

A Feldenkrais practitioner does the normal seven years of undergrad and postgrad training, and then undergoes and additional four years of training in the Feldenkrais Method.
Most Feldenkrais practitioners actually mix and match therapies according to the needs of the patient.

Two years ago I could't sit cross-legged on the floor.
I suffered regular back spasms that sometimes required hospitalization, and I would spend days laying on the family room floor, incapacitated by pain.
I now commute 15 miles a day, like clockwork.

A Feldenkrais Physical Therapist costs a lot of money.
My insurance company really wanted me to do it, though, and paid for it all.
They had already paid for two back surgeries and Feldenkrais has a better statistical record than does surgery and chiropracty.
If a person doesn't have insurance, the Feldenkrais folks sell a series of self-instruction tapes for about $65, and, if a person listens to them and does what they say, it works.
They just help the patient discover for himself what he does that causes the pain, and it helps him discover alternative ways of doing the same thing, without pain.
No mumbo-jumbo or mysticism.
After one figures out the how and why of his pain, and the alternatives, it all seems so obvious.

Just do a search on Feldenkrais.
Almost any community with more than four physical therapists will have a Feldenkrais practitioner.