Soothing Back Pain by Learning How to Sit Again

Mr. Drudge, 46, hasn’t just been sitting for two decades. Like so many workers chained to their technology, he has been hunched over desktops, laptops, smartphones and tablets, and it’s all taken a toll on his body. He tries to limit the time he spends sitting to four or five hours a day, but sometimes he sits for up to 17 hours.

To ease his back, neck and shoulder pain, Mr. Drudge says he has learned how to adjust his posture. Whether he’s typing in the car, from the wooden folding chair in his Miami home office, or from a boardwalk bench at the beach on cloudy days, he makes sure to tilt the top of his pelvis forward, roll his shoulders back, elongate his spine and straighten his craned neck.

Mr. Drudge is one of thousands of people who have trained with Esther Gokhale, a posture guru in Silicon Valley. She believes that people suffer from pain and dysfunction because they have forgotten how to use their bodies. It’s not the act of sitting for long periods that causes us pain, she says, it’s the way we position ourselves.

Ms. Gokhale (pronounced go-CLAY) is not helping aching office workers with high-tech gadgets and medical therapies. Rather, she says she is reintroducing her clients to what she calls “primal posture” — a way of holding themselves that is shared by older babies and toddlers, and that she says was common among our ancestors before slouching became a way of life. It is also a posture that Ms. Gokhale observed during research she conducted in a dozen other countries, as well as in India, where she was raised.

For a method based not on technology but primarily on observations of people, it has been embraced by an unlikely crowd: executives, board members and staff members at some of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies, including Google and Oracle; and heavy users of technology like Mr. Drudge.

“I need to do things that make sense and that I can see results from. Esther’s work is like that,” said Susan Wojcicki, 44, one of Google’s senior vice presidents, who has suffered from back and neck pain that she attributes to doing too much work at her desk.

Ms. Gokhale is not the first to suggest that changing posture is the key to a healthy spine. Practitioners of the Alexander Technique and the creators of the Aplomb Institute in Paris similarly help clients find more natural and comfortable ways to position themselves. Pilates and physical therapy can improve posture and bring awareness to it. A handful of companies, like Lumo BodyTech, now sell personal posture monitors, offering smartphone users constant feedback about the way they hold their bodies.

Ms. Gokhale’s methods have not been tested scientifically, though a doctor at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation is planning on conducting clinical trials by the end of the year.

But Ms. Gokhale, who was trained as a biochemist at Princeton University and studied at Stanford’s medical school, has some influence among medical professionals, particularly in Silicon Valley. Over 100 have referred patients to her, and a similar number have taken her course, she says.

FOR many office workers in the United States, sitting at a desk all day goes hand in hand with back, neck and shoulder discomfort. Stress and poor positioning can bring on aches or exacerbate injuries among workers faced with heavy computing, constant travel and long meetings. Regardless of occupation or lifestyle, backaches affect most Americans — about 8 in 10 deal with the pain at some point in their lifetimes, according to Dr. Richard Deyo, a professor of family medicine at Oregon Health and Science University.

The expenses are huge as well. By one estimate that appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the national cost of treating people with back and neck pain was $86 billion in 2005. And with back pain one of the top reasons for worker disability, missed work because of these aches may cost employers close to $7 billion a year, according to one study.

For the majority of people with back pain, the aches are short-lived and relief comes with rest and time, according to Dr. Deyo. But methods to help those with chronic pain are diverse. Using a standing desk at work has become a popular way to ease discomfort. Exercise, yoga, acupuncture and chiropractic have also been shown to reduce pain. Medical treatments like surgery and steroids continue to be important options, doctors say, even amid concerns that these have been overused.

Dr. Haleh Agdassi, a rehabilitation doctor with the Palo Alto Medical Foundation in California, sees back and neck pain so frequently among heavy users of computers that she calls it the “Silicon Valley syndrome.” She encourages clients to try a mix of nonsurgical strategies, but finds it frustrating that treatments for such a common problem are only modestly effective.

“There’s no magic bullet out there for back pain,” she says. “That can be overwhelming for patients. It’s an anxious, vulnerable crowd — they’re looking for solutions.”

Ms. Gokhale, 52, can relate to the anxiety of searching for an answer. She previously dealt with pain in her lower back, first as a college student practicing yoga, then as a young mother with sciatica. She eventually had surgery for a herniated disk, but it failed, she said.

When doctors suggested she try a second time, Ms. Gokhale began a search for other answers. Many of her own clients come to her similarly exasperated, she said.

Mr. Drudge read Ms. Gokhale’s book, “8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back,” before training with her in person. “I needed her touch, her observations and her humanity,” he said.

Google, Soothing Investors, Plays Up Its Innovations

Investors living in the here and now had mixed feelings about Google’s first-quarter financial results, which it reported Thursday, sending Google’s share price up 2 percent in after-hours trading. The company’s revenue slightly missed analysts’ expectations. Its earnings exceeded expectations, but only because of an anomalous tax credit from the government for research and development. Without it, Google would have narrowly missed earnings expectations, too.

Still, Google’s results showed that whatever the threats, its core search business is still strong, even as desktop search and advertising slow because people are rapidly shifting their computer use to mobile devices, where Google struggles to make as much money.

Google is throwing itself into cutting-edge businesses, like glasses that connect to the Internet and cars that drive themselves. In a shift, Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, talked in a conference call with analysts Thursday about how important these projects were to Google. In the past, Google executives have minimized these efforts, saying they mostly focus on Google’s core business.

“As C.E.O., it’s also superimportant to keep focused on the future,” Mr. Page said. “Companies can tend to get comfortable doing what they’ve always done, with a few minor tweaks. It’s only natural to want to work on things you know. But incremental improvement is guaranteed to make you obsolete over time, especially in tech.”

Mr. Page appears to have convinced analysts and investors who had previously worried about Google’s spending on science fiction.

“It’s a loss leader,” Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners, said of the new businesses. “But I like the fact that they’re doing those things. We look at Apple and say, ‘Hey, where’s the next round of growth coming from?’ You look at Google and say, ‘Hey, these are some pretty big markets they’re chasing after.’ ”

Despite Google’s challenges with its mobile business, investors have been fleeing Apple for Google. As Google’s share price climbed 26 percent over the last year, Apple’s fell 36 percent as the company faces slowing growth and competition from Google’s Android phones.

“There’s a chance that the reference to radical change being the responsibility of a C.E.O. was an acknowledgment that perhaps Apple didn’t change enough,” Jordan Rohan, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, said of Mr. Page’s remarks.

Google sold its first Internet-connected glasses, Google Glass, this week to app developers, and hopes to sell them to consumers by the end of the year. And it recently announced it would sell its ultrahigh-speed Internet, Fiber, which has been available only in Kansas City, in two new cities, Austin, Tex., and Provo, Utah.

Still, Mr. Rohan added, Google’s results have more to do with things like controlling spending.

“While on some level Google is distracted by glasses and watches and tablets and a cornucopia of form factors, its core business is being run more efficiently,” he said.

Net income in the first quarter rose 16 percent to $3.35 billion, or $9.94 a share. Excluding the cost of stock options and the related tax benefits, Google’s profit was $11.58 a share, up from $10.08 a year ago. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $13.97 billion, an increase of 31 percent over the same period last year. Net revenue, which excludes payments to the company’s advertising partners, was $11.01 billion, up from $8.14 billion. Analysts had expected net revenue of $11.3 billion.

Google’s challenge is that mobile ads cost half as much as desktop ads and receive only a quarter of the clicks, according to BGC Partners. In the first quarter, the price advertisers pay Google each time someone clicks on an ad declined 4 percent from both the previous quarter and the previous year, falling for the sixth consecutive quarter.

As investors have pieced together these data points, Google’s share price had dipped 2 percent over the last week. Google has been scrambling to fix the mobile problem. Now, advertisers will buy ad campaigns on smartphones and tablets by default when they buy ads on desktop computers. The program, which is called enhanced campaigns and scheduled to be fully in effect by July, is expected to increase mobile ad prices because there will be more demand.

“They are fixing the problem, but on the backs of advertisers,” Mr. Gillis said.

Nikesh Arora, Google’s chief business officer, said in the conference call that Google was acknowledging that people were always connected to the Internet now, and wanted to see relevant ads everywhere they went.

Another challenge is Motorola Mobility, which lost $271 million in the first quarter. Google executives have said that its product pipeline is subpar. But Mr. Page said Thursday that he had just seen Motorola’s coming products and “there’s real potential to invent new and better experiences.” He hinted at the phone features Motorola was working on: longer battery life and screens that do not shatter when dropped or die when spilled upon.