There comes a point with bad backs when your muscles go into excruciating spasm, the painkillers don't work, and you find yourself unable to move. Two years ago I was falling into this state more and more often. I had got used to waking up in pain, to the fact that bending down to put my knickers on in the morning would reduce me to tears and that the rest of the day would be spent hobbling around in thoroughly bad-tempered discomfort. But this chronic pain was increasingly being overtaken by days spent lying on the floor in agony.
My general practitioner referred me for osteopathy, which helped the first time but not much thereafter. A locum prescribed tranquillisers for the acute episodes, to relax the muscles and get them out of spasm. This guaranteed two days in bed in a woozy sort of bliss, but I would come to with the pain and bad temper intact. Both doctors had been vague about a diagnosis of the problem.
In desperation I tried a private appointment with a leading orthopaedic consultant. He was unaccountably abroad when I needed him, so I was seen by his brisk assistant, who took 15 minutes to tell me I had a terrible injury, should on no account lift my new-born baby for the next six months, should exercise in the sphinx position (don't ask), should write a cheque for £75, should wear a corset, should for this write a further and separate cheque for £35, and should book another £75 appointment in a week's time.
I still had no idea what the problem was, but the corset was a bit of a hit - the clubbers in the office admired the bright blue neoprene, though they weren't convinced it fitted with the rest of my south London housewife image.
By now I had become a back bore, but there were plenty of other back bores around to swap details with, three within whispering distance in the office and any number of other mothers in the playground. The tedious thing about back pain is that nearly half the population suffers from it at some time: 40% of adults, or more than 16m people had back pain in 1998, according to new research published by the charity Back Care.
The charity thinks as many as 180m working days a year may be lost because of back pain. Sitting for hours at computer screens and lifting small children (particularly in the first year after childbirth, when hormonal changes soften your ligaments) are classic triggers of back problems. I was doing both. (Much later I discovered that I had permanently damaged my sacro-iliac joint in the lower part of the spine.)
I put up with the pain for nearly two years until a fellow back bore, who had worked her way through everything from physiotherapy to acupuncture without effect, recommended Pilates, and in particular a Pilates teacher called Lesley Ackland, who specialised in injuries. Now I am still a back bore, but one of the messianic kind, for I have found a cure. It has changed my life and I feel I have to constantly share this information.
Joseph Pilates originally developed his system of remedial exercise in the 1920s, using pulleys and springs attached to hospital beds, to help injured troops in the first world war. He introduced it to New York, where it was taken up by the great choreographer George Balanchine to help his ballet dancers. It is now the fashionable exercise of Hollywood stars, and has become flavour of the month. The queue for Ackland's Body Maintenance studio has featured on Vogue's list of most desirable waiting lists. All of which sounds rather intimidating and would normally have been enough to put me off, but I was desperate.
It is true that in a typical session you might be sharing equipment with a few exquisite and wounded ballerinas, half the cast of London's latest hit musical, or a fashion designer's muse, but you are just as likely to be sharing it with someone crippled by RSI, or doubled up with scoliosis, or with a lump like me, who hasn't exercised regularly since school.
In the studio, where about eight people will be following an individual programme at any one time, there is an atmosphere of calm concentration, punctuated by raucous badinage and the latest gossip.
By the time I had got to Lesley Ackland, I was a fairly typical wreck. I was frightened to move and I was compensating for the pain in my lower back by gripping other muscles. My shoulders were so tense they could have done service as earrings. My posture was terrible but I didn't have any stomach muscles to hold myself better and my pelvis was out of balance. And because I had lost all spontaneity of movement, I was putting even more pressure on my joints. I needed to develop the muscles to support my back to break the vicious circle.
Like the best teachers, Ackland has a certain indefinable charisma and years of experience. She likes wrecks because they present her with an intellectual challenge. The first thing she did was give me confidence and show me I could move more than I thought without hurting. She taught me to breathe properly and then she devised a programme of simple exercises to stretch the muscles I had been over-tensing and to stengthen my abdominals, which act like a corset for the back and organs. I was able to ditch the neoprene support.
The effect was almost immediate. I felt myself uncurling. After a few sessions I could feel what was wrong with my posture and at least begin to correct it. I quickly developed enough strength in other muscles to do the things I wanted without putting pressure on my back. Although it would build up between visits, at the end of an hour's exercise, the pain would miraculously have disappeared.
On the whole, the exercises are very simple, and while they require concentration only a few need specialist equipment. Most I can do at home in between visits, and this week Lesley publishes a book for those who can't find a teacher near them.
The exercises have seen me through my third pregnancy without significant problems and helped me get back into shape quickly. The damaged joint still aches on and off, but the grinding chronic pain is under control. I have never been able to stick at any exercise regime before, but now I go every week and would no more consider not doing my stretches than not brushing my teeth. If I take a holiday of more than two weeks, the pain returns and pain is a very effective goad.
Like all treatments there are side effects, but with Pilates they happen to be rather nice ones: a flatter stomach, no more wobbly bottom and thighs, a transformed pelvic floor, and better sex. As life sentences go, it could be worse.
• For a list of Pilates studios around the country, send an SAE to The Pilates Foundation, 80 Camden Road, London E17 7NF. Lesley Ackland's book, 10 Step Pilates, is published by Thorsons at £7.99. She works from Pineapple Studios, 7, Langley Street, London WC2H 9JA. Tel 0171-240 4930. Back Care, a national charity set up to promote healthy backs, produces a fact pack. Send £3 and an SAE to 16, Elmtree Road, Teddington, Middlesex, TW11 8ST.
