Almost everyone has low back pain at some point in life. In fact, it’s one of the top causes of missed work in the United States. Ironically, it’s often your job that causes the problem in the first place. If your job involves lifting, pulling, or anything that twists the spine, it can contribute to back pain. Even simply standing for long periods of time, especially if your posture is less than optimal, can lead to an achy low back. Sitting at a desk all day comes also with risks, especially if your chair is uncomfortable or you tend to slouch.
Exercise can also contribute to low back pain. Overdoing it at the gym or golf course is one of the most common causes of overextended muscles leading to low back pain. You're especially vulnerable if you tend to be inactive during the work week and then spend hours hiking, running, or playing sports on the weekend.
Other contributors to low back pain include poor sleep hygiene, scarred nerves, having a c-section, smoking, your height (tall people, especially women taller than 5’7”, are more likely to experience low back pain), wearing tight pants, UTIs, and poor choices in footwear.
Symptoms of low back pain can range from a dull ache to a stabbing or shooting sensation. While doctors used to prescribe rest for back pain, we now know that lying still is one of the worst things that you can do. It can make back pain worse and lead to other complications, as can pain medications (both prescription and over-the-counter medications).
And that’s where yoga comes in! Yoga not only relieves current symptoms, but because it improves both muscle strength AND suppleness (thereby improving posture), it can keep low back pain from returning.
BUT, not ANY yoga practice will do. Some yoga can worsen symptoms. So we need to be mindful and methodical in our approach and seek out expert instruction to make sure we don’t cause more harm than good.
That’s where I come in!!
In yoga, when working with the muscles that most commonly contribute to low back pain, we do so in this order: passive release, active release, strengthening (if symptoms are not acute), dynamic mobilization, static lengthening via axial extension, other static stretching (if symptoms are not acute), and postural awareness.
If all that sounds like Greek to you, I have good news! This Sunday at 2pm, I’m offering a workshop, “Yoga for Low Back Pain,” that will teach you how to put it all into practice. We’ll do a complete yoga practice that incorporates all the above, and you’ll go home with a set of instructions that you can adapt to the amount of time you have available on any given day.
In addition to the anatomy and physiology of low back pain, we’ll also discuss the role that mental and emotional stress plays in low back pain and learn how to effectively mitigate the effects of stress.
I hope you’ll join me. No prior yoga experience is necessary, so if you know someone who suffers from low back pain, please encourage them to come with you! Register here today.