Posted on April 14, 2016 by Kate Halsall
This has been a bad back week. Anyone who follows my blogs will know that I suffer from intermittent lower back problems. For some reason – without doing anything different – I have been in agony since Saturday. I’ve had to use an abundance of heat patches, and try and find new ways to get comfortable! And it’s this effort to get comfortable which lead me to devise a short “yoga for lower back pain” routine which helped me get so much more movement than I’ve had recently!
The rules before you start:
- Make sure you’ve warmed up before starting the routine. It’s working hamstrings, hips and back – you need to be ready!
- Only go to your limits. I teach yoga. I may not look it but I’m flexible!
- Take your time and if you feel pain STOP!!
- Be aware that this may not work for you. Everyone recommends swimming to me – but it hurts like hell when my back is bad. Not all backs and back pain are the same.
- Narrow to Wide Forward Fold. A great hamstring and back stretch. Start with your feet together. Take a deep breath in reaching up, then as you breathe out fold at your hips, and reach towards the floor. There are lots of varieties of this (knees bent, knees straight etc) so pick one which works for you. Take a nice deep breath whilst you’re in that position and breathe out as you uncurl to return to your standing position. Take your feet a little wider and repeat (keep your feet parallel), until your legs are as wide as comfortable. When you reach this point, when you’re in your fold, gently rock your torso from side to side.
- Sun Salutation. Quite possibly the single best sequence in yoga EVER! It has everything – forward fold (hamstrings and back), low lunges (hip openers), plank (core), tricep press up, back extensions, downward facing dog (upper and lower back stretches) and so on. If you were ever only going to do ONE bit of yoga-it should be this!! It’ll take too long to write a description here, but there are a lot of websites to get the details from.
- Child’s Pose into Cat/Cow. Both are great back stretches and help with spinal flexibility. From a kneeling position, sit back on your heels, resting your stomach on your thighs, keeping your bum down and stretch the arms out in front of you. Then come up into all fours. Slowly drop your belly towards the floor lifting our chin up, then draw your belly in as you arch your back to the roof and drop your head down.
- Lizard Pose. An amazing hip opener, but may need modifying for some people. From a lunge position, bring your elbows down to the floor on the inside of the front foot. Keep your body as straight as possible. You can modify this by placing your back knee down or placing your hands on a block or raised object.
- Pigeon Pose. It hits all the main areas which can cause lower back pain – it opens the hips, stretches the hamstrings and can relieve pressure on the back. As with most things yoga related – there are loads of different versions of this posture. One of the best descriptions I’ve read which explains how to do the pose is here: http://www.popsugar.co.uk/fitness/How-Do-Pigeon-Pose-40236207
I’ve been doing this yoga for lower back pain routine for 30 mins each day. I’m certainly walking better today than I was earlier this week!