Back Exercises for Low Back Pain


What Can You Do
about Your Own Back Pain?
Give Yourself First Aid for Back Pain.

by Lawrence Gold Personal Page
Associate, The Novato Institute for Somatic Research and Training

Certified Hanna Somatic Educator

Certified Practitioner, Dr. Ida P. Rolf Method of Structural Integration

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This vignette is not staged, but actual, as you can
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Right here, you've found instruction in a type of back exercises for lower back pain that may work better than anything else you've come across -- as fast or faster for back pain than pain meds, longer lasting than stretching, more sound than strengthening. Are you in the know about Somatics?

Read this write-up, and then...

CLICK HERE for the free video so you can give yourself . . .

First Aid for Back Pain

-- ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND CREATOR --

This write-up explains back care in a way that finally makes sense and explains some things about your past experience of back care.

To make things easier for you, I provide links to topics, thus, so that you may read selectively:

RELEVANT KEYWORDS:
  • back pain
  • muscle spasms
  • back muscle spasms
  • tight muscles
  • strengthening and stretching
  • spinal alignment
  • skeletal alignment
  • skeletal muscle
  • muscular tension
  • muscle tension
  • I begin with an observation: Although it is often believed that the more invasive (or more standard-of-care, or more manipulative, or more high-tech) the procedure, the more likely it is to be effective, with back pain, the opposite is commonly true. Your back is already sensitized and reactive; it wants ease. A certain kind of non-invasive, self-controlled, gentle, "low-tech/high-touch" procedure can bring more complete, longer-lasting results faster and and more cost-effectively than invasive or high-tech methods, even under desperate conditions. How can this be? It's an entirely new approach to back pain with entirely new results.

    The approach presented here has helped thousands of people who have already had unsuccessful back surgery or other procedures to end back pain and recover freedom of movement. The video, above, shows one such person. Take a moment and view it, now, and then, resume reading.

    What to do, next? The video, below, shows you.

    "Left untreated, the damage could get worse." ~ Nexxium commercial [ commentary ]

    see also: "Understanding and Overcoming Lifting Injuries"
    "The Psoas Muscles and Abdominal Exercises for Back Pain"
    "A Functional Look at Back Pain and Treatment Methods",
    published in The Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients.

    The first thing to consider is, "What is the origin of the sharp or sudden pain of a back injury?" Is it muscle? bone? cartilage? nerve?

    Pain in the back, itself, usually comes from muscles going into spasm; the pain is the "burn" of muscle fatigue. Pain in the buttock or leg(s), when not muscle pain, (sciatica), comes from nerve compression, resulting from muscles going into spasm in the back, where nerves emerge from the spinal column, or in the buttock. Pain in the upper back may come from muscle spasm and the resultant displacement of rib heads from their seat(s) between vertebrae. Disc herniation (bulge) or rupture, often of muscular origin, causes nerve root compression that shows up as nerve pain distant from the location of the disc, itself. In a very high percentage of cases, tight muscles are the cause and key to relief.

    To the Point: Understanding the Approach

    Muscle weakness is not the issue. Tight back muscles aren't weak; they're tired. Despite best intentions, you can't remedy muscle fatigue by strengthening tight muscles.

    Spinal alignment is not the central issue. Spinal alignment is maintained by muscular pulls; bones go where muscles pull them. Your muscles aren't controlled by skeletal alignment; your muscles control skeletal alignment, regulated by your nervous system. Tight muscles don't keep themselves tight; your nervous system keeps them tight as a reflexive action. Despite best intentions, you can't change reflexes by stretching.

    Free control of muscles and movement is the issue. When you have control, you have freedom. You can freely tighten muscles and you can freely relax them. Right now, you can't relax your back; you're in the grip of a postural reflex of stress ("Landau Reaction").

    The approach, here, is to free your back by freeing your muscular control.

    Click to go straight to instructional video to relieve back pain.

    Medical Practitioners' Quandary; Patients' Quandary: How to Control Back Spasms

    Medical practitioners, including physical therapists and surgeons, face a peculiar quandary with regard to back pain in general: because their patients' pain so often comes from back muscle spasms, much of their efforts go toward ending back spasms or correcting their consequences (facet joint pain, herniated discs, spondylolisthesis/slipped disc). Still, according to one physical therapist, the likelihood of a back pain patient returning in another episode of back pain is about 80%. Back surgeries have a success rate of about 15%.

    Patients also face a quandary: money concerns. Patients tend to choose methods of treatment covered by health insurance, first. They want to use their health insurance because they've paid for it and so go to alternative methods as a last resort.

    Back exercises of the type shown below are an alternative to conventional treatment that promises speedy improvement.

    Click to go straight to instructional video to relieve back pain.

    Overview of Back Pain and Muscle Spasms

    Let's take another look at back pain that casts new light on conventional treatment.

    Unless you have had a violent accident, your back pain, whether sudden or chronic, has been coming for a very long time. Muscular tension builds up for a long time before crossing the point of no return and becoming a back spasm. Then, like the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back," a small movement can trigger a crisis: muscle spasm.

    So, we return to the therapists' quandary: back spasms. What causes back spasms? What controls muscular tension?

    The answer may be obvious to you: your brain, the master control center for your muscles; your brain causes your muscles to go into spasm.

    Why?

    Muscle Spasms -- Usually a Brain-Conditioning Problem

    Here, the answer may not seem so obvious -- until you understand it: conditioning. Apart from momentary reflexes, your brain controls your muscles. Your brain gets conditioned through repetition: repeated overuse, repeated overstrain, repeated stress. Your brain learns to hold muscles tight "on automatic". It's what is meant by "nervous tension." At that point, your tight back no longer comes from bending or lifting, but from a tension habit stored in your brain. You're always tight, on the verge of spasm or in spasm, and having gotten used to it, you probably don't even know how tight you've become. The problem isn't exactly "all in your head" -- but it is in your brain.

    With tingling or numbness, the muscles of your back are so tight that they are pulling your vertebrae (the bones of your spine) so close that they trap and pinch nerves.

    So the problem is simpler than you might expect. You probably do not have a medical problem; you probably have a conditioning problem. By relaxing those muscles, you end the pain of spasms. You also free the nerves from pressure and end the symptoms of a pinched nerve.

    With the new methods, a muscular conditioning problem can often be cleared up fairly quickly -- past experience notwithstanding.

    Perspective on Therapeutic Methods to End Back Pain

    The view of most therapeutic methods holds that back pain comes from weak muscles. They therefore prescribe or practice "strengthening and stretching".

    This view is understandable. Tight muscles are tired muscles, and tired muscles feel weak and seem to need strengthening. Tight muscles are shortened muscles, and shortened muscles seem to need stretching. Tight muscles cause postural changes, and postural changes imply the need for strengthening and stretching.

    However, if stretching were the answer, people who stretch their back muscles would no longer have back problems. It begins to look as if "The Stretching 'Emporer' has no clothes."

    The problem isn't weakness or muscles in need of stretching; it's muscular overactivity and muscle fatigue (tiredness and soreness).

    It's simple: When muscles relax, they rest and get refreshed (feel stronger); they lengthen out (no longer seem to need stretching). With normalized muscular functioning, spinal alignment improves, movement normalizes, comfort returns.

    A more direct approach, then, is to improve muscular control. People with back pain generally need a brain-muscle approach -- either to avoid surgery or after surgery.

    Muscular Control

    Because they concentrate on muscles instead of on the brain-level control of muscles. Common therapeutic methods -- spinal and soft-tissue manipulation, surgery, spinal decompression/inversion therapy, and most therapeutic exercises in general -- use models based upon a misunderstanding of the essence of the situation: muscular control.

    Muscular control has two parts: the ability to regulate muscular tension (regulate strength and relaxation) and the ability to sense muscular tension. Both abilities are needed.

    Therapeutic methods typically neglect the sensory awareness part of control. Too often, people are given therapeutic exercises but no instructions in how to do them (e.g., slowly or maintaining awareness of the sensations of movement), only what to do (e.g., do abdominal strengthening exercises, i.e., crunches; they're told, "These are strengthening exercises," so people go for strength instead of control; they go for effort (measured by numbers) without sensory awareness (experienced by feeling). That's why most therapeutic methods don't work as well as they might. To the extent that they do work, they do so through gains of muscular control at the brain level. Progress comes slowly, at best, often from working too fast and too mechanically (if not too hard).

    If you can't feel how to control your muscles, you can't feel how to relax them. You need to improve your ability to control your muscles and that involves your ability to feel your muscles working under your control (not merely the pain of muscles in spasm).

    As you do, you recover comfortable freedom of movement; you recover the ability to relax; you stay more relaxed without thinking about it.

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    To, show you how do-able this is, I'll present some coordinated movements that can often restore comfort to sore backs.

    NOTE: If your problem is severe, (numbness or tingling in your extremities) see your doctor to rule out conditions that can be addressed only by surgical means, such as a disc tear.

    First Aid for Back Pain

    • Do these movements as a way of creating sensations of movement.
    • Move slowly and smoothly.
    • Be gentle, working within the range of sensations you're willing to experience. Done gently, they are safe to do even with disk problems. If in doubt or afraid, consult your physician before proceeding.
    • Always separate repetitions of a movement with complete relaxation.

    If you do these movements mechanically (i.e., without sensing the location of the muscular effort), if you do them too quickly or too hard, you deprive yourself of the sensations needed to gain control over your muscle tension; you need to feel what you are doing. You get better results by doing "too little" than by doing too much. Never cause yourself to cringe from fear or pain (some soreness is inevitable); if you cringe, do a smaller movement. Move more slowly, more gently.

    NOTE: You may experience soreness for a few hours after doing these exercises -- and the main back pain associated with movement will have decreased. Evaluate the effects not by the absence or presence of soreness, but by your improvement of movement and posture and the decrease of the main pain. With repetitions, the soreness and the main pain continuously decrease. Stick with it -- or progress to one of the Programs for Long-term Recovery named, below.

    CATEGORY 1

    Twelve-minute Emergency Back Care from Lawrence Gold on Vimeo.

    Fast help for back spasm emergencies. Instruction for relaxing spastic muscles to recover comfort and movement. Gentle somatic movement exercise.

    NEXT STEP: 17-Minute First Aid for Back Pain

    Programs for Long-term Recovery :
    ~ The Cat Stretch: Overcoming the Myth of Aging
    ~ Free Yourself from Back Pain

    ARTICLE: Back Pain, Therapeutics and Somatics

    CATEGORY 2

    17 Minute First Aid for Back Pain from Lawrence Gold on Vimeo.

    This seventeen minute video shows and guides you through the second procedure for emergency back care of lower back pain. This is a recording of an actual session with a client, so you can hear his feedback as the session proceeds.

    Programs for Long-Term Recovery :
    ~ The Cat Stretch: Overcoming the Myth of Aging
    ~ Free Yourself from Back Pain

    ARTICLE: What You Can Do about Your Own Back Pain

    A: STARTING POSITION:
    • on your belly
    • face turned to the right
    • right hand under your left cheek (like a pillow, palm down)
    • left arm loosely by your side

    1. Slowly lift just your left leg.

      Feel the first sensations of muscular effort. Go slowly.

    2. Slowly lower your left leg.

      Feel the last sensation of relaxation, as it happens. Take a deep breath and let everything go.

      REPEAT THIS LEG LIFT FOUR (4) TIMES AT DECREASING LEVELS OF EFFORT.

    3. Simultaneously lift your left leg, head, and right arm.

    4. Slowly lower yourself down, take a deep breath and relax all the way.

      REPEAT 4 TIMES AT DECREASING LEVELS OF EFFORT, THEN SWITCH SIDES.

    B: STARTING POSITION:

    • On your back
    • knees up
    • feet near your buttocks
    • Fingers interlaced behind your head.
    • Elbows out flat on the floor
    1. Arch:
      • Inhale.
      • Gently, gradually turn your tailbone down into the surface (arch your low back).
      • Gently press your elbows down.
      • Tug your heels toward your buttocks and hold.

    2. Curl:
      • Begin to exhale.
      • When you can feel your back tighten, relax your back and gradually press your back onto the surface.
      • Bring your elbows together. (pause)
      • Press down on your feet.

      • Continue to exhale.

        Use equal strength to curl as you did to arch.

      • Point your elbows at your knees.
      • Curl forward and look at your knees.
      • Exhale completely.

      REPEAT THIS "ARCH AND CURL" MOVEMENT FOUR TIMES MORE AT DECREASING LEVELS OF EFFORT.

    Do these movements for ten minutes daily for a week or two. Many people get just the results they need.

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