Your back is still out? Therapy hasn't helped enough? Have you given up on chiropractic, acupuncture or massage? Have strengthening and stretching failed you? Have you resigned yourself to trying something -- there must be something -- besides muscle relaxants or pain medications? How about something innovative that can make your back stop hurting so much -- or at all -- something brain-smart?

You can start to ease your back pain in 90 minutes or fewer. Easing your pain is a start. With a complete program, you can escape from back pain for good -- by yourself -- and renew your life. With what's on this page, you can get started for free -- enough to convince you that it works. Then, I'll show you how you can get more.

How to Self-Relieve
Low Back Pain

Is back pain taking your life away?
Do this to take it back.
90 Minutes to Noticeable Relief

9 Weeks or Fewer
to Complete Relief

written by +Lawrence Gold | View Lawrence Gold's LinkedIn profile profile
Certified Practitioner, Hanna somatic education®
Click "Practitioner", above, and read my own story.

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In this article, I'll give you new information about back pain that actually makes sense and a way to get started reducing your back pain, in short order. Results are telling. At the end, I'll show you how you can get more, so you can do the job thoroughly.

WHY THERAPY MAY HAVE
MISSED THE MARK (read):

  • Bad spinal alignment, subluxations, bulging, herniated, or degenerating discs, "spinal arthritis", spasms and pain all come from chronic, high back muscle tension; tight muscles don't come from these conditions. Adjustments "put the cart before the horse," and that's why they often don't work, for long.

  • Muscle/movement memory maintains high back muscle tension and causes all of the above symptoms of back pain. Muscle memory forms during violent injuries, surgeries, repetitive movements, and long-term stress. Manipulation and stretching change muscle/movement memory slowly, at best.

  • If you have back muscle spasms, your back muscles are too tight, not too weak, but tired, so they feel weak. Strengthening exercises take you exactly the wrong direction -- toward tightening already-too-tight muscles tighter.

    (click) | TO EXPLANATION |

YOU MAY HAVE:

WHAT'S ACTUALLY POSSIBLE:

  • able to do anything you want without fear about your back
    • sports
    • heavy lifting
    • bending, straightening, twisting and turning

  • free of the need to
    • maintain neutral spine position
    • strengthen back or abdomen
    • get adjustments or therapy

This way gets you there.

The video at right shows an actual (not simulated) somatic education session to end lower back pain.

On-screen comments highlight key points for best results in your own practice.

Excerpted from the program, Quick Help for Back Pain.

LISTEN TO WEBINAR
LISTEN TO WEBINAR Q&A

Send for the free beginning exercise to end your own back pain. Get feelable improvement within 90 minutes of cumulative, guided practice time, with more improvement to come, until you're back to normal.

Somatic exercises end back pain by creating new muscle/movement memory -- the body-sense that controls muscle tension and movement. Spastic muscles let go and relax so deeply that they're far from spasm and so comfortable that you don't notice them, even during heavy lifting.

The shift is painless and progresses with each practice session. You'll notice that the pain is less, your balance has shifted more over the centers of your feet, and you feel taller.

Has your previous therapy experience been like that?

"The referrals that I have made to Lawrence [Gold] were people that I felt were suffering from complex motor behavior abnormalities that had to do with muscle imbalance and the lack of motor control. His utilizing Hanna Somatic Re-education has allowed these patients to regain what the chronicity of their injuries has taken from them. We know that muscles can be pain generators. Muscles suffering from neurologic altered input can react in two ways. The first is by becoming hypertonic and short, and the other is by becoming reflexly inhibited and flaccid.

Lawrence's treatment techniques and keen eye in evaluation have been a key modality ... to restore balance to these altered systems. Lawrence's ability to both diagnose, educate, and restore a better understanding with patients is his best attribute. He is well written, well-spoken, and is an asset to have as a key staff member in a multi-disciplinary approach to musculoskeletal injury and chronic pain."

-- Janine Talty, D.O.
M.P.H., Biomechanics
Watsonville Community Hospital
Wellness and Rehabilitation Center
Watsonville, CA

Send for the free beginning exercise to end your own back pain.

This is not about "strengthening and stretching, and then holding a neutral spine position", but about reconditioning your back so you don't need to hold a neutral spine position -- or to hold any position. It's about freedom to move.

I call the idea that "standing upright causes back trouble", "The Great, 'It's Evolution's Fault -- We Were Never Meant to Stand Upright' -- wrong understanding". Standing upright doesn't cause back pain and degenerating discs. Chronic back tension causes back pain and degenerating discs.

Experts hold fairly uniform opinions about how to cure back pain -- strengthening and stretching, adjustments and massage.

Typical results: a long, slow recovery process with a still-delicate back.

Has that been your experience?

People should re-evaluate their expectations of most accepted (and alternative) therapies. Your expectations should be higher.

Somatic exercises (movement education to retrain muscle/movement memory) provide the kind of experience and results you may wish for but may believe is unattainable or too good to be true: fast recovery. Here and now, I say that "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." Use what's on this page.

Approximately 300 clinicians practice this approach, worldwide. Read about my own history of injury and recovery. Then, test my words.

Lawrence Gold's signature

RELEVANT KEYWORDS:

  • lower back pain
  • back muscle spasms
  • tight muscles
  • strengthening and stretching
  • the cause of subluxations
  • spinal misalignment
  • severe back pain
  • back muscle tension

GLOSSARY OF MEDICAL BACK PAIN TERMS explained clearly in layman's terms, excerpted from Free Yourself from Back Pain | Nine Movements to Recondition Your Back for Any Activity

Immediate Answers to Ten Basic Questions: Back Pain Q&A.

Topics in the Present Write-up:

Send for the free beginning exercise to end your own back pain.

When prescribing a treatment for back pain, the obvious first question a health-care provider must ask is, "What is the cause?" Is it muscular? skeletal? disc? nerve? or something more?

While always involving one or more of those four, the more important answer is, "something more", as you will learn.

Pain in the back, itself, usually comes from muscles going into spasm; the pain is the "burn" of muscle fatigue.

When it's not muscle pain (sciatica), pain in the buttock or legs comes from tight muscles that compress the sciatic nerve where it emerges from the spinal column, or passes through the buttock. Pain in the upper back comes from muscle fatigue or spasm, which sometimes displaces of rib heads from their seat(s) between vertebrae. Disc herniation (bulge) or rupture, most commonly caused by tight muscles, leads to nerve root compression that shows up as nerve pain distant from the location of the disc, itself. Although some experts and practitioners cite "ligament strain" as the cause, that's rarely the case, and in any case is an effect, not a cause. All of these conditions trace back to that "something more", which I will explain in detail.

The Body is Not a 'Marvelous Machine'

 A living person is more than a machine. However, most approaches to back pain treat us as if we were a machine whose parts can be adjusted, as if our muscles are unresponsive objects that, if stretched, will stay stretched.

Well, we don't stay stretched, do we? (Otherwise, we wouldn't have to stretch again, and again.) If you've had treatment based upon this idea and you still hurt, you've seen that it's false -- though you might not yet have reached that conclusion, in hope that it might yet work.

Doctors and therapists who administer treatment based on the body-as-machine idea expect therapy to take a long time and for you to remain in danger of relapse. (If you don't believe me, ask them.) They may have told you that you'll have to be careful of your back for the rest of your life and that you'll have to maintain a neutral spine position at all times.

The "body as machine" idea misses something basic: muscle/movement memory controls our back muscles and spinal alignment. If you get a spinal alignment adjustment or do stretches or get massage, your muscle/movement memory resets your back muscles to the high state of muscular tension that caused the back pain to begin with, and you're back where you started, or close to it.

If you have had therapy that treats your body like a machine without regard for your sensibilities (as in surgery, strengthen-and-stretch therapy, electrical stimulation, heavy massage or fast adjustments), you may have experienced a rebound spasm and even more pain. If the rebound pain lasts for more than a day or two, that's not "par for the course"; it's a setback. Isn't it?

Maybe, what would work better is a more relevant -- and more humane -- approach. Address the muscle/movement memory conditioning that controls your back muscles.

Your back is already sensitized and reactive. Wouldn't you like to be brought to ease? What if, instead of treating you like a machine (or with a machine), we bring you to ease with a non-invasive, self-controlled, "low-tech/high-touch" procedure that addresses your muscle/movement memory? What if changing your muscle/movement memory could bring you to a lower-stress, more easeful state even under desperate conditions such as severe back pain with disc bulges or nerve entrapment -- and do it so completely and so reliably that you no longer have to have any treatment or worry about a recurrence of symptoms?

I'm not posing this as a casual, fanciful, speculative "what if" question. I'm posing it as a question with consequences for your life, comfort and well-being. What I've just described is what I'm promising, here.

The approach I present here has helped thousands of people (not millions, yet) who have already had unsuccessful back surgery or other procedures to end back pain and recover freedom of movement. The results are highly reliable.

The video, above, shows one such person. This is a good time to take a moment to view it, if you haven't, already -- or listen to the webinar recordings, or both.

Ready to take a new action? The video, below, shows you what to do, next -- click the link or read on.

Back Spasms -- The Patient's Plight, The Therapist's Quandary

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 muscle 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% and orthopedic surgeons are reluctant to perform them. The most commonly used approaches to muscle spasms, including massage therapy, help, but typically bring only partial relief. Has this been your experience?

Patients also face a quandary: money concerns. If you limit yourself to methods of treatment covered by health insurance, you are, in effect, choosing (at best) a longer recovery period. Is the money saved worth it? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

However, "somatic" back exercises of the type described and shown here potently support all forms of conventional treatment, with complete recovery in days or weeks, instead of months or years of treatment, for those who follow the instructions and practice daily. Your trying something new will be rewarded by new results: faster improvement.

free instructional video to self-relieve back pain.

About Back Pain Therapies -- Old and New

 Most therapists hold that back pain comes from weak muscles and so have you doing "strengthening exercises".

This conclusion is understandable, but wrong. Your back muscles may feel weak and in need of strengthening, but they're just tight and tired. They need relaxation, just as you do -- not higher muscle tone (exactly the direction leading to spasm).

Most therapists see tight muscles and so have you doing stretches.

This approach is also understandable, but also wrong. Muscles get and stay chronically tight from one cause: muscle/movement memory.

Stretching changes muscle/movement memory, but very slowly. If stretching were a good 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", doesn't it?

Tight muscles change spinal alignment, and unhealthy spinal alignment implies the need for strengthening and stretching to those who think of the body as a marvelous machine.

But the problem isn't in your back muscles, themselves, but in the muscle/movement memory that controls them. Change your muscle/movement memory, change your back.

It's simple: When muscles relax, they get refreshed (feel stronger); they lengthen and no longer seem to need stretching. Spasms end, spinal alignment normalizes, suppleness improves, and strength returns faster than by biomechanical methods. That's the breakthrough.

A more direct approach, then, is to change your muscle/movement memory. With that, you still may not believe that you're 'out of the woods' until you test yourself with the demands befitting a healthy back. Test it. Lift something heavy -- after you've thoroughly done the complete program offered, here.

Why Back Pain Strikes Suddenly

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, 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 -- and all the accompaniments.

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 seat of muscle/movement memory, the master control center for your muscles; your brain causes your muscles to go into spasm.

Why?

Muscle/Movement Memory Runs the Show

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, and both are controlled by the muscle/movement memory.

Muscle/movement memory sets the resting tension level of muscles, beyond which you can't relax. Muscle/movement memory sets the readiness of muscles to contract (and go into spasm). Muscle/movement memory controls coordination.

As with all memory, muscle/movement memory resides in the brain, a product of habit formation, repetitive use patterns, and intense, painful experiences. By concentrating on muscles or skeletal alignment instead of on muscle/movement memory, common therapeutic methods -- everything from soft-tissue manipulation, surgery, spinal decompression/inversion therapy, and most therapeutic exercises in general -- miss the center of the problem.

Your experience: When you've had therapy, did your doctor or therapist emphasize strengthening and stretching? Did (s)he give you abdominal strengthening exercises, i.e., crunches, and tell you, "These exercises will strengthen your back"? Did you get massage or some other form of bodywork? Did it work? That's my point.

Retraining muscle/movement memory is the key to recovery from back pain. As you create healthier muscle/movement memory, you recover comfortable freedom of movement; you recover the ability to relax; you stay more relaxed without thinking about it.

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Muscle weakness is not the issue. Tight back muscles aren't weak; they're tired (and very sore). Try as you might, you can't remedy muscle fatigue by strengthening tight muscles.

Spinal alignment is not the central issue. Spinal alignment follows muscular pulls; bones go where muscles pull them. Skeletal alignment doesn't control your muscles; your muscles control your skeletal alignment. Tight muscles don't keep themselves tight; your nervous system keeps them tight by muscle/movement memory.

Muscle/movement memory is the issue. It has final say on the activity of your back muscles.

The effective approach, then, is to "teach" your back muscles out of spasm, to change muscle/movement memory. That's done not through thinking any more than through strengthening or stretching -- but through movement training of a deeper kind.

I expect you to be skeptical. That's intelligent.

The 'proof' of the 'pudding' is in the 'eating', not in the reading. I invite you to test my words -- risk free. Invest 90 minutes.

The Benefits
  • rapid, durable relief of pain
  • confidence in your back
  • full capacity for lifting and twisting
  • full flexibility and strength
  • no need to maintain "neutral" spinal position
  • discs can heal
  • no further need for therapy or adjustments
  • better physical prowess

Now, for your direct experience of releasing your back pain pattern . . .

Be proactive. Get started right now with a FREE one-week practice period -- exercise #1 ("Spine Waves"), once or twice, daily. Click for Free Exercise to Ease Back Pain.

Three practice sessions are enough to feel your back relax, lengthen, and flatten to healthier spinal curvature.

To bookmark this page (Windows): [CTRL]+[D]

Click above for a free one-week evaluation period of Free Yourself from Back Pain, the entire program. Get some experience. You'll know within three days if it's making a worthwhile difference.

If, after one week, you want to keep going, a payment of $48.50 will levied every four weeks (two payments, $97.00, total). If not, click the button, below.

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Before you try something new, you should:

  • find that the approach makes reasonable sense

  • know if it's worked for others

  • have access to coaching, should you need it

  • have a chance to test it before you pay for it

    CLICK to view step-by-step self-relief programs.

    Free Yourself from Back Pain

    • clickable link to get free somatic exercise by email

    Exercise 1 of Quick Help for Back Pain

    Click the image or underlined link, and send. You'll receive an automatic quick-return email message with a link to this somatic exercise in 1-10 minutes.

    opt in button

    Back Pain Blog Entry
    for health professionals and clinical somatic educators

    ARTICLE:
    Back Pain, Therapeutics and Somatics

    This gentle, wavelike somatic movement exercise gradually relaxes and lengthens spastic back muscles. You'll feel more comfortable, on your back, and taller, standing.

    Do the exercise three times, the first day. You may even feel relaxation the first time through. The benefits accumulate. Repeat for two days, then get the complete program.

    NOTE: Soreness, if it happens, passes by itself in 24-36 hours.

    From the "light-weight" program, Quick Help for Back Pain (money-back guarantee).

    Free Yourself from Back Pain
    ("heavy-duty" program)
  • Module 1a: Spine Waves
    - relaxes your larger back muscles
  • Module 1b: Lazy 8s
    - lengthens your spine and frees twisting
  • Module 1c: The Folding Seesaw & The Kite
    - evens out the tone along your spine
  • Module 2a: The Wriggling Jig
    - frees your shoulders and waist
  • Module 2b: The Yoga of the Reclining Buddha
    - frees the sides of your trunk and neck
  • Module 2c: The Twist that Untwists
    - coordinates shoulders, trunk and pelvis
  • Module 3a: No-stretch Stretches
    - relaxes your deep back muscles
  • Module 3b: The Dog Stretch
    - lengthens your spine further
  • Module 3c: The Mortar & Pestle
    - teaches your spine flexibility in all directions
    •

    To give your feedback on the exercise, bookmark this page, do the exercise, then return to this page and click here.

    R E S O U R C E S
    You are invited to take a free preview
    of the somatic exercise programs offered here.

    The Institute for Somatic Study and Development
    Santa Fe, NM

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