Here, the answer may not seem so obvious -- until you understand it: conditioning. Your brain controls your muscles. Your brain gets conditioned through repetition: repeated overuse, repeated overstrain, repeated stress. Your brain learns to hold muscles tight until you can no longer relax them. 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. 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 you take the pinch off the nerves.
Fortunately for those using the right 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.
But the problem isn't weakness or muscles in need of stretching; it's muscular overactivity and muscle fatigue (tiredness and soreness).
In that way, common therapeutic methods -- psychological, manipulative, many surgeries, therapeutic exercises in general -- use models that lead people to misunderstand (or miss a part of) the situation. They concentrate on muscles instead of on the brain-level control of muscles.
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, 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
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; 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 very well -- or to the extent that they do work, they do so through inadvertent 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 freedom of movement; you recover the ability to relax; you stay more relaxed without thinking about it. "Freedom of movement" means it's your natural state.
To, show you how do-able this is, I'll present some coordinated movements that can often restore your comfort. Before I do, read and understand the following instructions:
NOTE: If your problem is severe, (numbness or tingling in your extremities) see your doctor to rule out a medical emergency. That done, use the procedure recommended below, self-help resources (below), or find a Hanna Somatic Educator (the clinical methods are different and work faster than self-help methods).
