Understanding and Overcoming Back Pain

Certified Hanna Somatic Educator
Associate, The Novato Institute for Somatic Research and Training

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

This article distinguishes back pain from back injury; you may have one but not the other. It critiques prevalent treatments for back pain and provides the rationale for a more conservative (less invasive) but often more effective approach than prevalent therapies or surgery, for many back pain cases.

If you want a different outcome, take a different approach. Internalize the information in this article and consider it in your decisions.

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

see also: "What You Can Do about Your Own Back Pain"
"The Psoas Muscles and Abdominal Exercises for Back Pain"
"A Functional Look at Back Pain and Treatment Methods"

According to the reports of the mass communications media, back pain afflicts eight out of ten of us sometime in our lives. You may have tried the traditional medical solutions -- strengthening, stretching, pillows, braces, a special bed, pain relievers, muscle relaxants, massage, exotic surgeries, or other approaches -- acupuncture, biofeedback, relaxation techniques. For the good these approaches do, many people still have back pain after treatment and expect to have to live with it. It's either that, or drugs. There's been nothing better, until now.

From your own experience, you probably know that traditional therapies often produce only short-term, partial relief or require regular -- even lifelong -- care. But it need not be that way.

There is something better available -- a new discipline in the field of health care: clinical somatic education. With it, most back pain sufferers should expect full recovery.

Clinical somatic education is not education of the thinking mind, but of the brain as master control center for the muscular system. It rapidly improves muscular control and freedom of movement through a training process that involves learning to control muscles and their movements better. Clinical somatic education affects the brain the way biofeedback does, but with importance differences, one being speed of results and the other being the durability of the improvement. Clinical somatic education makes you fit for all activities of daily living.

New Information on Back Pain

Somatic educators are likely tell you something that other have not: back spasms are a sign your back muscles are musclebound -- tight by habit, not by disease. You can free yourself from back spasms by improving your control of your back muscles, so you can relax back spasms and have them stay relaxed. This statement applies as much to people with degenerative disc disease and herniated discs to those who have only a twinge, now and then. The underlying cause is the same.

A message like that may make so much sense that it may seem too good to be true. After all, "If that's all it takes, why doesn't my doctor (or therapist) know about it?"

The answer is that until recently, no method existed that could rapidly improve muscular control at the brain-level.

You may think, "Back spasms are too painful, too serious to be dismissed that quickly, or that easily."

It's understandable why you think that.

Conventional Therapeutics and Back Spasms

Conventional treatment methods, sorry to say, aren't very effective, in the long run. Most therapies try to strengthen, stretch, or adjust people out of back trouble by working on muscles or the skeletal system. But bones go where muscles pull them, the control center for the muscular system is the brain, and these approaches don't address the brain's control of muscle action, so the problem remains or returns. The problem is a muscular tension habit that makes muscles musclebound.

That's why the relief obtained by conventional therapeutic approaches to back spasms is usually temporary and you remains subject to re-injury and to prescribed limitations to movement.

Habits, including muscular tension habits, exist as patterns of brain programming. They're learned or acquired. Tension habits can be unlearned, and actually, that's the only approach that can work for long term relief of back pain. You must unlearn the tension habit underlying back pain and learn better control of your back muscles, to the degree of relaxation.

Medical doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, osteopaths, and bodyworkers use predominantly manipulative methods. Temporary results are common; cures are rare.

Problems arising from muscle tension cannot be "cured" by manipulation because muscle tension is a habit maintained in the brain. Lasting relief from muscle tension is obtained only when the brain-level tension habit is overcome.

The idea behind the common "strengthening and stretching" regimen for back spasms is usually based on a misunderstanding; it's a misunderstanding because the muscles involved are almost never weak, but tired; it's a misunderstanding because the muscles involved are not "short" but "in contraction." These muscles don't need strengthening; they need rest and refreshment. They don't need stretching; they need to relax and lengthen.

You need to regain your ability to relax, something you can't regain by being manipulated by someone else; you regain it by relearning to relax -- and it is a form of learning, albeit a specialized one for which you will probably need instruction.

Back Spasms are a Malfunction, but Not Necessarily a Sign of Injury

One of the automatic reactions of the body to injury is to tighten up. That's part of the pain of most injuries, particularly of musculo-skeletal injuries. It's a reaction that protects the body from further injury. There are cases where the tightening up of back muscles is such a protective reaction, and a necessary one -- where actual damage has occurred, such as a ruptured disc or a violent accident. In such situations, surgery may be necessary and somatic education with either not help or produce only temporary relief, at least until after surgery.

If you've seen a doctor for your back spasms, he or she has either discovered that you need surgery or that you don't. Surgery is a last, desperate resort and most doctors are reluctant to recommend it. If you have been sent for therapy or given drugs, yours is not a surgical situation, meaning that your spasms are not a protective reaction against injury.

And in fact, in the majority of back spasms, there is no injury. The back spasms are just a movement malfunction -- a tension habit formed under stress. It's the "tension" part of "nervous tension."

So, why do back spasms occur? You now have part of the answer. Let's look a little more closely.

Your muscles obey your brain. Except for momentary reflexes controlled in the spinal cord (tested by your doctor's hammer tap), that's the whole story. So, if you have tight, spastic muscles, they're caused by your brain.

This answer is a "good news/bad news" type of answer. The bad news is that your muscles are out of control, and it's your brain's fault! The good news is that your brain can be relearn to relax those muscles.

The Major Source of Back Spasms

One thing you will almost always notice about people with back spasms, if you exercise your powers of observation, is their high shoulders and swayback. Touch the muscles of their lower back, and you will find the same thing: hard, contracted muscles, not soft, weak, flabby muscles.

The major source of back spasms is the lifestyle of being "on the go" -- driven, driving, productive, on time, and responsive to every situation. This is a new idea for most people, so here's the explanation.

Our post-modern lifestyle triggers an ancient bodily response (known to developmental physiologists as the Landau Reaction); this reaction involves a tightening of the muscles of the spine in preparation for going from rest (sitting or lying down) into activity (standing, walking, running). The Landau Reaction consists of the muscular responses involved in coming to a heightened state of alertness in preparation for moving into action; triggered incessantly for years, it becomes a tension habit -- one that often outlasts the moment (or stage of life) when it was necessary.

(The general viewpoint taught in physical therapy, it should be noted, is that the Landau Reaction is a temporary developmental response seen in infants, that does not persist into maturity. However, the muscular pattern seen in Landau reaction is identical to that seen in adults under stressful conditions. Just notice where you tighten up when you're in a hurry -- shoulders, back, and hamstrings.)

Many medical consequences of back muscle spasms -- degenerating discs, facet joint irritation, pinched nerves, sciatica, headaches -- stem from that single, contracted condition. These conditions arise from excessive tension and strain on body tissues. They cannot be "cured" by manipulation because the body is doing it to itself and does not stop doing it to itself until the tension habit of The Landau Reaction is overcome.

Somatic educators usually find, upon examination of a person's musculature, that their back spasms come not from an injury, but from overworked muscles; not from a medical problem, not from an injury, but from a conditioning problem. Their clients have back muscles conditioned into a painfully high state of tension that predisposes them to muscle spasm. We find that, most of the time, that people can be taught how to relax back spasms, and when they do, the pain and the problem disappear. Our opinion is based upon ongoing observation and consistent experience.

Though injuries from traffic accidents, falls, etc., also trigger muscular reactions that can become habitual, the Landau Reaction is behind most of the back-spasm epidemic in our society. It's a consequence of accumulated stress.

While you can't avoid the Landau Reaction (it's a necessary and appropriate part of life), you can avoid getting stuck in it. If your lifestyle puts you habitually in a state of reaction, you have to "de-habituate" yourself from it, so that your rise in tension occurs only as a momentary response to situations and does not become your chronic state.

Attempts to De-habituate the Landau Reaction

Most therapeutic approaches to back spasms are -- without knowing it -- attempts to de-habituate the Landau Reaction.

Cures for the tension and stress associated with the Landau Reaction include relaxation techniques, hypnosis, massage, skeletal adjustments, electrical stimulation, muscle relaxant drugs, and at last (as at first) pain medications.

Until recently, there was nothing better. Now, a new clinical method exists that rapidly improve muscular control, freedom of movement, and physical comfort. Once you have de-habituated your Landau Reaction, a brief daily regimen of certain movements is sufficient to keep you from accumulating the daily tensions of a driven life of job, schedules, home and career.

If you have numbness or tingling in your extremities, your problem is more severe and requires a medical evaluation to rule out serious conditions that require surgery. Even if you have surgery, you will still need to learn to relax the tight muscles that caused the problem to begin with. If yours is not a surgical situation, then somatic education is probably the most viable option for you. Schedule an office visit with a practitioner for an evaluation (practitioner list). For people too far from a practitioner, a self-help program is available that has been found to be effective.

The new methods used to de-habituate Landau Reaction are highly reliable and have no adverse side effects, apart from occasional temporary soreness the day after a session, soreness that fades out in a day or two, leaving you flexible, comfortable and stronger than before.

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