Apparently a huge percentage of the population suffers from some kind of lower back pain. Combinations of unnatural practices like sitting in chairs, not moving for hours on ends, and carrying laptop bags on one shoulder all contribute. Poor genes don't help either.
And if you're one of these folks who suffer from intermittent or chronic back pain, or have "slipped a disk," you may have found some relief in (frequent) visits to chiropractors, osteopaths, physiotherapy or acupuncture. Or maybe from drugs. Your mileage may vary.
I reached a point about 18 months ago when i woke up limping with a numb leg/foot, and in considerable pain that i'd had it with these approaches. I'd been in and out of chiro offices repeatedly for years. And i was still in pain. There HAD to be a better way. I'd seen from x-rays from a previous incident in 02 that what was being called reduced disk space actually seemed to be having my spine start to veer to the right. Oh god, i thought, this can't be optimal. This latest bout of numbness was diagnosed as a slipped disk. great. What does the future hold?
My approach to finding a better solution was to go for the extreme: check out the web for one of the most extreme conditions of what folks do whose spines are twisted. I checked out scoliosis sites, and any council they had on bringing a twisted up spine back to the norm, and reducing pain along the way.
What i found has been a life changing experience. The proposed solution: yoga. Its benefits have been huge, undeniable and ya, life-changing.
In the next section, i'll go over the resources i found that have helped, and continue to help me have a better back life (a better life back?). A warning in advance: the approach means taking your own back health into your own hands, and you being responsible for doing the work, rather than asking a therapist (repeatedly) to fix it for you.
On hearing Yoga, though some people immediately self select out and say "oh i'm not flexible; i can't do yoga." It's important to note that yoga does not equal stretching or gymnastic postures. Yoga, as i have learned from these sources, is about breathing and awareness of one's body, and using that awareness to focus on change. Thus if you can breath, you can do yoga. And if your back is killing you, it may just be worth a try breathing in some of these postures.
(Aug 07 update at end of article)
Technorati Tags: back pain, yoga
There's a great general back care site - the theme of which is scoliosis which is extreme, but many of the same things apply for herniated discs and lower back pain. The core theme of the site is that Yoga can help heal/restore one's back.
This site recommended the two main books that changed my appreciation of yoga, and my back health:
Back Care Basics: A Doctor's Gentle Yoga Program for Back and Neck Pain Relief (Paperback) (amazon link to book)
by Mary Pullig Schatz (M.D.) It's very good, very gentle. well described. It goes over in plain language the skeletal and muscular interconnections in the back, and the how and why of various poses for helping to do back work. It has good sections on assessing what kind of back and back problem you may have. It also shows real people doing real poses. These are not super yoga models or abnormally stretchy people. They're very much in the real, and nothing presented is extreme at all. Indeed each posture is usually a modified version of an Iyengar style yoga position (more on Iyengar later). This is a thin paperback volume stuffed with lots of useful information.
The scoliosis site also recommends a couple other books. The one i found particularly helpful is the Structural yoga Therapy Book (amazon link) by Mukunda Stiles. This book has pragmatic systems of assessing your current body state and council for working on particular problems for "structural" or rather profound body change/improvement. Its approach is also gentle. It uses many modified versions of poses - does not assume huge flexibility - and helps put together series of moves for problems.
The main value i have found from the book is more on the philosophy of yoga - how to think about it while doing it. This is the first text i encountered that really emphasizes the mental side of yoga, and how it is NOT stretching.
For myself, it was taking what i'd learned in these two books, and then plugging that back into a yoga book i'd had on the shelf from a book sale for ages. It is a fantastic big picture book of yoga asanas/poses that gives a lot of detail for beginners and intermediates about how to get into and out of the poses, what the benefits are, what to feel where, and what sequence of poses are good for what conditions:
Yoga: Path to Holistic Health (amazon link for book) B.K.S. Iyengar, Daphne Razazan. There's the traditional version of a pose given in the first part of the book and a more beginner version of a pose later in the text as well. The core poses are also shot from a variety of angles so you can really see what they're supposed to look like. So if you're ready to go a bit beyond the version of the poses shown in the above back books, then this full colour, multi-angle guide is a great way to go.
I should also note that years ago i'd taken about a dozen Iyenger Yoga classes, so i had been familiarized to yoga. At the time it bored me to tears. It didn't connect with my life or needs (as i perceived them to be) at all. What a difference pain can make. Now it does make sense, and my focus is different: the practice has meaning. But the main point here is that i'm not sure if my previous exposure to a very good teacher was a significant part of being able to parse these yoga tomes or not. I'm not convinced that's the case, but it may have an effect. Your mileage may vary. I actually like the Iyengar book more than the classes: i could go at my own pace with my study/work in yoga. That's been important.
Bottom line: yoga has been a hugely transformative practice in changing my experience of chronic back pain. Now, i have pain all the time. I've had a few days in the past year when i have been "pain free" and they usually make me cry cuz the experience is so rare and fleeting. But with yoga, the chronic pain has become almost always less and certainly entirely more (self) manageable. If something flares up, i have strategies for addressing the pain that feel far more effective than results from most chiro offices i've visited, and i just feel better for doing it regularly.
My usual practice is a big session once a week that's about an hour and thirty minutes; during the rest of the week its sunrise salutations and some particular postures for my particular stuff.
if you're looking for a solution to your back pain, give yoga, the back care basics approach, a month of regular practice. See if your world doesn't start to change for the better. As always, consult your physician before taking up any new health regimen.
good luck!
Update: Aug07- since writing this article, two things have happened: i've had the opportunity to work with a strucutural yoga therapist working with Mukunda (from the structural yoga therapy book sited above). This work has given me a set of specific yoga moves and joint freeing work (from the book) to do to work on areas of weakness. Prior to this, i had also changed my workout routine to something that it turns out highly complements the structural yoga work for my back: kettlebells (kb). Work with KB's focuses in particular on lower back, glutes and hamstrings muscles that the structural yoga therapy has indicated i really need to help support my spine properly. The kettlebell work/effect has been nothing shy of amazing. The complimentarily between the kb's and the structural yoga therapy has taken my back to a whole other level of both pain reduction and pain management.
If you're not familiar with kettlebells, i've written a review of the Enter the Kettlebell program i've been following here. There is also another back source that folks in the kb community (many of whom seem to be likewise (ex) back sufferers reference quite a lot: Stuart McGills Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance. If you can, it is also well worth finding a structural yoga therapist in your neck of the woods to help develop a program specific to your back needs.
Posted by mc at May 9, 2007 03:47 AM