How Can We Reduce Back Pain Naturally?

– How can yoga or meditation help with back problems?

Yoga is said to be very helpful as a mindful movement therapy. Mindfulness meditation trumps placebo in pain reduction.

By staying present as we move, we guard against fear or agnst, which can be the body overprotecting itself and guarding against pain which may not actually correlate to tissue damage. 

“Pain is produced by the brain with input from the body [it’s not the body producing pain],” Lorimer moseley

– But if you’re experiencing back pain won’t backbends or stretching simply make it worse?

No. ‘Movement is king’ in the recovery from chronic pain and when you make it mindful movement, you can really assist yourself further by reducing stress which mindfulness is proven to do…

“Stress makes pain worse and pain usually makes stress worse,” Lorimer Moseley

– Can meditation ever really be a substitute for medication?

Well, in the US and Australia, we have an opioid addiction crisis on our hands. We can see that the injections and pain killers we keep relying on (when taken over a year’s time) do not work as well as understanding pain and brain training (over the same year long period).  Not forgetting, that movement is king in the recovery from chronic pain.

– Can you talk us through a quick exercise to give us some idea of what’s involved in mindfulness meditation and gentle backbends?

Breathing helps immensely, observing the breath and movement mindfully prevents us from entering into an overprotective fear response. 

Gentle backbends such as bhujangasana or baby cobra (baby backbends) are said to be very effective on a daily basis as opposed to back surgery. We know that pain is about protection and the empirical evidence shows us that “repetitive thoughts about danger contribute to pain.” When we move slowly, gradually and with attention and breathing to assist the relaxation response we can  re-train the body and brain to once again experience ease or safety. Acknowledging that muscle tension is almost a reflex reaction to stress, we can understand that it is the body’s way of guarding against injury and pain.  Experientially, and with good guidance, we can use both meditation and yoga to re-explore appropriate muscle tonus for our bodies. We can use our breath as medicine and reduce inflammation which is a disease process linked to stress that gives rise to pain.  We can begin to understand that pain is “over-protecting” bodily tissue that actually needs to be trusted, loaded and retrained.

If you need more spinal support before doing these back bends mentioned above, sometimes simply raising your arms in the air on an inbreath may be enough for some gentle extension of the spine. 

Don’t forget that breathing slowly and gently will also assist the body from entering into “overprotective” mode and will assist you to once again safely trust your body.