DISCLAIMER: this is my experience and what worked for me. Make sure to do your research properly and start slowly when trying a new kind of treatment or talk to someone professional to not risk making injury worse :)
Finally! I’ve been waiting for someone to teach me how to treat my back pain for so long. I got injured in 2015 and it stopped me from living my life as I had previously done. My body told me to stop. I then went on to have a surgery, which was extremely scary. I remember we got a booklet from the hospital and my mum read about the procedure for the operation and I just started crying so much I had to stop her from reading the rest. This whole process has been extremely tiring and frustrating and no one seemed to know how to help me other than “do some squats, take walks and live a normal healthy life” like what the heck kind of advice is that from physiotherapists and doctors I feel so betrayed now looking back. I spent so much money on different kinds of treatments and therapies and it was just not helpful. No one could tell me about the core of the problem, the reason for my symptoms and I was so lost and hopeless for many years. Up until now.
Thanks to the generous Isabela Mattos who put up a workshop in the EJC, I have come across an extremely simple and natural way of healing called The McKenzie method (https://mckenzieinstitute.org/). I recommend you to read this short book which is packed with great advice Treat Your Own Back by Robin McKenzie.
These exercises and tips are valuable for anyone who spends a lot of time sitting. All it consists of is balancing the back extension with some flexion. Here’s a summary of what I’ve learnt.
We need to understand that the spine is an extremely fragile structure of the body, where if it gets injured, we might end up paralyzed. Therefore there is a lot of nerves around the spine to protect it and to give a warning signal BEFORE we get a serious injury. This means that when we feel pain, more often than not, it is not an actual injury, but our bodies telling us that if we continue like this, we might get one.
So the structure of the lower back has a little inwards curve or arch when it’s in its neutral position. This does not naturally happen when we sit down, if you look at my back in the picture below, you can see that my back is bending forward (extended). It’s the same movement as if I would bend down to pick up something from the floor. So whenever we are seated or when we bend down to carry light or heavy objects and we pull with our back, we are doing the forward bended motion of the back. And when do we do the opposite where we’re bending back? Very rarely. And that’s a problem.
See, the discs of the spine will shift slightly backwards when the body is in the extended position to facilitate the movement. If we do this too much without balancing it by bending the other way, the discs get too much pressure and will crack, which is what happened for me. 90 - 95% of the people that have back pain is because there is too much extension and not enough flexion. Which is why we have to take breaks in long sitting sessions and lay on the belly/sphinx/upwards facing dog. These exercises has worked magic for me.
If going up and down like this 10 times for a couple of seconds is easy then move on to the upwards facing dog which you might know from yoga:
If you cannot lay down, putting your hands on your back and letting the fingers meet just above your butt and bending backwards 10 times is really helpful. I take brakes from sitting sessions at about every hour or so to do some of these stretches and they really help.
All this said, if you have some back problems you should really read the book as all the details are in there.
If you know someone with back pain then I really hope you will share it with them as it can work wonders if applied correctly. It did for me.
With love,
nobackpainonlybiggainsJ