Downward Facing Blog

As a yoga teacher, I get questions almost daily about back pain.

Although this is a subject that really could fill the pages of a long book, here are a few tips.

Is the pain in the bone or the muscles around the bone? If it’s in the muscles, begin by resting a few days, being sure to take a good dosage of turmeric as I wrote about earlier in this Downward Facing Blog. If a few days of rest doesn’t help you to feel better, you may want to get an xray at the hopsital.

Are you feeling it in the lower back? Here are four possible reasons: jamming your lower back in back-bends, having insufficient abdominal core strength,  tight hamstrings, and sitting in chairs too much!

1. When you come into a backbend: learn to tuck the tailbone to take the arch out of the lower back so the sacrum (end of the spine) scoops  your hips into the air. Learn to separate each part of the spine; lumbar, thoracic, and clavicular (lower, middle, and neck). When doing any backbend, separate the upper body from the lower body first by exhaling, hollowing the belly, and lifting the chest and upper back. THEN take the backbend so you take as much of the backbend in the less flexible upper back gets stretched as much as possible. Beginners tend to just overuse the more flexible lumbar spine.

2. Remember no breathing into the belly in yoga! Develop core strength through leg lifts, kapalabhati / bhastrika pranayama, agnisara kriya/ nauli kirya or plain old sit ups. A weak abdominal core doesn’t support you and it may contribute to lower back pain.

3.  Are you able to touch your toes? Hamstrings run from below the knees to the sitting bones attached to the pelvis. Tight hamstrings continually exert a downward pressure on the pelvis which in turn pulls the lumbar (lower) spine out of it’s natural curve.

4. Get out of your office chair! In fact, sitting on chairs all day long will make for a weak back Continually having back support makes the muscles weak and lazy. The antidote is to sit a few inches away from the back support and sit up straight. The other way is to come learn shalabasana pose at yoga elements studio! That looks a bit like this:

Hope this helps! Love to you all yogis in Bangkok and Thailand