Back pain is a bit of an issue. 

In fact, it is a huge issue. It costs our economies in terms of productivity, billions of dollars every year in lost time and lost effort. With many people unable to work because of the chronic back pain they have. About 80% of the population, at some point in their life will be touched by back pain.

Back pain is one of the top five reasons people visit the Doctor. It depends on which piece of research you are reading, but it is either the number two, or the number five reason, or any number between two and five for people visiting the doctor. Around the world.

There's a normal everyday life kind of back pain that happens after a big workout in the gym or day in the garden, which is your muscles hurting after they have been well used. Then there’s the back pain that continues. A key point is that if you have back pain for more than six weeks, it is considered chronic. Most back pain resolves itself within three months.

After six weeks to three months is when people may start thinking about other more serious interventions. Be warned only one percent of the population who suffer with back pain will be served by a surgical intervention. 

If you've had back pain previously, then the likelihood of you having back pain again increases because you have created a pain pathway. This muscle memory occurs because the pain is remembered in the brain. What happens is you feel this sensation somewhere and  your brain automatically switches on and says, oh that's your back pain. The pain is a signal that something's not quite right.

When you experience physical pain, the same region lights up in your brain as if you're experiencing emotional pain. So actually, heartfelt pain and your back pain, your brain registers it in the same place.

Most back pain, when investigated with MRI or Xray, they can't actually find the specific cause of the pain. This means a lot of back pain, is nonspecific. They can never find the cause. The research tells us that 50% of humans who do not have back pain, have herniated discs, or a little bit of a spinal twist, but they don't experience back pain and only 50 percent of people who have back pain have herniated discs or spinal twists. 

The good news is there is so much that we can do to prevent the need to even be going to see the doctor because of back pain. It is possible to heal your back and also prevent your back from going into pain. At Yoga to Transform we obviously recommend yoga to reduce and prevent back pain, using yoga therapeutics and the alignment principles of yoga. 

Our Yoga to Transform back pain course is a four week program. The first week's focus is on softening to release the pain. We talk about physical softening, and we talk about mental and emotional softening. Then in the second week we cultivate your core strength.

Now we talk a lot about core strength and it does not mean you need to get a six pack, and to be super strong. Good news - six packs are not required. In terms of providing core stabilization, you actually need the obliques and the transverse abdominis engaged more.

The core stability system is the three groups of muscles that create the abdominals. Then there are the pelvic floor muscles. Then there's the erector spinae up the back, which are the long muscles going up the back. And then you have your diaphragm sitting over top.

So you need to be  doing deep belly breathing. That is the core crunch exercises you need to be doing to strengthen your core. Because we are  talking about the deep internal muscles. We teach in our yoga philosophy, that we have to be strong on the inside and soft on the outside. If you think about our course, week one is all about cultivating softness on the outside, and then week two is all about internal strength.

Then in week three we move on to mobility. Motion is lotion for your back. Unfortunately what happens as adults is we tend to sit down a lot. How many hours a day are people sitting down? And what happens when you're sitting down? You are shortening your hamstrings and your hip flexors, you're strengthening your quads and weakening your core. IT’s very important to move around.

Then the fourth week of the course  we increase movement, do bigger movements and have a variety of movements. As adults, we get really good at things, we narrow down our movement. We sit around quite a lot and we do the same movements.

The beauty about the yoga practice is that the research around back pain is that the people who end up experiencing back pain, are the ones who tend to be using their big, strong muscles, not their deep internal muscles? When you come into a yoga pose, we also ask you to stay there for a while.

You have big muscles that are fast twitch muscles, which means that they prepare you to run you. Your quads, and your glutes,  are examples. But in a yoga pose where your body could be in any variety of positions and we ask you to hold it. Sometimes for three breaths, sometimes for three minutes. If your teacher talks too much, maybe even longer. But that's when we move into what we call the slow twitch fibers, the deep internal stabilization system. So, you are building internal strength and training your muscles, the smaller weaker muscles to get stronger.

They're only weaker because we haven't been using them. They have the same strength. They could have the same strength. It's just that we haven't been practicing or using them. If you can create a regular practice around creating deep internal strength, not stomach crunches, not planks - there's scientific research that actually says that planks and stomach crunches do not help prevent back pain. It’s the slower, gentler internal core work.

Your whole wellbeing is a huge contributor to your back health. Our top tips:

• Get good sleep
• Stop smoking. If you are a smoker, it would be really beneficial for your back pain to stop.
• Reduce stress.
• Eat well, even supplement.

You might not be getting all the nutrients that you need through your food. Magnesium is a great supplement to take. Maybe even talk to your doctor about vitamin D and calcium to support bone strength depending on your age.

Definitely go to the doctor and have a good chat about it, because you don't just want more drugs to mask the pain. Be careful with pain killers, The leading cause of death in North America today is overdose from opioids.

Lastly, there is the psychosocial connection to pain. The physical pain, versus the emotional pain. Remember they register in the same part of the brain. If you can introduce this practice of gratitude, it can help manage your pain. Practice being thankful for the things that you do have. If you focus on the bad, that's what you'll see. If you focus on the good that is what you will see.

You can reduce and prevent back pain by improving your wellbeing and practising being grateful.

If you want to learn more about Yoga to Transform back pain, visit our courses page on: www.yogatotransform.com