How increasing your movement helps manage back pain - Principle three to manage back pain
Sep 17, 2022
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.
While it feels counter intuitive, we recommend you increase your movement. Why?
Because, 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 - all of this impacts on the health of your back. It’s very important to move around.
Motion is lotion for your spine. There is very strong evidence that keeping active and returning to all usual activities gradually is important in aiding and speeding up your recovery. After injury most people think their spine needs to be protected from incurring further injury. The fear of worsening or further pain leads to protective guarding, avoidance of some movement, and potential disability.
Our recommendations to increase your movement are:
• Start low and go slow when starting a new exercise. Remember, your body must adjust to the new movement.
• Try gentle activity such as swimming, walking, or yoga.
• Be consistent - the first few times you do an exercise, you’re likely to experience some soreness and pains that you didn’t have before. Most of the time, those feelings are transient and will subside once your body gets used to the new activity.
• Make sure you are taking movement breaks at work. Get up and walk around at least for one minute every sixty, and rotate your spine every twenty minutes
If you want some great tips and tricks watch this Satsang on how to relieve your back pain: Thankful Thursday/Satsang - Yoga tips and tricks to relieve and treat back pain - YouTube
Change happens through movement and movement heals. – Joseph Pilates
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