Yoga for Back Pain

Balance is Key: Doing yoga cultivates a balance between the flexibility and strength of the muscles of the body, often the real culprit in back pain. Most people are tight in key areas affecting the spine, for example in the hips and shoulders. A system such as yoga, which releases the tension in the muscles, should improve back pain. While the emphasis is on stretching and flexibility, yoga also develops muscle strength.

Types of Yoga Suitable for Back Pain Sufferers: There are a variety of styles of yoga out there, ranging from gentle to vigorous. Also, some styles emphasize spirituality and emotions, while others, such as Iyengar hatha yoga, focus only on the physical postures. For persons with back pain, a hatha yoga style is a good place to start, particularly rest and restoration classes. Styles such as Kundalini, Ashtanga and Bikram are specialized and challenging -- not a good choice for back pain sufferers. A rule of thumb is gentle is better.

Alignment and Body Awareness --The Hallmarks of Hatha Yoga: As a whole body system, yoga develops body awareness and places emphasis on alignment. This means that the whereabouts of each body part (feet, knees, hips, spine, shoulder, head) affect all the others. Like Pilates, yoga emphasizes core work although there is less abdominal strength development in yoga than in Pilates.

Don't Try -- Modify! An Introduction to Props: You may be wondering -- will I be able to do yoga without creating more pain? Most yoga classes utilize props. Props help bring the pose to you, when tight or weak muscles cannot fully bring you into the pose.

Relax, Deeply: Yoga incorporates breathing techniques which can lead to stress relief as well as help you get through the challenge of the stretch. Often yoga classes have a spiritual basis, and may offer techniques and the environment to work on deeper levels of healing and resolution of pain.

Conditions Helped by Yoga: By its very nature, yoga is well suited to address back problems such as those arising from postural alignment conditions.

Examples of conditions particularly suitable for yoga include (but are not limited to):

kyphosis
scoliosis
lordosis

With modifications and a gentle, prudent approach, beginner yoga can benefit those with other conditions as well, for example (but not limited to):

stenosis
problems of the intervertebral disk
nerve root problems

Yoga for back pain can be quite a winner, but you must respect the limits placed on you by your pain. This necessarily involves listening to the body, a skill you will undoubtedly cultivate as a student of this ancient system.