A STORY ABOUT LOWER BACK PAIN

Yesterday I popped over to a neighbour's house, he was experiencing pretty severe lower back pain and had been almost immobile for almost 5 days.

What I noticed fairly quickly was that any extension and flexion of the spine caused an immediate aggravation. Try to imagine life without moving your spine in this way. Everything from putting your shoes on, sitting down and looking upwards is painful. The pain itself has a cascading effect, the more you feel pain, the more you brace the body and the more you brace, the more the pain sets in. The body becomes more immobile, a fear of movement sets in, a fear that something has been possibly damaged and that you will be exacerbated by movement. Consequently, you stop moving.

So first up I took him through a breathing practice, very simple breath awareness. I like to get people to turn the palms up and then down and then to see if they can synchronise this gentle movement to the breath. It has a hugely calming effect, soon the body feels calmer and the nervous system starts to quieten. Once the nervous system has turned down a little, there is a window of time to get into the body and explore.

Knowing that extension/flexion were not on the cards I went into the spine from the side body. As he was able to get on to his side I took him through the QL balancing sequence that I posted a few days earlier (https://www.facebook.com/charlottedouglasyoga/videos/614138796040345/). After the first side, I allowed him to roll on to his back. Instantly he said "something feels different, it feels better". When you are in pain, you really notice these changes. After the other side was done the change was becoming even more noticeable.

At that point to me there was a visible difference in the messages the nervous system was emitting. So I felt we then had a window to bring some gentle movement into the body.

Using a strap around the shin I asked him to lift the leg up and down, this has the effect of asking the psoas muscle to get involved without straining the back or legs. I then asked him to do this without the strap. Just even being able to lift his legs was an advancement, when I first arrived he told me that he could not lift them. Things had shifted so considerably that he was even able to allow some spinal rotation into the spine, with ease and no pain.

When I left he was relaxed. His pain had gone from an 8 to a 3. In the world of pain, that is significant.

Later that night I received this message from his wife:-

"You’re either a miracle worker or a hypnotist, Ian has been literally transformed since you came over, he is so so much better!

He has informed three different people that it was all in his mind, and you become more of a guru type in each retelling 😇
That was so amazingly kind of you to take the time to do that. Have passed on the video and instructions, thank you. Will let you know what happens with the physio."

My response, no I am not a guru nor a hypnotist however I do know that huge shifts can happen when the body is allowed to feel safe, when we are listened to, heard and given a place to feel into the body without judgement. Pain is complex, it does not always mean we are broken and damaged. It does not mean the full catastrophe has happened, although I am not dismissing the need sometimes for a full diagnosis. However, just because pain is there we must not assume that there is something that needs to be fixed. It is perfectly possible that something simply needs to change, that we need to do something differently. Pain is a messenger, in the same way that a baby cries as its only way of communicating hunger, it is the only way the body can ask for help.

So you see folks, pain is something to listen to and the only way we can really truly listen is to get quiet and then in that moment of quietness we can explore a new pathway, a new way to be and see where it takes us.

Be well folks

Charlotte