Once upon a time, you could go through a whole day without getting a twinge of pain in your back. Some of us are lucky to experience those rare days every so often—but we can sometimes spend days in agony. It can also be caused by just doing regular activities, such as picking up shopping bags or playing soccer with the kids. How can you relieve back pain if you get it regularly?
Many people find that, by practicing yoga, they can get some relief from their back issues—whether it’s chronic or just every so often. Here are some of the benefits that you might discover yourself if you try out yoga for your lower back pain.
Better posture, body alignment, and balance
Yoga poses are there to train your body to be both healthy and supple. By practicing yoga consistently, you will find that your posture will improve, your sense of balance will increase, and your head, shoulders, and pelvis will be properly aligned.
Yoga also helps to stretch and strengthen both sides of your body equally, unlike many other types of exercise. Making sure that you have good posture and proper body alignment (which helps to maintain the natural curvature of the spine) is important in reducing or avoiding lower back pain.
Strengthening muscles
Yoga increases the strength of certain muscles and muscle groups. Holding yoga positions shouldn’t be uncomfortable, but it does require concentration and specific use of muscles in the body. As a result, your muscle strength increases by staying in these positions and carrying out various movements.
Back and abdominal muscles are essential parts of the muscular network of the spine, which can help the body have a proper posture and movement. Many yoga postures gently strengthen these muscles, and back pain can be reduced if they are well conditioned.
Muscles can be relaxed and stretched
Each yoga pose is held for between 10 and 60 seconds, and this includes the stretching of your muscles and lengthening of the spine. This can then lead to relieve tension in the muscles.
Certain muscles flex during each pose; others stretch. This mix of moves can encourage relaxation, as well as improved flexibility of joints and back muscles.
Better blood flow
Regular yoga practice means you can focus on deep and rhythmic breathing through your nose with each pose you do. This technique can help your body to relax and also increases the blood flow, which nourishes the body and flushes out waste. This improves the internal environment for your back muscles.
Improved mental health
Regularly practicing yoga helps your mind to relax, so you can meditate while exercising. This can help to decrease anxiety and stress, and enhance your mood. Being relaxed and in a better mood means that you can oppose the negative psychological effects that you may suffer from with chronic back pain. These negative psychological factors might not affect the physiology of the pain, but may intensify the pain that is already there; so if you can reduce your perceived pain, you can therefore reduce the sensation of back pain.