The Key to Ending Back Pain is to recondition your back. Here's the difference.

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Numerous writers on the subject of back exercises for lower back pain point to the efficacy of back exercises for obtaining relief, even long-term relief. Therapeutic exercises form a key part of any physical therapy program for back pain. Advocates of strengthening and stretching exercises point to yoga, Pilates, therapy ball exercises, and various programs of stretches.

These exercises have a degree of efficacy with mild to moderate back pain; with more severe cases, however, a special kind of exercise is needed to produce fast progress (days) and definitive improvement.

To understand the process of reconditioning your back, beyond the idea that certain exercises promise to do that, you need a bit of technical understanding of what's behind most back pain and what back exercises must do to alleviate it.

First, a brief overview of back pain:

Overview

Most back pain is of neuromuscular origin -- meaning that it comes from muscles triggered to stay tight by brain-level conditioning. "Conditioning" means "learned or acquired habit patterns". If muscles are tight, it's because the brain is triggering them into a state of tightness. The technical term would be, "conditioned postural reflex". "Reflex" means "on automatic". So, most back pain comes from acquired habit patterns that keep muscles tight on automatic. Pain follows.

Tight muscles generate pain through muscle fatigue and soreness.

According to a writer at WebMD.com, on the topic, "Low Back Pain - Cause"...

Most low back pain is triggered by some combination of overuse, muscle strain, and injury to the muscles, ligaments, and discs that support the spine. Many experts believe that over time muscle strain can lead to an overall imbalance in the spinal structure. This leads to a constant tension on the muscles, ligaments, bones, and discs, making the back more prone to injury or reinjury.

Tight back muscles pull vertebrae (back bones) tight and close together, causing friction between neighboring vertebrae (facet joints), leading to facet joint irritation (facet joint syndrome). At the same time, they cause spinal misalignment ("subluxation"), compress discs, leading to disc breakdown ("degenerative disc disease"), disc bulges (herniation), nerve root entrapment (e.g., sciatica), eventual disc rupture, extrusion of disc material (nucleus pulposus) and pressure on nerve roots, and eventual disc fusion. That about covers the range conditions associated with back pain -- and, except for violent accidents, they all trace back to neuromuscular conditioning.

How Does Neuromuscular Conditioning Develop?

Another name for neuromuscular conditioning is habits of posture and movement. Most movements, you may notice, occur on automatic once set into motion. That's because you've learned them previously and now only need to intend them for them to occur and to make minor adjustments of movement to meet the need of your activity.

In other words, you've learned habits of movement.

That simplifies matters: When we think of learning, we think of memories formed by repetition, drill, and an experience of some intensity. In other words, repetitive motions and accidents produce enough of an impression on the brain to create a memory of "how movement should be" to create a tension habit and habits of movement.

Writer Hege Crowton, in his article, "Lower Back Pain and Your Computer is a Bad Combination", makes the point this way:

Did you know that spending long hours at your computer can put your health at serious risk? Working at a desk is extremely hard on your body... When the muscles that hold the lower back vertebra, the set of bones that constitute the spinal column, get strained lower back pain is the end result."

Emotional stress, particularly long-term stress, has the same effect, as tension level goes up; Dr. John Sarno has correctly identified emotions as a piece of the back-pain puzzle: nervous tension that leads to "tension myositis". ("Myositis" means irritation of muscle.)

That's how excessive back muscle tension and back pain form: the formation of a back-muscle tension habit, through any of these three routes: repetitive motion, violent accident, or emotional stress. All make their impression on "movement memory" ("muscle memory"); all lead to and underlie most back pain.

It's that simple.

The Way Out

Numerous writers have stated the efficacy of back exercises. Most articles on back pain revolve around a few common themes:

strengthening

stretching

warming up before activity

good posture

good structural support

Let's hear from some of them:

With regard to dynamic lumbar stabilization exercises, writer Nishanth Reddy has this to say in his article, "Physical Therapy for the Lower Back: How to Prevent and Treat Lower Back Pain":

... the first thing that a physical therapist does is to look for the patient's "neutral" spine. This refers to the position that allows the patient to feel the most comfortable.

Afterwards, when the patient is in that position, the back muscles are then exercised in order to "teach" the spine how to stay in this position.

In support of strengthening and stretching exercises, Dr. Graeme Teague, an expert in the structural field, writes:

Step 1: Release tension in your Hip Flexors

Step 2: Improve the strength of your Abdominals

Step 3: Balance the Pelvis

Writer John Groth, states:

Exercises to help ease lower back pain and strengthen the stomach and back muscles to reduce the risk of future lower back pain.

On the website for The National Institute of Neurologic Disorders and Stroke, on the topic, "How is back pain treated?" the writer states:

Exercise may be the most effective way to speed recovery from low back pain and help strengthen back and abdominal muscles.

At FamilyDoctor.org, the writer states,

Some specific exercises can help your back.

Since the brain controls the tension and strength of muscles, and through that, muscle tension, length and posture, the brain's control of muscular action is a major key to ending back pain.

Since our brain has learned its way into your back pain, we must teach it the way out. That's the key to effective back exercises.

In other words, the effect of strengthening and stretching exercises comes almost entirely from learning better control of back muscle action. It's not "added strength" or "added stretch", but added control, which regulates muscle strength and length (degree of "stretch" and tendency to spasm), posture, and degree of muscle fatigue (soreness).

That point understood, we understand that the most direct route back to comfort is learning better control of muscle tension and movement, which leads to better posture and movement and which leads out of strain to ease. That kind of learning works in reverse to the other kind of conditioning that creates back pain to create a new, automatic, healthier pattern of back muscle conditioning. That kind of learning makes efforts at "maintaining good posture", "maintaining neutral spine position", or "holding adjustments" unnecessary -- unnecessary because your good condition is now automatic, your new baseline or habit of natural movement -- like anyone else with a good back.

As with all methods and techniques for accomplishing anything, there exist more effective ways and less effective ways.

A quote from writer, Dave Powell, in his article, "Ouch! Prevent Lower Back Pain!", makes my point.

First, notice the regimen he recommends:

First of all, I want you to learn how to minimise the strain you put your body under during regular day-to-day activities. When you stand up, stand tall, tuck in your chin and then tuck your tail in. Make your back into a straight line, and it is ergonomically better equipped to function. When you sit, to prevent lower back pain use a good back support; sit squared up to your activity and never cross your legs. This keeps the body correctly aligned and the flow of blood around the body is maximised.

This recommendation amounts to holding certain postures and alignment. While there's a measure of truth in his recommendation (e.g., good ergonomics in your work situation), his recommendation instills additional patterns of muscular holding (tension) to counter the habitual ones.

Now, notice the kind of result that follows from this regimen:

... lower back pain prevention means you must think and plan before you carry out a tough task. This will minimise the stress you put upon your back and very much reduce the risk of episodes of lower back pain.

In other words, he implies that you can't be care-free about your movements and expect to be free of back pain.

Dr. Graeme Teague, in his article, "6 essential Tips for Lower Back Pain", echoes this view:

Tip One: Lie down more

Tip Two: Warm Up

Tip Three: Lower Back Stretches

Tip Four: Lower Back Exercises

Tip Five: If Pain Persists - seek help

Tip Six: Do it now

All of these tips imply that you can't really get a definitive resolution for back pain; you must continually act as if you have a bad back and take measures to protect it.

Moreover, he points to the habitual nature of the underpinning of back pain with these words,

"The longer you wait the harder it is to correct."

In his article, "Lower Back Pain and Myths", writer Ansh Shukla reasserts the difficulty of ending back pain with the more common therapeutic methods:

... the remedy is not that simple and straight forward. Some people with proper medication and exercise may find solution and get rid of it quite quickly where as for some it is long and winding road to getting an accurate diagnosis and an effective treatment.

I differ from these writers. I say (based on my experience and that of my colleagues in the field of clinical somatic education, who have worked with thousands of clients over the years), If you take the most effective measures, you can have healthy back without concern for maintaining posture and alignment, without concern for pain or for a "bad back" -- because your habits of movement are already automatically healthy.

Moreover, it doesn't matter, in most cases, how long you have been in your condition; you can correct it fairly quickly using an approach that treats the underlying cause.

Even if you may be skeptical -- and I can understand why you would be -- do you like that idea? What I say is doable and my words are testable. See the links at the end of this article for free instructional video that teaches somatic exercises for back pain.

Learning to Control Your Back Muscles

The most direct way to learn to control your back muscles better is to free yourself from the painful habit pattern and establish a new, healthier pattern of movement. The result is freedom from back pain.

That's it, in principle.

An Entirely New Form of Therapeutic Exercise

Somatic exercises free you from habituated back muscle tension and establish a healthier pattern by dissolving the grip of the old habit pattern and imprinting a new sense of movement and control into your memory. In other words, they teach your brain a new pattern of muscular control.

Because they are designed specifically for learning muscular control ("muscle memory" or "movement memory"), they target the central process of effective back exercises for lower back pain (and other locations of pain, as well) and accomplish what is ordinarily sought through strengthening, stretching, efforts at good posture or good body mechanics.

Here are the elements of somatic exercises.

Somatic exercises are...

slow

comfortable

patterned movements

that, by establishing new memories of how movement feels...

relieve pain

free the muscles

develop new, low-strain patterns of movement

coordinate movement better

improve strength

... all of which result in natural, easy movement in comfort.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

See below for links to free instructional videos of somatic exercises for back pain.

links:

Somatic Back Exercises for Lower Back Pain: http://somatics.com/back_exercises_for_lower_back_pain.htm
The Inner Side of Somatic Exercises: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bReYpZs46nc
Somatic Therapeutic Exercises - ANew Class of Self-Treatment for Musculo-Skeletal Injuries: http://ezinearticles.com/?id=3816589

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Somatic Back Exercises for Lower Back Pain

The Inner Side of Somatic Exercises

Somatic Therapeutic Exercises
- A New Class of Self-Treatment for Musculo-Skeletal Injuries

Lawrence Gold is a long-time practicing clinical somatic educator certified in The Rolf Method of Structural Integration and in Hanna Somatic Education, with two years' hospital rehab center experience (Watsonville Community Hospital Wellness and Rehabilitation Center: 1997-1999) and articles published in The American Journal of Pain Management (Pain Relief through Movement Education: January, 1996, Vol. 6, no. 1, pg. 30) and in The Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients (A Functional Look at Back Pain and Treatment Methods: November, 1994, #136, pg. 1186 ).

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

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