Yoga connection: Yoga therapy for back pain

(News Terupdate) - If there is a common reason that drives many people to practice yoga, it would have to be back pain.

Tension and pain in the back are major ailments for adults – about eight out of 10 people will experience them at some point in their life. It is the most common cause of job-related disability. Americans spend US$34 billion treating lower-back pain each year – the largest category of medical reimbursement in the country.

But despite the billions of dollars spent each year on these problems, they persist. Lately, more doctors have suggested practicing yoga as therapy for back pain, based on studies suggesting yoga is a safe and effective treatment for chronic back pain. It even uplifts the mood in a better way than regular painkillers.

Last year, research by West Virginia University – funded by the National Institutes of Health in the United States – found that people with chronic lower-back problems who practiced yoga were better able to overcome their pain than people treated the conventional way.

The three-year study, published in the September 2009 issue of the journal Spine, showed uplifted moods, less pain and improved function in the group that did yoga compared with a control group that received standard medical therapy.

I am dedicating this column and the next two to discussing this condition and demonstrating a sequence of poses that will help relieve back pain. The sequence is inspired by the Viniyoga tradition, a system of therapeutic yoga developed by T.K.V. Desikachar, the son of the late and much-revered guru of modern yoga teachers, Shri T. Krishnamacharya.

All back pain is related to the spine, which supports the weight of your entire trunk, from the head and shoulder to the thorax and pelvis. The lower back and the hips bear the most of the weight, hence the majority of the stress in the body is located here.

Most causes of lower-back pain are nonspecific and related to muscle and ligament sprains, the result of poor posture, improper lifting, poor body mechanics and repetitive stress injury.

The most serious kinds of back pain are those caused by diseases, such as spinal stenosis, or the narrowing of the spinal canal that impinges on the nerves and causes strain.

Others include spondylosis, the inflammation and degeneration of the spine itself, degenerative diseases such as osteoporosis, and rheumatoid arthritis. They can also be caused by cancer, tumors or infection of the joints, bones and ligaments of the spine.

Repetitive stress injuries, accidents that cause bulging or herniated discs, muscle and ligament sprains, or tendon strains and tendonitis also cause back pain.

And lastly, back pain can be related to mechanical issues such as skeletal misalignment, muscular asymmetry, chronic muscle contraction and weak muscles, dysfunctional neuromuscular movement patterns, and nerve impingement, including sciatica. The latter – one of the most common conditions – is the pressure of the large sciatic nerves in the pelvis that run down the legs.

Before seeking therapy for your back pain, first seek out what kind of pain you have. There is chronic pain, which is measured by duration; and acute pain, which is measured by degree of intensity. Both have sensations that range from dull, sharp, electric to incapacitating, and can cause limited range of motion and loss of function.

If there is damage to the invertebrate discs, you usually have numbness or tingling sensations in your legs and feet, or sharp, electric immobilizing pains in your back.

If you have any of these symptoms, immediately seek out professional diagnosis. While yoga therapy can assist in the healing process for damaged discs, the wrong practice could worsen your condition.

Yoga therapy may be beneficial because it involves physical movement, but also because of its emphasis on mental focus. In yoga, practitioners focus on developing awareness of their breathing and movement.

By doing the pose and paying attention to their impacts, yoga aims at reducing pain and inflammation, increasing circulation, improving function and increasing the sense of self-confidence and well-being.

Finally, yoga is fundamentally the process of self-understanding and self-development that leads to self-transformation. Through this discipline of self-awareness, we will hopefully help ourselves get better, but we will talk more in the next issue. Namaste.

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