Improving Chronic Low Back Pain With Yoga Based Exercises

A recent study found in the medical journal Spine1 found that twice-weekly yoga improves functional disability, pain intensity, and depression in adults with chronic low back pain, as well as a trend towards less pain medication use.

How does it work? Yoga helps increase strength in very specific muscles and muscle groups. Holding positions in yoga is not intended to be uncomfortable, but it does require concentration and specific use of muscles throughout the body. Muscle strength improves by remaining in these yoga positions and incorporating various movements.

Many of the postures in yoga gently strengthen the muscles in the back, as well as the abdominal muscles, which are both essential muscles in the network of the spine and help the body maintain proper upright posture and movement. When these muscles are well conditioned, you can reduce or sometimes entirely avoid back pain altogether!

Your physical therapist can assess you to help you decide if a yoga-based exercise program would be right for you. To give it a try, follow these directions below:

Reclining Big Toe Pose (Supta Padangusthasana)²

Step by Step

 Lie on your back, legs strongly extended. Exhale, bend the left knee, and draw the thigh into your torso. Hug the thigh to your belly. Press the front of the right thigh heavily to the floor, and push actively through the right heel.

 Loop a strap around the arch of the left foot and hold the strap in both hands. Inhale and straighten the knee, pressing the left heel up toward the ceiling. Walk your hands up the strap until the elbows are fully extended. Broaden the shoulder blades across your back. Keeping the hands as high on the strap as possible, press the shoulder blades lightly into the floor. Widen the collarbones away from the sternum.

 Extend up first through the back of the left heel, and once the back of the leg between the heel and sitting bone is fully lengthened, lift through the ball of the big toe. Begin with the raised leg perpendicular to the floor. Release the head of the thigh bone more deeply into the pelvis and, as you do, draw the foot a little closer to your head, increasing the stretch on the back of the leg.

 Hold the vertical position of the leg anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes. Once you have returned to vertical release the strap, hold the leg in place for 30 seconds or so, then slowly release as you exhale. Repeat on the right for the same length of time.

References:

1. Williams K, Abildso C, Steinberg L, Doyle E, Epstein B, Smith D, Hobbs G, Gross R, Kelley G, Cooper L. Evaluation of the effectiveness and efficacy of Iyengar yoga therapy on chronic low back pain. Spine. 2009;34(19):2066-76.

2. Reclining Big Toe Pose. http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/483. Accessed July 3, 2011.