The key to decreasing your pain quickly, is to position and move in "Neutral Spine" throughout the day. So what is Neutral Spine, you ask? It is learning to sit, stand, lie, turn, bend.... you know, life stuff, all without making your spine twist, bend, round, arch. In other words, learning to move from your hips while keeping your spine still.
Neutral Spine is the position to maintain where we put the least amount of strain to the vertebrae, discs, nerves, muscles, ligaments, and tendons - by doing this, our backs will be allowed to heal instead of constantly being pulled, compressed, irritated.
See the picture to the right which shows the spine, from a side view, in a Neutral position. Imagine the person attached to the spine is facing to the left: their Cervical spine (neck) at the top with 7 small vertebraes, has a small concave arch on the right; the Thoracic spine (mid back) has 12 larger vertebrae and has a convex curve to the right; the Lumbar spine (low back) has 5 large vertebrae with a larger concave arch on the right; below this is the sacrum and tailbone.
So why is this important to visualize? Because many of us lose our neutral spine throughout the day when we sit, stand, lie down, move, etc, which irritates our low back condition. This is due to one part bad habits (ie. poor posture, bad alignment habits), one part weak "core" muscles, and one part tight hip muscles.
In future posts, I will start teaching you how to maintain a Neutral Spine position with various positions and movements... so memorize the picture of the spine above so that you can visualize it when I make recommendations.
Bye for now!