Hello and welcome. My name is Ravi Lescher, and for over 25 years, I have treated individuals with low back pain... first as a massage therapist, and then as a physical therapist (see "About Me" on website for more information).
I have worked with patients with low back pain on a one-on-one basis, literally treating thousands of people through the years, teaching them exercises, posture, movement patterns, in addition to the "hands on" work. And I found that in addition to the standard treatments above, the more I educated people about their back pain, how to tune into their pain signals, how to decipher what those signals are telling them, and how to alter their daily movement patterns and positions to learn to live with their bodies differently on a day-to-day basis, then they would have better outcomes. A partnership approach. And often after working with people this way, by giving them the information they needed, the "owner's manual" to their back pain, they would exclaim with frustration, "Why wasn't I taught this earlier?!!" (by this point they had often seen multiple doctors, massage therapists, and physical therapists prior to seeing me).
I call this system I've developed the Mindful Back.
You see, treating low back pain effectively is not just about spending an hour, 2-3 times a week, with someone to "fix" them. And it's not just about doing certain exercises to get stronger or more flexible. What I have seen after all of these years of treating people with back pain is that it is SO important to teach people how to tune into their own bodies first. Otherwise, you get a strong "core" but have increased pain if you push through symptoms. Or learn to sit correctly, but sit for too long and still flare yourself up. That is why being "mindful" of your own body is so important. After all, you live with your body 24/7 and need to understand how it works!
Treating low back pain has always felt a little "personal". My mother has suffered from chronic low back pain most of her life due to a terrible car accident in her early 20's. In the 1960's, after her accident, she fractured her neck and herniated a lumbar disc. She was in the hospital for a month on a contraption, which she describes as feeling like she was an animal put on a "Spit", in order to keep her spine in place while she healed. And the pain advice she received from her doctor at the time was to drink a 6-pack of beer a day for pain relief. And this turned into an addiction in an effort to manage her pain (today, those with chronic pain issues have often developed opioid addictions). And while she was raising 3 kids and running a busy household, she often had to lie in bed for days due to a flare up of her pain. She progressively could due less and less. She tried physical therapy once or twice, but never had the time or the conviction to follow it through more than a few weeks. Her pain ran her life... and ours.
So it's no surprise why I decided eventually to become first a massage therapist, and then a physical therapist. I made it my life's work to figure out how to help people like my mom.
And then, early in my career as a physical therapist, I developed my own low back pain with sciatica. It developed, in hindsight, after prolonged sitting in poor positions. This then started my education "from the inside out". You see, by this point I had been given the theoretical knowledge to treat low back pain but had not figured out how to apply it to my own body. I consider this period of learning to treat my own back pain as one of my greatest lessons - combining theoretical knowledge with what really worked... and learning the "language of pain" and how to decipher it.
And I am happy to say that I successfully treated my own back pain many years ago, as well as thousands of patients back pain since!
These are strange times. During the Coronavirus Pandemic, like many in the world right now, I have not been able to work in the traditional way, but this now gives me the time to create this website and hopefully help more people. And I know that there are many of you out there that are suffering with low back pain and cannot get the help you need due to Shelter-in-Place restrictions.
So, I am creating this blog to give you tips on how to treat your own low back pain from home... both gently and mindfully. Learning how to "tune in" to your body's messages, and understanding what those messages mean while you change how you position and move, strengthen your "core", and stretch your hips.
This will be a PROCESS. There are rarely any "quick fixes", and I'm assuming you've probably tried them all. Medication, injections, and surgery only go so far... and often have terrible side effects or complications. Isn't it better to treat your pain naturally?
So I hope you will join me in this PARTNERSHIP - me providing you the information, and you taking in the information and practicing the techniques I give you... over and over until your body/mind "gets it". We all learn through repetition, so I recommend you read the information here again and again to let it sink in, and practice the techniques I teach repeatedly, over weeks to months, in order to truly change how you move, how you live in your body, to see a PERMANENT decrease in your pain.
I will continue to create new content, so please subscribe to receive future blog posts, videos, and other offerings.
Good luck! Here's to pain-free living...
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