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Yoga Stretches Relieve Back Pain Naturally
Back pain isn’t just a pain problem, it influences our overall mood, energy and well-being as well. If you have ever had a bad case of back pain, you know just how debilitating it can be. Even small, everyday activities become painful, and everything you do during the day is impacted.
Yoga therapy targeting back pain is showing promise as a new, alternative treatment for back pain. Back problems often originate in the soft tissues, and as a consequence, the most effective back pain treatments are typically non-surgical and non-prescriptive, targeting the soft tissues instead. Yoga offers therapy for back pain, because it helps relieve chronic tension and tightness in the soft tissues, addressing back pain at its root.
A study published in 2005 in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that people practicing yoga for back pain experienced greater pain relief than people who received a combination of exercise and knowledge of proper back care. Yoga exercises for back pain have also been recommended by the American College of Physicians and the American Pain Society as a way to treat chronic back pain.
Yoga helps people suffering from low back pain, shoulder, or neck pain in four major ways:
1. Yoga tones and strengthens weak muscles. Yoga is particularly effective for toning and strengthening the body’s core muscles, which are critical for creating proper support for the spine and giving the back greater strength and stability. By increasing core stability and improving posture, yoga exercises for back pain decrease the pressure on the spine, a key element in creating lasting back-pain relief.
2. Yoga improves flexibility. Yoga stretches for back pain increase flexibility in a balanced manner, in turn removing the strain caused by muscle groups tugging the spine out of alignment. Many back pain problems arise from too-tight muscles pulling on vertebrae at unnatural angles. Yoga offers natural back pain relief by stretching out these muscles, relieving the pressure.
3. Yoga increases circulation. Yoga also improves back pain by enhancing oxygenation to body tissues, thereby increasing the flow of nutrients and removal of toxins in the spine itself. Many yoga poses for back pain alternate compression and release of pressure, coupled with an emphasis on deep breathing to systematically flood the body with uniquely oxygen-rich blood. This fresh influx of blood clears out toxins in the body and delivers vital nutrients to all areas, including the soft tissues. This is particularly helpful to people who sit at computers all day, which can lead to a compressed spine and restricted blood flow. Yoga stretches for the back lengthen and decompress the spine, thereby improving circulation to the vertebrae and vertebral discs.
4. Yoga relieves stress. Stress leads to chronic tightness in the soft tissues, which is often a factor in back pain. Yoga helps relieve back pain by creating greater relaxation and inner calmness. The stresses of modern life can trap our body in a constant “fight or flight” mode, in which muscles and soft tissues tighten up. Chronic tightness in the soft tissues of the neck and back can cause back pain, neck tension, and even tension headaches. By inducing greater relaxation in body and mind, yoga shifts the body from a “fight or flight” mode into the rejuvenating “rest and digest” state, in which the body can begin to heal itself.
Of course, like any holistic mind-body approach to health, yoga offers many therapeutic effects, and these are just a few. When the spine is healthy, vital energy flows unimpeded, and we enjoy optimum well-being. For this reason, a person practicing yoga for back pain will also benefit from yoga’s effects on organ health, mood, emotional balance and general energy and well-being.
If you are looking to find gentle yoga exercises for back pain, then visit www.YogaTherapyWeb.com to find the best information and instant yoga downloads for back pain yoga.
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Filed under back pain by on Dec 22nd, 2009. 
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