Yoga Poses for Back Pain

Hi, I'm Chris Freytag. At some point in our lives, most of us experience some sort of back pain. Here are some yoga poses will help to alleviate your back pain. Now, it does depend on where on your back the pain is, and what type of pain it is, but some of these may feel better than others, so always listen to your body. Starting with Child's Pose, one of my favorite poses, you're going to splay your knees, just a little wider on your mat. Drop your glutes, your butt, to your heels, drop your belly between your thighs, and just reach those fingertips out. If this is uncomfortable with your hands out, you can always just tuck your hands at your sides and drop your forehead down to the ground. And this just going to give you that nice stretch through your sacrum. Hands here or here. Take a couple of deep breaths here, and then you're going to come up into your Cat-Cow Pose. You're going to have those shoulders over the wrists, and hips over the knees, and you're going to round your spine, look for your belly button. Really articulate the stretch, and then release the crown of the head, away from the tail bone, into Cow Pose. Cat Pose right here, round it up. And Cow, and you can do this several times. Moving into your Downward Facing Dog Pose. Tuck your toes under, if they aren't already. Push your hips to the sky, press your heels down towards the earth, press your open armpits towards your thighs, and press your palms firmly into the mat. Release your head, neck and shoulders so there's no tension through your neck vertebrae, And just release and breath. Nice deep, full breaths in Down Facing Dog. Coming down to the mat, perhaps you might try Superman Pose. This is a way to strengthen all those back extensors, which sometimes helps with back pain also. You're going to extend all four limbs out, face just down at your mat. And you're going to life all four limbs at the same time. All back extensors firing. Breath and release. You're going to lift up, hold, breath, count to two, three, four five, whatever feels good, and release. And you're going to do that a couple of times. Coming over, onto your back, let's come into Knees-to-Chest. So you're just going to roll down. Again, depending on where your back pain is, always listen to your body, and see which one of these poses feels better. We're going to draw our knees into our chest one at a time and see how that feels. Just pull it in. You're going to get a little stretch through your glutes and your low back. Nice deep breaths right here. Another variation can be to lengthen one leg out. As you lengthen the one leg out, you're opening that hip flexor, pull the knee in towards your chest, and then switch, so you feel that hip flexor opening, and you get that nice stretch through your glutes, into your low back. And last but not least, try Windshield Wiper Pose, depending again on where your pain is. Your feet are going to come into Tabletop, hands out to the sides. And you're just going to rotate to one side, twisting, you can even turn your head the opposite way. And then rotate all the way around, to the other side, dropping your knees down towards the floor, just see how it feels. And wrapping that rib cage around. These are some yoga poses that you might want to try that will help to alleviate some of your back pain, and get you back into the game.