Is Yoga Good For Back Pain? Research & Opinion

Transcript

hello Leon here from back intelligence calm where we help people manage their back pain from home on their own as well as help them fix their postures and if you're not subscribed to this YouTube channel yet make sure you hit the button to keep getting back pain tips now today I'm gonna be talking about what may seem to be a controversial subject is yoga good for your back pain or not well the answer is complicated say yes and then though I'm gonna give you some research behind it as well as I'm gonna give you my own personal opinion about it so let's look at some research first this study here suggests that the practice of yoga can decrease pain and increase functional ability in patients with chronic low back pain however on the flip side another study stated that a considerable proportion of yoga practitioners experienced injuries or other adverse events now what do we hear at back intelligence think about the practice of yoga for back pain well I'll talk to some of the doctors on our team and all the doctors agree that general yoga can be good for some back pain relief we wrote an extensive article on this subject on our blog so I'm gonna read to you right now some of the pros and cons of doing yoga for back pain from that article well it helps to restore flexibility and mobility it can help improve your strength and endurance you can also improve your balance and stability it helps improve overall posture and body alignment promotes muscle relaxation and flexibility throughout the body and reduces stress and improves mood so these are all good pros but let's look at some of the cons now the cons of doing yoga for backbend it has the potential to worsen back pain if certain poses are performed or if poses are performed incorrectly it's essential that you find an instructor that can modify poses as necessary for any back issue that you have example disk herniation or impingement it has the potential to cause injury with a lifetime prevalence rate of 21.3% according to one study with the most injuries being in the musculoskeletal system in the form of sprains and strains a lot of poses also require flexion of the spine which is forward bending so when you do things like this and this could be problematic for people with disc problems sometimes it's not specific enough for your back condition or posture dysfunction so as you can see there are plenty of pros and cons now let me give you my own personal opinion I've done a lot of yoga myself over the years and in general I enjoy it and I think it's a great form of exercising and stretching but I do have some issues with it the biggest issue with doing some general yoga classes is that you could be making your condition even worse so if you have a specific back condition or a specific postural dysfunction you could be doing poses in the yoga class that are making it worse or are not helping at all for your specific conditions so for example if you have a herniated disc or bulged disc or sciatica usually forward flexion type of exercises which are done a lot in yoga they're gonna make things worse for you and create pain so you know you could still do that yoga class but maybe modify those flexion exercises so when I say flexion I mean bending of the spine forward that's what I mean you know when they make you touch your toes and and round your spine that's terrible for people that have bulging and herniated discs so if you're taking a class that requires you to do a lot of that maybe don't do it during that time or modify the position to something else or when you bend down keep your spine straight okay so you can definitely keep doing the yoga classes but make sure you understand what your specific condition is and what you should avoid for your condition and let's say you have a specific postural dysfunction like your neck juts out forward and your shoulders are rounded then some of the poses in your yoga class may not actually be helping for that specific condition so for example for rounded shoulders you need to strengthen your low to mid trapezius muscles as well as stretch your chest muscles so there are a lot of hamstring stretches or a lot of Cobras that may not necessarily help your specific postural problem so I'm not saying yoga isn't bad but you probably want do some other specific postural exercises for your specific condition that's what I'm saying or maybe find yoga classes that include more of those poses that will help your specific back pain or your specific posture one more thing to keep in mind whatever exercise or stretch or pose you're doing in your yoga classes or pilates or any kind of training that you're doing the technique is what really matters so for example if somebody gives you a very simple neck stretch and they tell you to put your hand here and and bring it to your shoulder and all you're doing is you're hunching your whole body like this and you're twisting yourself you know you could make things worse in other parts of your body by doing a simple neck stretch so whatever the yoga pose is again and I've talked about before if you're bending forward if you can keep your spine straight while you do that instead of rounding it that's gonna go a long way from hurting your back in general any yoga pose that you do make sure you understand how to do it properly so it doesn't put a lot of strain on your muscles and ligaments so again yoga can be great but if you have a specific back pain condition or a specific postural condition that you want to address make sure you're also doing other exercises outside of the yoga classes that are specifically going to help you to fix those imbalances lastly you are the best judge at whether Yoga is good for you or not or what exercise works for you or not try a yoga class and if it helps you great if you feel pain every time after you finish yoga then you know there's something you're doing there that's not helping you at all I'd love to hear from you leave a comment below let me know are you practicing yoga right now does it help your pain or not yeah and also make sure you like this video if you enjoyed it as well as share it with a friend also if you'd like to get three exercises to fix your forward head posture and rounded shoulders we'd love to send you these step-by-step videos there's gonna be a link to get them somewhere here on the video or there's gonna be a link in the description below I'm gonna send you these videos right away to your inbox otherwise see you next time [Music]