Yoga For Back Pain - 20 Minute Stretch, Sciatica Pain, & Flexibility | Yoga Dose

Transcript

So, we're going to start off on our backs. So, lie down onto your back. Oh, and one last thing. I have a foam roller for a supported stretch. It could be like a cushion. And then I also have a little stool for a standing stretch for my hamstrings. Could be like a little chair or anything you have around your house. Okay. So, having said that, lie down onto your back. Just let your hands rest at your side. Then roll your right ear towards your right shoulder and roll your left heel to your left shoulder. Just let the shoulders relax. Let the neck release into the movement. Right ear to right shoulder. Just real nice and smooth. So you might be like, why are we starting with the neck? It's my lower back that hurts. Well, it might be that you're holding tension somewhere in the upper back and the shoulders and the neck and that's pulling somewhere on your back. So, if we can just release those muscles first, it it's going to help to affect the whole spine. Usually, it's a posture, it's a postural problem. So, if we can just start to release the muscles that are knotted up and pulling on your spine funky, you might feel a deeper release in the whole spine. Okay, bring your head back to center. And now let's just start to warm up your hips. So, keeping your tailbone down onto the floor, bring your right leg up without your hips twisting. And change legs. Bring the left leg up. Change legs. Right leg up. Change legs. Left leg up. So, as you're doing this, I want you to feel your abdominal muscles engage to help keep your lower back long and neutral. So, it's not flattened all the way, but it's not lifting at all. You're visual visualizing your back lengthening each time you pick up one of your legs. Just a couple more rounds here. It's like real mellow. Starting to warm up the muscles. Good. Now, put your fingers behind your ears. Let your chest open. And then squeeze your shoulder blades towards each other on your back and hold. And then let your shoulders relax. Then squeeze your blades like there's a pencil in between your blades. You're trying to squeeze it and release. Good. Then let the knees open up wide. Inhale. And as you exhale, bring your knees back together. Few more times. Inhale, let the knees open up wide. And exhale, knees back together. You can just let your hands hang at your side. Now in cactus position, inhale, let the knees open up wide. Exhale, back together. Last one. Inhale. Open up the knees wide. And exhale back together. Then fingers behind your ears. As you exhale, let the chin roll towards the chest. And slowly roll in towards the knees. Exhale. Lower the head back down. And slowly roll the chin towards your knees. Lower your head back down. One more time. Roll the chin towards the chest, head towards the knees, and lower your head back down. Then open the elbows up again and take your feet the width of your mat. Hopefully, you're already feeling that this movement is helping to release some of the tension. Now, we're going to roll the right knee towards the left big toe. So you're internally rotating the thigh. And then change legs. Roll the left leg knee towards the right big toe. And change sides. Right knee to the left big toe. And change sides. Good. Now hold in this side. Draw your navl in. lengthen through your lower back and then see if it's appropriate to cross your right ankle on the outside of the knee. This is going to intensify the stretch. Now, just be sensitive. Feel what happens in your back when you intensify the stretch. If it feels like your back reacts by locking up, then you don't need so much stretch. But if it feels like the stretch is helping your back to release, then keep the ankle crossed and keep visualizing your tailbone lengthen out of your lower back. Then slowly come back to center and change sides. Take your right knee over towards your left big toe and just feel is that enough stretch. Breathe. If you need to intensify the stretch, then cross your ankle onto the outside of your knee. Breathe. And then slowly uncross the legs, come back to center, take the feet hip distance apart, and just relax. Then as you exhale, flatten your lower back down into the mat like you're trying to imprint the spine onto the mat. And as you inhale, let the spine come back up. Exhale. Flatten your lower back down towards the mat. Let the spine imprint on the mat. Inhale. Back up. One more. Exhale. Flatten the lower back. Let the spine imprint. And then come back. All right. Now bring your right knee in towards your chest and slowly stretch your left leg out along the floor. So, even though you're hugging this knee towards your chest, try not to let your hips torque and twist. Instead, visualize both sides of the hips reaching evenly out of your back as this knee comes in. And breathe. Then set your right foot down and change legs. Hug your left knee in and slowly stretch your right leg out and just breathe into it. Feel that the smooth quality of your breath is helping to release the muscles that feel locked up. And then set that foot down. Now gently roll over to your side and press yourself up to seated. Good. Then come onto your hands and your knees. So on your hands and your knees, place your hands under your shoulders, your knees underneath your hips. Then visualize the spine is being pulled in opposite directions. So like I had a string attached to the crown of your head and a crotch attached to your tail. You're being pulled long. Now without losing that length and without twisting, just start to send your right arm forward. It doesn't have to go up very high. Then stretch your left leg back behind you with the toes curled under. Any part of the spine that feels like it's started to shrink, lengthen it again. See if you can reach your leg and your arm even a little bit longer. Slowly lower your hand and your knee and change sides. Stretch just the left arm forward and slowly curl the right toes. Stretch the right leg back. Feel your core muscles turn on to support the length of your spine. Then lower your hand and your knee down. And keeping your lower belly drawn into the spine, send your right arm, left leg. This time the left leg can lift. Keep the tail long and lower down. Navl pulls up. Change sides. Keep looking down at the floor. Lower your hand and your knee. Change sides. Lower hand and knee. Change sides. Lower hand and knee. And then slowly start to stretch back. Child's pose. So, it's a modified variation of child's pose. I have the toes curled under and it's not my deepest. I'm not going as deep as I can. Instead, I want to feel that the spine is being lengthened through the reach of the arms as the hips sit back. The head can come into the line of the spine. And as you open the hands into the mat, turn your biceps up. All right. And then come up. So now we're going to use this stool to get our hamstring stretch. This also can be done on your back with a strap, but I find that using this little setup can be helpful to get into the back of the leg a little bit better. Okay, so I have my stool here and based on your flexibility, you can adjust your height and based on what you have at your house, I guess really. Um, so for me to get a a good amount of stretch, I would actually lift my heel just a little bit higher, maybe a few inches higher to get into the hamstrings. But for your body, this might be enough. So just feel that you feel a nice steady stretch in the back of your leg. On a scale of 1 to 10, you want it to be like a five. And then even more important that that you can feel that your hips go level and your spine goes tall instead of tucking under. And we're just going to hang out there for 20 seconds in the stretch. And then raise your arms and lower your leg down. Change legs. Now take your left leg up. Heel up onto whatever you have. Stand up tall. 20 seconds here in this stretch. Natural breathing. Let the breath come in and out through your nose. And then take your arms up. And then bring your arms back down. Bring your leg down. Good. Now let's come onto the belly for a moment and then come up onto your elbows and spin your inner thighs up to the ceiling. Pinky toe side of the foot down. Draw the skin from your belly up towards your chest and roll your chest open. Stretch back through your toes. And then lower your chest all the way down to the mat and stretch your arms forward. Head down. So just like Superman stretch, let your body lengthen out. All right, then come back up onto your hands and your knees. And then finishing sequence. Here's where we're going to use the foam roller. And this is actually just to prevent you from going too deep in the stretch so that you don't cause more harm. So lie down onto your back and first cross your right ankle over your left knee and gently hug the back of your left leg towards you and actively reach your hips out of your lower back. Visualize both of your hips reaching into the wall across from you even as you hug this knee in. Then if you're more flexible, you might be able to take a hold of the shin or just holding the back of the leg might be enough stretch. Remember, we're going on up for a five on a scale of 1 to 10. You don't want to try to eradicate the pain by making the stretch more intense. Instead, make the stretch mellow to help to mellow out the pain that you're feeling. Just by holding it and spending time in there, you'll start to unravel and alleviate the tension. But you don't want to use the psychology of like if I'm in pain, I want to like feel pain somewhere else to try to detract from that. It's like that's like the psychology of like if you hit your thumb with a hammer and like you try to hit it again to make the pain go away. Doesn't make sense. Okay, change legs. The analogy really doesn't make much sense either. Change legs and slowly hug the right knee in towards your chest and let the hips evenly evenly release out of your back. As this leg comes in, the left foot is flexed like it's up against the wall and the left thigh is turning out as it releases away from you. and then set that right foot down. Okay, big finish here. So, check it out. The foam roller, I'm going to take it over to the left side of my body and then I'm going to roll over onto it with my left leg straight. My right shin, knee, foot comes onto the roller. Then I'm going to take my hands, press them together and stretch towards the yard. As I inhale, as you inhale with me, slide your right hand along your arm, along your chest, and open up all the way towards the floor on the other side. And as you exhale, slide back. We'll do that two more times. Inhale, slide your arm and start to open up. Exhale. Slide back. One more time. Inhale. Slide your arm. And we'll hold 15 seconds. And then slowly come back. Felt so good. Okay, change sides. Take the roller to the other side. Then roll onto the roller. Left shin on there. Right leg straight. Hands together. As you inhale, slide your left hand along your right arm and open up. Exhale back to center. Inhale, slide your hand and slowly open. Exhale to center. Last one. We'll hold. Inhale. Slide your hand and let your chest open here and hold. 15 seconds. Visualize your tailbone lengthening out of your back to help with the health of the discs in the lower back. and then slowly come back to center. Nice job. Okay, now lie down onto your back and we'll do just a minute of lying down flat in chioasana. Except today for shabbasana, you're just going to take your knees bent and your feet on the floor like this. If it feels better on your back to stretch your legs out, you could. Otherwise, let's hang out here. So, just watch your breath. Watch your breath come in and out through your nose and feel any tension that you're still feeling in your back. Start to completely let go. Just notice how much more open the body feels after having done these mellowed out stretches. Good. Then roll over to your right side. Press yourself gently up to seated and sit up tall.