If you are experiencing any form of chronic back pain, you may have lost hope of ever living without it or finding help for your lower back pain! You may have visited several medical professionals, ended up with half a dozen prescriptions, no evident explanation for your pain (even after MRIs, CAT scans and X-Rays), and no long term relief.
Many clinical massage clients who are experiencing chronic muscle issues are shocked when they get significant relief from just one session of focused muscle and connective tissue work, because they feel like they tried everything that ‘should have’ worked. The problem is that, although the traditional specialists are highly skilled in their field, they don’t really address your muscular health. In the five years in my twenties when I had excruciating, chronic low back pain, I visited an orthopedist, physical therapist, neurologist… had an MRI, and X-Rays, but they found technically no ‘reason’ for my pain, so they declared it a bulging disc and sent me home with a handful of prescriptions. I was healthy otherwise, and active until my constant back pain became too intense. I did not find relief until my pain had been a part of my EVERY DAY for FIVE years, when I had three deep tissue massages in two weeks. It was significantly relieved after just one, but by the third massage, the pain was COMPLETELY gone, and has not returned since 1998. Since then, I have run a marathon, carried and given birth naturally to two children, and been very active, with a career in bodywork, running a multi-therapist clinic.
Back pain is epidemic! WHY? Today’s lifestyles create restrictions in our bodies, patterns of tight muscles that reduce our ability to move and create pain. If you don’t know what you are doing everyday to cause these tension patterns, it can get tighter and tighter until it begins to hurt. The pain can be in the tight muscle, or where that muscle group creates tension. Basic anatomy: It *can* hurt due to the pressure from a continuous contraction in the muscle, or in an area where the tissue is restricted and stuck together. These types of issues can, and often do eventually squeeze the nerve that runs through it. You are NOT crazy.
We have heard from SO many people in pain. MANY of them share that their doctors implied the pain was ‘in their heads’. This is horrifying to us! There can be other structures (bones, etc) which put pressure on a nerve, but VERY often chronic muscular tension patterns can be involved, particularly when a doctor can’t find another reason in testing and imaging…because…(wait for it)…they can’t see muscle tension on any common imaging device. Muscles take up a lot of volume in your body. To dismiss anything they can’t see on an MRI or X-ray as psychosomatic is RIDICULOUS.
So this is what we’ve found to be typical causes of low back pain in the world today:
Chronic postural strain from working position, sleeping posture, or recreation activity.
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That sounds simple, but changing some patterns can be very difficult. The positions you most want to look at in your experience, if you are experiencing chronic low back pain from working positions are:
Sitting for long periods of time is problematic for our muscles. This position shortens every muscle in your upper leg that attaches to your pelvis. When you move to stand up, those shortened and ‘stuck together’ muscles end up pulling on those structures. One of the more troublesome postures is pulling your feet under your chair. I have to share with you that this is a hard one for me to be aware of, but it shortens your hamstrings to an extreme, and can eventually create quite a bit of tension running up into your back.
If your seated position of choice involves crossing your legs at the knee, the likelihood that the pain goes into your rump, and aches quite a bit along your sacrum is really high. The reason for that is that when you cross your legs, the pelvis gets twisted a bit, often straining the soft tissues around a joint (the sacroiliac joint). This was one of the areas I had very persistent aching, even after getting physical therapy and chiropractic care, until I learned what I could do about the pattern, stop some of the positions causing trouble, and learn to stretch out the issue.
Low back pain from muscular patterns resulting from sleeping postures; often involve sleeping with the legs bent to a deep angle. When the legs are bent, the muscles shorten over time, much like sitting. One of the less troublesome postures would be sleeping on your back, because it’s structurally neutral. When you sleep on one side or on your stomach, it starts shortening different muscle groups and causing pressure on joints and general imbalance. With stomach sleepers, the low back pain pattern usually involves one leg pulled out to the side, sometimes with the knee above the hip. This shortens a twists a number of muscles, so that eventually, a position close to this one is the only one that feels comfortable!
Recreation patterns resulting in low back pain usually does not seem like the primary cause of an issue. Often, individuals who may have pain in their knee when they run, but the pain is often related to the restriction caused by their sitting position at work for 8-10 hours a day, then when they try to recruit the muscles, they are restricted, and pull on the joints they support. Often when a chronic pain pattern is caused by a recreational activity, it’s a repetitive strain, something someone does many days a week, or has an extreme position, requiring a posture out of ‘the biomechanical norm’. An example of this would be cycling. Leaning over, holding the upper body in a stable position (mainly with muscles in the low back and upper legs), *while* pedaling and requiring a lot of power can certainly cause some repetitive strain issues.
A solution that can address these issues involves deep tissue massage work, in coordination with a particular kind of stretching, which works with the muscles AND the connective tissue in the area.
The specific component of the stretches involves holding the stretches longer than most people do. The reason for that is, muscle fibers keep contracting during a stretch, to keep you from stretching into a tear. This reflex usually relaxes after 45-60 seconds. When we hold our stretches for 90 seconds to 2 minutes, we finally get into the deeper muscle fibers, and the connective tissue that runs the full length of the muscles to the attachments of the muscle to the bones. In fact, when stretching for the full amount of time, it is not uncommon to feel the stretch ‘creep’ around the 45-60 second mark. You can almost mark it on a clock. It’s quite an interesting experience. This seems to be why Yin Yoga is so helpful in helping people to unravel long time patterns. In a Yin Yoga class you are usually holding your postures for up to five minutes, and that, biologically, seems sufficient time to open up restricted tissue.
There is a bit more to the process of evaluating what patterns are causing or exacerbating muscle and connective tissue pain. However, we want you know that even if you’ve spent quite a bit of time in pain, and you’ve been told there is nothing wrong with you, or that your pain is ‘in your head’…there is a very good chance that your muscle structure has been affected by years of postural strains and you can still find help! Don’t lose hope that you can live a comfortable life again. Keep seeking help until you find someone with the right answer. I did, and I’ve had 12 years without my low back pain. The depression, frustration and life changes that naturally evolve from experiencing chronic pain can make you restrict your activities in life to a great degree, and isolate yourself. Please, keep looking until you find someone who has seen what you are dealing with, and has experienced success in finding solutions. I wish you the very best in your journey!
Tiffany Blackden is a Fort Collins Massage Therapist with over a decade of experience in the field. She thoroughly enjoys teaching massage therapists and the public about anatomy, massage and biomechanics. Her passion for years has been absorbing, living and breathing natural and holistic health practices. Not a day goes by, when she is not completely in awe of the human body. When not in the clinic, or in front of her computer, she is running, doing yoga and chasing around her two freakishly adorable children. For more information about the Fort Collins Massage Clinic she and her husband run, information on chronic pain and free stretching downloads, visit their website: http://www.fortcollins-massage.com/natural-solution-for-chronic-lower-back-pain.html
Tiffany Blackden and her husband have both been certified massage therapists for well over a decade. They have owned two successful clinics, with numerous therapists employed at each, one in Northern Virginia and one in Northern Colorado. In each location, they have included classes in their practice, to share with the public, massage therapy students and professional massage therapists in massage techniques and business building skills. Tiffany and Gary currently reside on the front range of the Rocky Mountains with their two freakishly cute children, soaking up a lot of vitamin D and getting plenty of fresh mountain air!
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