Are you suffering from low back pain? The nagging, unpleasant pain that prevents you from enjoying your life to the full and makes you pop painkillers?
The recent study lasted a whole year, included 320 participants and proved that particular yoga exercises can be as effective as physical therapy in treating chronic low back pain.
The participants had been suffering from chronic low back pain yet didn’t have any injuries. They were divided into three groups: one group attended a yoga class for three months. During the 9 remaining months, they were assigned to home yoga practice or drop-in classes. Another group were attending a physical therapist weekly for three months and were assigned to home practice or “PT booster sessions” for the rest of the year. The third group was required to practice yoga at home during all the 12 months using the manuals provided by the researchers. And the good thing is these valuable manuals are available for free. Read further for the links!
When the research period was over, all groups reported relieved back pain, both yoga and PT groups reported about the same amount of improvement. The number of participants taking painkillers has considerably dropped (from 70% to 50%).
And here is the guidebook that was handed out to the participants. And here is the teacher training manual.
As you can see from the manuals, the sequences suggested include basic beginner yoga poses and no challenging asanas.
No expensive equipment required, lots of attention paid to warming up. Very low injury risk, very high chance you’ll forget what low back pain feels like!
This guide addresses specifically the problem of chronic low back pain and is developed for people who did no or very little yoga prior to the study. The book recommends practicing yoga for 30 minutes daily.
The results of the study don’t mean any yoga practice is effective for alleviating low back pain. But the particular gentle yoga practice developed for the study participants surely does.
So if you suffer from low back pain, if you can’t get around to paying a visit to a physical therapist and don’t really feel like taking painkillers, you should totally give the sequences from this guidebook a try. If you think you lack discipline, imagine yourself taking part in this study, mark off the days when you practiced yoga sequences in the calendar and write down the results at the end of each month. Bye-bye, low back pain!
Read more: https://yoga.com/article/home-yoga-effective-for-lower-back-pain
