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I'm A Yoga Teacher & These Are The 3 Best Things I Did For My Back Pain In 2023
Amazing things happen when you cultivate more awareness in your body in order to figure out where you need to stretch and where you need to strengthen. And this past year, as I completed my second yoga teacher training over the course of 11 months, I had plenty of time to do just that.
Throughout the training, it was clear there was one big area I needed to target: my lower back. Luckily for me—and thanks to the guidance of my awesome training instructors—I learned a few keys for eliminating back pain that wound up shrinking my waist size and strengthening my core, too.
Eliminating my rib flare
If you've never heard of rib flare, it's essentially a postural issue where the spine is overly arched, causing the chest to come forward, the ribs to expand outward, and the bum to stick out behind you.
It winds up making you look like you're perpetually leaning forward and that your ribs are wider than they could be. And if that wasn't enough, it can also be a big contributor to back pain.
My entire life, I thought I just had a wider than average rib cage, so imagine my surprise when I discovered you can actually rectify your rib flare by learning to properly pull your ribs down and engage your core!
Try this exercise to get a feel for pulling the ribs down instead of flaring them out:
- Take a comfortable seat either cross-legged or in a chair.
- Place your hands on either side of your ribs and take a deep breath into your belly (not the chest).
- Begin to exhale through the back of your throat, making a "Ha" sound that warms the throat.
- Keep exhaling with that "Ha" sound until you have absolutely no more air left. At the bottom of your exhale, you'll start to feel your stomach compress inward. Continue compressing the stomach as you exhale completely, imagining the bottoms of the ribs were pulling down towards your hips.
Learning to properly engage my core
Once I realized my rib flare could be fixed, this led me to strengthening my core. It seems, at least for me, not knowing how to properly engage my core was part of how I wound up with the rib flare in the first place.
Once I knew how to pull my ribs down, I applied that in all of my core workouts. I was unwittingly rib flaring in planks, crunches, and a number of yoga postures, and pulling the ribs down is one big component of properly targeting your abs, and specifically, your transverse abdominis (the deepest layer of your ab muscles).
In other words, engaging your core is not just sucking your belly in. One of my teachers describes it more as bracing for impact, as if someone was about to punch you in the gut. You wouldn't suck your belly in, you would compress it inward to solidify.
And for what it's worth, core strength isn't only important in the gym or a yoga class—I'm now using my core way more doing basic, everyday things like walking, sitting up straight, going up and down stairs, etc., which has done wonders for my overall posture.
Stretching my hip flexors
Finally, as I strengthened my core and fixed that rib flare, I noticed I was able to stand a bit taller—but only if my hip flexors would loosen up. This led to the cherry-on-top of my rib flare journey, which was stretching my hip flexors to completely open up the front side of my body.
So often we think back pain is a problem in the back, when it's actually (at least in part) due to tightness in the front of the body putting undue strain on the back. Considering most of us spend hours a time sitting down, it's no wonder the fronts of our hips get closed off; They're stuck in flexion all the time!
Here are some of the poses I've been focusing on to keep my hip flexors loose and the front of my body open. As you do them, feel for stretching the knees and quads away from your hips.
- Low lunge
- High lunge
- Bridge
- Wheel
- Floor bow
- Dancer
- Camel
- Mermaid
- Tiger
- Upward facing dog
- Fixed firm
The takeaway
Yoga helped me realize my back pain was largely a result of rib flaring, not engaging my core, and super tight hip flexors, and for that, I am so grateful. Not only has my back pain significantly diminished, but my posture has improved, my core is stronger, and it turns out I don't have a wide rib cage after all.
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