Yoga for a Healthy Lower Back (26 page)

Lordosis might not sound so bad in and of itself, but it has a ripple effect up through your spine that can open up a world of tension and imbalance. Your body is always working toward balance, and if your lower back is out of whack, everything else adjusts to “balance” around it. The middle and upper back does this over a lordosis by overrounding backward into a position called
kyphosis
, which is an exaggeration of its natural outward (kyphotic) curve.
⁷
Then your neck gets in on the act, overarching forward and bringing your head with it. Once your head is forward of your shoulders, all manner of tightness erupts in your neck, upper back, and shoulders, contributing to chronic upper back pain, as well as headaches and migraines. This is one of the best examples I can think of to illustrate the interconnectedness of all the parts of your spine—an action deep in your back (tight psoas muscles) has an effect all the way up into your head.

Before we move on to the Eastern view of the lower back, a brief note about the abdominal core is in order. Although I will spend much more time in chapter 5 on the abdominal core muscles, it is helpful here to know that the muscles of the anterior abdominal wall (what you typically refer to with the general term “abs”) support your lumbar spine by maintaining pressure on its concave curve. They help the entire spine to bend forward, and when they are toned, they can actually help resist the tendency of the lower back muscles to form an exaggerated lordosis. So when you create support for your lumbar spine with your abdominal core muscles, you counteract not
only excessive lordosis but—because everything in the spine is interconnected—excessive thoracic kyphosis and neck contractions as well.

Because of its remarkable interconnectedness, the lower back responds to what's happening below it in the legs, hips, and sacral spine, what's happening in front of it in the abdomen, and what's coming down into it from the head, neck, and middle and upper back. In fact, the lower back and the neck have a very deep connection with each other, because they share the same concave curvature. An injury to the neck, such as a whiplash or a head injury, can have a direct effect on the health of the lower back as well.

In this chapter you will practice yoga poses to strengthen and tone the musculature around your lumbar spine. When you start to practice, decide if a pose feels good, both while you are in it and when you come out of it. If it feels good, it's a keeper! But if you start to feel pain in a pose, do not move more deeply into it; listen to your body's feedback and practice only what helps you to feel better. As your lower back becomes more toned and strengthened, you will be able to expand your repertoire to include a broader range of poses.

T
HROUGH
E
ASTERN
E
YES: THE
E
NERGETIC
V
IEW

I often receive e-mails from students after yoga classes. One student wrote that her lower back had never felt better than it did the morning after our class. Another student wrote that he gained new insight about how to take care of his lower back and, with his pain lifting, he had more positive energy to use in various aspects of his life. When I looked back at the practice sequences for the particular classes the students were referencing, I realized that the sequences had just what a hurting lower back needs. In them, we practiced a good balance of spinal elongations, backbends, twists, forward bends, and deep relaxation. In doing so, we not only physically massaged and toned the lumbar area, we massaged the energy of the third (Manipura) chakra and activated points along the nadis called
marma
points, which distribute prana to specific parts of the body—in this case, the lumbar.

Chakras: The Fiery Power of Your Lumbar Spine

Your lower back and abdominal area is the home of the Manipura chakra, the energetic center of vitality and personal power that includes the area around the navel and the solar plexus. In chapter 3, I noted that the activation
place for the Manipura chakra is right behind your navel, which is aligned with the top of your sacral spine (
illustration 15
). You've now learned that the top of your sacral spine is the meeting place of the sacral and lumbar spines. So as we look through Eastern eyes at the lumbar spine, we've come right back to the L5/S1 area that I called “the lower lumbar challenge”—the most vulnerable part of the lower back.

The flip side of this vulnerability, though, is the potential for great power and strength. When balanced and strong, this area is an active, powerful location in the body, full of creative possibilities, self-activation, inner power, heat, and fire—both energetically and physically.

The Manipura chakra encompasses the area between your navel and your diaphragm; it is the home of the “fire in the belly” of Western psychology, the passionate readiness to fight with energy and determination for what you believe is ethical and right. In yogic terms, it is the home of
agni,
the fire of transformation that fuels the digestive system and burns up energetic impurities, cleansing the subtle layers of your body and releasing residue with each exhalation. It is often depicted with red and yellow hues, true to its fiery nature.

Manipura is a magnificent source of energy and personal power—the good kind of power that helps you to forge good relationships with others and helps you direct your creative energies into positive actions.

An image traditionally associated with the Manipura chakra can help you understand the immensity of its power—the image of the sun. The power of the Manipura comes from the presence of solar energy residing there, just as the term
solar plexus
in Western anatomy implies.

Even though the chakras don't have direct physical locations in the body, we are always encountering the interconnected overlay of the physical and energetic bodies. In a holistic view, the energy of the chakras makes impressions on their corresponding physical areas, and the energy of your physical body in turn imprints on the energetic areas. If either the physical or the energetic body isn't functioning smoothly, the other may be affected.

Illustration 15. The Manipura Chakra

Marma Points: Vital Centers of Energy

In the system of traditional medicine native to India called Ayurveda, there are points associated with the nadis, the energetic channels we discussed in
chapter 3
. These are called
marmani,
or marma points. These points are connected with specific anatomical areas of the body, but they are much more than that. In their book
Marma Points of Ayurveda,
Vasant L. Lad and Anisha Durve define marma points as “vital energy points infused with prana, where consciousness is most expressive.”
⁸
Marma points are a bridge that spans the body, mind, and soul. They are similar to the acupuncture points that Traditional Chinese Medicine teaches run along the energetic meridians of the body. The difference between the two is that marma points are located on the surface of the body rather than deeper within, where acupuncture points reside. And many marma points are located directly on their associated anatomical areas, which makes them highly accessible and easy to use for therapeutic purposes. Similar to Western massage techniques, marma point therapy loosens knots in the physical body, and similar to acupuncture treatments, it releases blockages and brings balance to the energetic body.

Ayurveda hypothesizes that activating marma points with massage and pressure facilitates cellular communication, cleanses and rejuvenates the physical body, and calms the mind and emotions. Marma point treatments support the body's balance and healing ability by increasing the flow of prana through the nadis, bringing balancing and healing energy into the targeted area. Marma point therapy is used in Ayurvedic medicine to treat everything from elbow pain to neurological conditions, as well as for a full range of internal-organ disorders. Due to the lack of research on Ayurveda in the West, this system has not been integrated into conventional medical treatment plans. However, as knowledge about Ayurveda increases, it is finding a place in Western health care and contributing to better health and well-being.

How do marma points relate to your lumbar spine? Very much so, especially three “sets” of points:

•  
Kukundara
points (Sanskrit for “that which supports the spine”) are located right where your lumbar and sacral spines meet, on each side of lumbar vertebra L5.
⁹

•  
Kati
points, meaning “hip or waist,” are located just below the lumbar spine, at the openings in sacral vertebra S1, one of the locations from which the sacral nerves emerge.
¹⁰

•  
Vrukka
points, meaning “organ of water filtration,” refer to your kidneys. These points are located between lumbar vertebra L1 and the thoracic vertebra T12 on each side of the spine.
¹¹

U
NITING
E
AST AND
W
EST: THE
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OLISTIC
V
IEW

The Kidneys and Your Lumbar Spine

Looking through a holistic lens, an interesting connection between your physical and energetic bodies is how your lower back interacts with your kidneys and adrenal glands, and how these glands affect your energetic well-being. Your kidneys sit squarely inside your lower back, between thoracic vertebra T12 and lumbar vertebra L3, and they play a critical and unique role in the body's overall health. From a Western viewpoint, they are essential in the urinary system, they help regulate blood pressure, and they filter and remove waste from the bloodstream, among other things. The adrenal glands sit on top of the kidneys and regulate the production of the hormones adrenaline and cortisol, both of which are released by stress and participate in the fight-or-flight response of the sympathetic nervous system. Of course, we need the fight-or-flight response in critical situations, but it's an intention of yoga practice and Eastern medicine to bring the fight-or-flight response into balance with the relaxation response of the parasympathetic nervous system so the energetic body comes into a state of equilibrium and health.

In Chinese medicine, a concept that is analogous to prana is chi or qi (pronounced “chee”). The kidneys are considered by the Chinese to be the regulators of life force, balancing yin and yang, rest and activity. Kidney chi regulates the overall state of energy in the body. And here we encounter another correlation between East and West: in Chinese medicine the emotion of fear is associated with the kidneys and adrenals; in Western medicine, fear signals the adrenal glands to release adrenaline and cortisol.

From a holistic perspective, when the lower back musculature is tight or injured, the kidneys and adrenals may become compressed and stagnant, which in turn can affect your vitality, overall sense of well-being, and ability to relax.

Students have told me that they feel afraid to move when they have
lower back pain, thinking they will worsen the injury. Did you catch the word
afraid
in this common response to lower back pain? Understanding and calming fear is unquestionably part of the process of healing your lower back, as Dr. John E. Sarno's 1991 bestseller
Healing Back Pain,
among other books, argues.
¹²
I encourage these students to practice gentle twists, backbends, and forward bends, all of which tone the lumbar musculature and massage the kidney area. I also suggest breathing techniques that elicit the relaxation response of the parasympathetic nervous system though elongated breaths and deep exhalations. Ocean Breath, which you learned in
chapter 1
, is an excellent example of this, especially when you practice it using extended exhalations.

I also encourage them get an Ayurvedic treatment that includes activation of the marma points in the sacral and lower back areas, to help stimulate the functions of the kidneys and adrenals. Soon, students' backs start to feel better and their fear goes away. Their bodies are more comfortable, and their minds are calmer.

As we begin this chapter's exercises, create a supportive intention for your practice. Practice for the health and happiness of your lower back. Meet your lower back where it is with mindful, curious, nonjudgmental attention. Accept that your lower back may not be able to do all the exercises now, but that the poses might be possible for you to practice in the future. Listen to your body's feedback about which poses feel good to your lower back, and practice them whenever you can. Over time, your lower back will surely become a place of tone and vitality.

Y
OGA
P
OSES FOR A
H
EALTHY
L
UMBAR
S
PINE

Ask and Listen: Preparation for Practice

Almost all back-injury therapies rely on stretching and strengthening movements to help heal lower back pain, but passive rest is also an essential, therapeutic part of healing. It helps release tightness in the superficial back muscles, brings circulation and prana into an area of restriction or injury, and creates a dialogue between you and your back so you can start to understand it. We will end our practice as always with deep relaxation, but let's also begin it with a calming, meditative check-in with your lumbar spine.