Lower Back Pain Treatment - Is Yoga Safe?

Lower back pain is insidious and can be debilitating. it is also quite scary, since the spine is the nerve center of your entire body and damage to it can lead to partial or even complete paralysis. it is not something to be taken lightly, and not something to go the do it yourself route with.

That is why doing yoga as treatment is such a risk unless you have been directly prescribed to do so by a doctor or a licensed chiropractor. While yoga in general is a good idea - it improves muscle tone, increases flexibility and blood flow, and is good for your blood pressure as well - specifically doing yoga as a lower back pain treatment can be a risky proposition.

You are not a doctor, so you do not know if your lower back pain is because of something as simple as having slept wrong and pulled a muscle, or if you have slipped a disc, or even if you have some sort of degenerative condition that yoga will actually exacerbate rather than help. And bear in mind, your body does not always register pain when you are abusing it. You may even find yourself in less pain after yoga but actually have done some structural damage. That is the last thing you want.

So now that you are properly warned, it is time to educate yourself on the different kind of yoga that can be done as a lower back pain treatment, and all the other options there are out there. Of course, Yoga itself is not just one particular set of stretches or poses. There are different kinds practiced in different ways for different reasons, and finding out just which one is best for your aching back or shoulders is a matter of consulting a licensed professional.

That said, most back pain is caused by improper posture. If That is the case for you, then your best starting point is Hatha Yoga, a style and technique of Yoga that focuses on posture as a means of physical purification and restoration. It was created in the 15th century by the Yogi Swatmarama, and he took the word "Hatha" as its descriptor because "ha" means sun and "tha" means moon in Sanskrit. The idea was to strike a true, unencumbered balance between the two - just as that should be your goal when practicing yoga as a back pain treatment.

Of course, fixing your posture will not do much if you have slipped a disc or some other similarly gruesome injury. That is why you need to be diligent and realistic about what will work as a lower back pain treatment and what will just make it worse. So remember, step one is see your doctor.

By Noel DCosta
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4047191