9 Ways to De-Stress Your Back
What is it about emotional stress that can contribute to an actual physical reaction in the back?
One explanation is that as pain persists, a person becomes more anxious about performing daily activities, let alone exercise, for fear of worsening the discomfort. That, in turn, leads to physical deconditioning that makes the back more vulnerable to injury, which in turn leads to more pain-and more stress-thus creating a vicious cycle. Fear of using one’s back can even lead to social isolation in extreme cases, thereby increasing the odds for emotional stress in the form of depression.
Stress also heightens pain’s emotional component (yes, pain does have an emotional component). It diminishes overall coping ability and erodes one’s sense of control over her life. Consequently, stress can make a person less likely to feel equipped to “take the reins” to do something to remedy back pain.
Another possibility is that emotional tension can cause changes in the body’s nervous system, leading to muscle tension and eventual spasms. It certainly stands to reason that tension resulting from the stress of not being able to meet payroll, a job loss, divorce or other negative life change can lead to tension in the spine. After all, we know that even everyday stress can make your muscles tighten. The longer lasting the tension and resultant muscle tightening, the greater the chances for ensuing pain.
Sometimes the pain of a physical insult to the back, perhaps via lifting something heavy the wrong way or a car accident, can continue even after the back has healed physically because in the wake of an injury, negative emotions can be released that then linger.
Whatever the reason for the mind/body connection that links stress to back pain, there are a number of avenues of relief. A couple of these avenues are completely nonphysical. They specifically help heal the back by way of the mind. Others involve types of exercise, or at least movements, that research has linked both to stress reduction and a stronger spine.
Approaches:
1. Meditation –
That emotional health and physical health are inextricably interwoven is illustrated very well through the effects of meditation. It reduces heart rate and blood pressure and improves mood, all of which can indirectly lessen a back’s burden. Far too many of us are not as meditative as we should be.
2. Psychotherapy –
Working with a psychological counselor might help to retrain the brain by working through stresses that both contribute to and result from back pain. Consider that some people with long-lasting back problems develop an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain; pain can do that. And that, in turn, influences how pain signals are processed and interpreted.
3. Connecting with Others –
When people are part of a larger community, when they come outside of themselves to take part in a group activity, they often are able to reorder their priorities in such a way that whatever was very troubling to them before is no longer as front and center. Becoming involved includes everything from joining a fitness group to working at a soup kitchen to volunteering at a library or after-school tutoring program.
4. Tai Chi –
A graceful martial arts form, tai chi is based, in large part, on an ancient Chinese martial art called tai chi Quan, which requires tranquility and calmness while emphasizing slow, soft movements. Research in countries around the world has demonstrated that tai chi can reduce stress and improve back health.
5. Yoga –
This helps to reduce stress and enhance mood, which in turn makes back pain less magnified in one’s life. Reduce the perception of pain, or the central importance of pain, and you in effect reduce the pain itself.
By increasing flexibility, range of motion, and muscle strength, and also by improving posture, balance and coordination, practicing yoga can potentially go a long way to alleviate back problems, particularly problems of the lower back. Yoga can even help heal injured back muscles-and prevent reinjury.
6. Pilates –
Like yoga and tai chi, Pilates is all about a mind-body connection. Essentially, Pilates uses precise, controlled movements in the trunk to increase flexibility and strength in the abdomen, lower back, and pelvis-the body’s core.
PS - If an exercise causes pain, STOP!
7. Massage –
In a study conducted at the University of Miami, it was found that massage therapy lessened lower back pain, not only by acting directly on the back but also by working on the brain. Specifically, it reduced depression and anxiety and improved sleep, all of which may have contributed to the beneficial effect
8. Somatic Technique (Feldenkrais Method/Alexander Technique) –
Hans Selye, a Canadian Endocrinoligist, was the first introduce the concept of stress as a factor in disease. Similarly, these techniques have the understanding that we adapt to stress through abnormal neuromuscular tightening leading to hypertonic and dysfunctional musculature as well as poor posture.
In these techniques, a series of procedures were created to help the patient become aware of his/her somatic holding. The approach is founded on the premise that sensory awareness and motor control form a feedback loop that is governed by the brain. This means that the ability to contract or relax a muscle voluntarily is largely dependent on the degree that the muscle can be sensed or felt.
More simply – the technique is a method of releasing chronically tight muscles and enhancing mind/body awareness thereby decreasing pain and dysfunction.
9. Acupuncture –
With acupuncture, balance is said to be restored with the insertion of fine needles at particular points on meridians14 pathways mapped on the body through which flows one’s life force, or Qi. Not only can acupuncture locally relieve the tightened muscle but it also works with the mind/body connection – calming nerves, relaxing the patient and rebalancing the psyche.
