What we’re talking about today is breathing through back pain and the importance of it. I’ve broken down back pain in a lot of different ways. I’m going to tell you today the fastest way to get out of back pain, to start the process of getting your back pain to eliminate itself.

          What people mainly do is they focus on either the massive muscles that are in the back – the lat, the erectors, the back fascia, the glutes. Or they start focusing on stabilizing the back, which is getting the hips to function properly, working with the glutes and the hip flexor complex and getting them to balance out so the back doesn’t have to brace itself so much. Some people go even broader by getting the whole posterior chain from the back of the calf, the hamstrings, the glute, the erectors, lats, all the way up to the upper trap, to start functioning properly – getting them to elongate, getting them to move. Some people work with contracting the abdominals – those are also important motions to go through. However, the fastest way to eliminate your back pain, is meshing the external world with the internal world, and the avenue to do that, is breathing.

          What everyone tries to do with those bigger muscles, is get those muscles to function properly, but you’re forgetting why the muscles are acting like that in the first place. We have done something to the internal structure to make our body want to protect our spinal cord. That means all the muscles on the internal aspect have now contracted themselves. Unless we get those things to stop protecting themselves so hard, we’re going to consistently be fighting against ourselves. So what everyone does is focus on the quadratus lumborum, which is underneath the twelfth rib and attaches to the hips, the back fascia which runs all the way around the back itself. The erectors that run up through that area and the glutes do also. But you have to also understand that really close between the spine there’s something called your multifidus. The multifidus is really centralized, really right close to the spine as well as – there is muscle tissue that runs all the way along the spine. Not only do the hip flexors run through the same area, but there are also muscle tissues that stabilize the spine all the way through there. We have to get those muscles and that tissue to learn how to move. That’s it. Because remember, it’s trying to lock the spine in place in an effort to keep it sturdy. What we have to do is access that muscle system and get that muscle system moving. The way that we do that is through breath.

The more you can actually do the deep diaphragmatic breathing the better, and then you can alter where you’re breathing and that’s when you get things to move. So, with proper breathing, you’re getting these big muscles to move all the way around, but you need to get the whole entire structure to start learning how to expand. Because the discs that are in between every single one of these vertebrae, need to breathe. They need to collapse and go up. Up and down, up and down. But right now, its main job is protection and holding itself down. We have to break that cycle, right? We don’t want the discs to be crushed because that’s when you start getting herniations after prolonged times of that et cetera, et cetera. So what do you do? You start breathing.

Let’s get into the finer points of how to use this. You hurt your back, pop, something happened – you can’t get up, you can’t do anything. Your first task is not instantly getting things to stretch and move, is one – break fight or flight, and we already gone through this diligently. We have to break the cycle of protection – you’re going to do that through breathing, so you’re going to do your deep diaphragmatic breathing. Then you’re going to target that breathing. The diaphragm core is pretty much like a balloon; it pushes down when you breathe as well as your pelvic floor pushes up. Try it and see how it crushes your belly out. When that happens, your core wraps around and brings it in. So now everything pushes in, but where does the air go? This is the internal pressure that your body needs to structure itself.

What I want you guys to start focusing on is – we can use this internal pressure to now start pushing back. Once we do here – your back, if we lie down on the floor or curl up into a ball and we breathe and we focus on just our lower back expanding; now we’re starting to get the back to start moving on its own terms because it’s your breath that’s doing it. Not a muscle doing it – it’s your breath. So now you can breathe and get it to open slightly and close. Does that make sense? We want the breath to do all the motions, not just muscle tissue. Once you get those to move, then you’re in the position to really start changing how your body is feeling and thinking – do I need to protect this area or not? Especially if you do it on a turn.

With each breath that we take, your rib cage has to move. When you diaphragmatic breathe, it’s the rib cage is not going to move as much, but you’re going to push more pressure down low close to your hips. The rib cage is attached to the vertebrae so those are going to start learning how to move more and more now. If we trap the air, so putting your belly button against something like your legs if you’re curled up into a fetal position or the floor, your body has no choice but to push the air back. This is something called “crocodile breath”. Crocodile breath is going to get you learn how to push the air in the back. A lot of opera singers use that low diaphragm, all the air goes into their lower back to get the power that they need to sing. That’s what we want to access. We want get the body to start learning how to breathe in the back. So if your back is in pain, you’re going to want to lie on the floor anyway – curl up into a ball. Now you just want to focus that breath that you have to take to live in the first place. You want to focus that breath back into the back. Once you do that, that’s when you start getting the spine to expand.

What you have to realize is – once you start doing this consistently time and time again, your body might give you a little bit of a resistance at first, because it naturally wants to protect itself, but the more you do it– give it time, give it a good three, four, five minutes of you laying there and just getting it to move, very, very slowly and you’ll start realizing the back is going to start coming out of it. Once you get things to move – I say it all the time – once you’re in pain, as soon as you get something to move on its own terms – you get blood flow. Once you get blood flow you get healing. Once you get a lot of blood flow and begin to trust that the pain will go away, that’s where rapid healing happens.

So folks, when you have back pain, the first thing that you have to do, the fastest way to get it is work external and internal. First get that internal system to start wanting to let go – that’s with your breath. Fight or flight system calms down. Then you start doing all the structuring of the hips. Then you start doing all the erector work, all the trigger point work, all the stretching – all the other things that work. There are many things that work, but you have to get that internal system to match the external system – outside system. Get everything working and wanting to move – now you’re in charge. Now you have a way to really speed up how fast your back pain goes away.

Folks, if you loved it – share it. If you know somebody that has back pain – chronic back pain that happens every now and then, they need to hear this, too. Have them get my newsletter.