Can Holistic Massage Help: Lower Back Pain?
Lower back pain is something many of us are unfortunate enough to have experienced in our lives. At best, it’s an unwelcome discomfort, and at worst it’s a debilitatingly painful affliction that can severely impact your quality of life. Fortunately, massage can help provide relief and rehabilitation, putting you firmly on the road to recovery. Here’s how.
Causes of lower back pain
Lower back pain is one of the most common health complaints, with millions of people suffering from it worldwide. Let’s look at a few things that can cause it:
Poor posture - In today’s computer-oriented workplace, sitting at a desk with poor posture for many hours a day can have long-term effects on your back health. Slouching forwards puts pressure between your shoulders, and unwanted strain on your upper and lower back.
Muscle strain - Overexertion lifting weights at the gym, or repetitive actions that cause spinal impact, like marathon training or horse riding. Sports where you twist your spine, such as tennis and golf, and even enthusiastic gardening can result in pushing your body just a little further than it will willingly go.
Injury - An awkward fall, skiing accident, or even slipping into a muddy puddle during a dog walk. It happens to the best of us, and the effect is immediate, and intense.
Lower back pain associated with these factors is typically localised in the lumbar region — the spinal area near your belt line or waist. The symptoms can present themselves as a dull aching sensation, or sharp pain confined to the lower back. You may experience stiffness, spasms, or limited mobility.
Is my back pain sciatica?
I’d like to briefly mention a condition that has a lot of similarities with lower back pain, called sciatica. Sciatica is caused by compression or irritation of the sciatic nerve, which is the longest nerve in the human body, starting in the lower back, and extending down through the buttocks, hips, and the back of each leg, ending just below the knee. Sciatica can be caused by a herniated disc, chronic poor posture, inflammation, or anything that impinges on the sciatic nerve. Symptoms include shooting or burning pain that radiates along the sciatic nerve pathway, often accompanied by numbness, tingling, or muscle weakness in the affected leg.
Massage can also be used to treat sciatica with great effect, however since it is a condition that more directly relates to the nervous system than the muscular system, we will save this for a future blog post.
Holistic massage for lower back pain
Muscle relaxation - Muscle tightness can lead to restricted movement and additional discomfort, and techniques like deep tissue massage or myofascial release can target specific muscle groups to alleviate tension and lumbar pain, helping to reduce the strain on the lower back and surrounding muscles.
Pain management - Massage therapy stimulates the body’s production of endorphins, which are natural pain-relieving chemicals. This helps to reduce pain perception and encourage a sense of well-being, making regular massage an effective pain management strategy for chronic lower back pain.
Stress reduction - Chronic pain can have secondary effects like stress and tension, which can exacerbate the pain itself. In addition to its immediate physical effects, holistic massage helps to reduce stress and improve mental well-being. Breaking the cycle of tension that can occur with chronic lower back pain is an important step in overcoming it.
Techniques for treating lower back pain
Many different massage techniques can be used to target lower back pain, and here are three which I regularly use in my Southville holistic massage practice:
Deep tissue massage - This technique focuses on applying pressure to the deeper layers of muscle and connective tissue in the lower back and surrounding areas, targeting chronic muscle tension and stiffness.
Trigger point therapy - In trigger point therapy, pressure is applied to specific areas in the lower back where there are muscle knots or tight spots. These points can cause lumbar pain locally or referred pain elsewhere in the body so, although it can seem counter-intuitive, sometimes lower back pain can be treated by massaging other areas of the body such as the glutes, abdomen, or hamstrings.
Myofascial release - This technique targets the fascia, a connective tissue surrounding muscles. Releasing fascial tension, can improve range of motion and flexibility, providing a welcome respite from stiffness and muscle tightness in the lower back.
Treat your bad back in Bristol
When it comes to dealing with lower back pain, massage can work extremely well as part of a comprehensive pain management plan, which may also include stretching, exercise, and physical therapy. If you are based in Bristol or Southville and are interested in exploring how holistic massage can help with your lower back pain, feel free to reach out and book a session.