Low back pain is common but not normal. If you have low back pain or have had it in the past, you are not alone. We know it can feel debilitating, we know it can feel disheartening and frustrating to stop living your life, exercising, playing with your kids because your back hurts. We are here to help by providing you with the education to help stop the cycle with  science-informed tools to help you get out of pain and prevent future recurrences. 

This simple & gentle 12 part program will provide you with practices to do when you are in an active pain cycle: classes that help you downregulate your nervous system and muscle tone, that teach you how to move in less pain and introduce gentle movement. The classes then progress for when you are recovering to softly begin to build resilience by adding  low back, core and glute strength, as well as back and hip mobility. 

Resilience in your low back is much more than cat/cows and core strength. The low back lives between your hips and your thoracic spine. When those pieces don’t move well and aren’t supported, your low back can suffer. In addition, how we breathe and mental resilience/flexibility are often overlooked in their contribution to pain, but can literally save you from having just a tweak to having a persistent pain episode. 

Therefore a program that TRULY builds low back resilience should include not just the physical mobility and strength pieces but the mental work and breath connection. That’s why we created this program. Each class is important and will teach your body and mind skills to overcome pain and help prevent future episodes. 

How to use: 

If you are in pain: we recommend starting with the 3-Part Breath OR the Low Back Therapeutic Snack: Ab Set, Nerve Floss, Rolling.  The breath class’ focus is to enable the diaphragm to facilitate breath which will help calm your nervous system, therefore decreasing overall muscle tension, the class will also serve as a mindfulness practice, which may help to calm anxious thoughts for a period of time. The low back therapeutic snack is more movement based rescue techniques, introducing gentle spine movement and an abdominal set exercise, some nerve flossing and teaching you how to roll from back to side for easier transitions (ie) out of bed in the morning. 

If you aren’t in Pain: you may skip two classes for now: “Introducing Spinal Movement and Low back Therapy Snack, ab set, flossing and rolling”.  Those will be great rescue classes if you do experience an acute pain episode. 

After you’ve chosen your starting class, we suggest you proceed in order. We purposefully ordered classes to build in challenge, more challenging core or hip strength, more challenging mobility, more challenging in the amount of variety of moves.  However, you’ll notice that downregulation classes (restorative, breathing and mindfulness) are built in throughout, that is purposeful and intentional, to continually remind you to connect mind to body and hone your skill of mindful pause and calming practices away from fear and anxiety. 

Take each class as often as you like, we recommend starting at your chosen class, and performing it a minimum of 2x/week and max of 6x/week. Since everyone is a little different, you may notice a class that doesn’t feel great for your particular situation. In this case, it’s just fine to skip the one that’s not working and move on to the next. 

When should you progress to the next class?

If:

• You feel like you can perform the moves and techniques well with minimal instruction
• The moves or techniques feel easy to you now
• You can maintain breathing at a steady rate and can connect to breath
• You feel the connection between your mind and the moves/techniques you are doing. 
• You are ready to try something new!