Yoga for a Healthy Lower Back

Book excerpt: A guide to managing lower back pain through gentle yoga exercises—perfect for beginners and anyone with conditions like fibromyalgia and arthritis The sacrum, or lower back, is an incredibly powerful part of the human anatomy. It’s what enables you to stand upright and tall, it unites your upper and lower body, it roots you to the earth—and it is one of the most common areas where people experience chronic pain and discomfort. Yoga practice can have a transformative effect on lower back problems: it allows the body to gain the range of movement and flexibility that short-circuits the mind’s perception of limitation and pain. Yoga for a Healthy Lower Back will help you understand lower back pain and heal it through gentle exercises that can be done even by those with no previous yoga experience. Liz Owen describes the anatomy of the sacrum and the region around it, including the hips and lumbar spine, and illuminates both the Western and Eastern approaches to understanding back pain. She then provides simple, easy-to-learn sequences of yoga poses for general sacrum health and then for specific issues or conditions such as pregnancy, fibromyalgia, and arthritis, among others.