This question comes up more frequently than you might imagine, and the short answer is yes. Yoga, in any of its forms, will almost certainly help manage back pain, and will even play a major role in reducing, and ultimately eliminating it.
Yoga forms are fantastic ways to introduce low-impact, low-intensity stretching into your daily routine. The various positions you’ll adopt and hold, moving slowly from one position to the next are designed to gently work and strengthen nearly every muscle in your body.
The muscles in your back and abdominal region are the workhorses of your entire musculoskeletal system. As those muscles go, so goes the rest of your body. By practicing yoga regularly, you put yourself on the path of gradually building these muscles, and ultimately, giving yourself a much broader range of motion than you would otherwise have.
Yoga is especially beneficial for people aged 55 and up, who often suffer from periodic lower back pain and less pliable hamstring muscles. The yoga forms not only limber these muscles up, but also improve blood flow and circulation, which helps to not only nourish them, but rid the body of toxins, both of which make you feel better.
In addition to that, proper yoga forms help place the body into proper alignment, which improves both posture and balance. Perhaps the greatest benefit of practicing yoga, however, comes simply from the increased body awareness it gives you. The quiet, meditative state required for proper yoga exercise is ideally suited to stilling the voices in your head and truly listening to the messages your body is sending you. Once you are fully in tune with those messages, you’ll find that you’re better able to modify your routine to address issues you discover yourself, simply by listening more carefully to your body.
For people of any age, yoga is a wonderful form of exercise. If you’re too shy to take classes, you’ll find a plethora of helpful videos on the web.
