Relieving Back Pain

Welcome to this micro-practice if you're experiencing back pain. So let's just stop whatever we're doing. If you're sitting on a chair, see if you can give your weight up to the chair, let your feet rest into the floor. If you're lying down, feel the whole back of the body resting into the bed. If you're standing, allowing your weight to drop down through the feet, into the floor.

When we've got back pain, very often, what we do is we tense against the pain. It's totally understandable, but this tension just makes the pain worse. So let's see if we can release that a little bit by yielding the weight of the body into the chair, into the bed. And checking in on your breathing. Maybe you're holding your breath against the pain.

Again, totally understandable, but it doesn't help things. It just adds to this tension, adds to this extra pain. So let's let the out-breath flow all the way out, ah. Let the in-breath `flow in. Aahh, out-breath flow out.

Do that a few times in your own way, in your own time, following the rhythm of your own breath. And then allowing your breathing to find its own natural rhythm as the breath flows in and out of the body. But with each out-breath, feel the weight yielding a little bit more up to the support. And releasing tension, releasing all this holding and contraction with each out-breath. And let each in-breath flow naturally into the body in its own time.

You can come back to this practice whenever you feel the need. When your back pain is bad, just noticing, are you tensing against it? Are you holding your breath? And seeing if you can develop this new habit of softening, of yielding, of resting. And allowing the out-breath to have free expression in the body and the in-breath to flow in, in its own time. Do this whenever you feel the need, during the day or during the night when you can't sleep. And remember this practice is here for you to come back to time and time again.

I wish you all the best.