Low back help: Re-connect the feeling of movement with a specific frozen place.

Here’s a way to begin to find your lumbar spine.

Yeah, low back pain is all too common. Usually chronically painful low backs have imbalanced muscle activity when one considers that the low back should be able to forward and backward bend, sideways bend and twist left and right. With intermediate levels of refined sense of position and movement you can tune up specific stuck segments (vertebrae) in your low back. Before you can get to intermediate levels of exercise and control, you first have to develop an ability to access this area in a basic way.

First get better at finding your low back. You can use imagery to help. There are images modeled in mostly food that you can look to get a more refined sense of this area of the body. Look at the posts in this Change Pain series that are about your core. See Looking at the front of your Core http://mindbodyphysicaltherapy.com/2020/01/looking-at-the-front-of-your-core/ .Looking at the back of your Core http://mindbodyphysicaltherapy.com/2020/01/looking-at-the-back-of-your-core/ and What’s turning your core? http://mindbodyphysicaltherapy.com/2020/01/whats-turning-your-core/

A useful image to progress to is to imagine each of your low back bones as a marshmallow with eyes on front and a projecting tail on the back side. See other posts here that gets you started imaging this area.

Then, practice throughout the day noticing what parts of these last 5 segments of the spine can you 1.) Locate, 2.) determine a position, 3.) influence a change in position. This is the idea behind PURE and SIMPLE exercises. The Position is Understood Refined and Exercised throughout your day in ordinary kinds of movement.

It is a more basic starting place to just notice the group of 5, or a group of 3. Then ask for one of the 3 distinct movements felt by asking for:

Only a bend forward or back.

Only a bend sideways to the right or a bend sideways to the left.

Only a twist to the right or a twist to the left.

While you move, focus and keep your awareness in the body area you are exploring. If you can’t, take in a bigger part of the area, or just one surface of the area, and persist. Loss of ability to feel your parts and feel them in motion is a significant contributor to pain and frozen states in your muscles.