Yoga for Back Pain Relief by Yogini Nikki

Yogini Nikki, one of the yoga teachers at Bali Yoga School, shares 10 yoga poses to release back pain. She is teaching Ashtanga vinyasa yoga at Bali Yoga School, and she is a dedicated Ashtanga yoga practitioner herself. This subject is personal to her as she suffered from chronic pain due to scoliosis, and yoga really helped her to heal herself and manage her scoliosis.

In this video, instead of focusing on moving our back, she guides us to heal the back by approaching other parts of our body that may contribute to the pain such as neck, shoulders, hips, and even our hamstrings.

Okay, the first posture that we do is to warm up our spine and also to give a gentle stretch on our neck. So let’ s start with a tabletop posture where you put your hips in line with your knees, shoulders with your hands. From here, let’ s start by arching our back and gazing forward on inhalation. Then, exhale, rounding your back, gazing down. Let’ s do three more rounds just to warm up and also observe where actually we really feel the pain. So, let’ s start with a tabletop posture where you put your hips in line with your knees. And after three rounds, let’ s just hold the pose for five breaths. And then, after that, let’ s do push-ups. And release back to your neutral tabletop position. And the next pose that we do we can go from here we do balasana.

And this posture also giving a gentle stretch on our spine. So we bring our hips down and to add another deep stretch on our hips we can open our knees apart and walk down. So we can open our knees apart and walk down. You can even place your heels down and you can even push your hips up to your knees. Oh, the other side. Let’ s go. Andhaze for three more rounds. So you can do three moreeyed people to the front leg and walk back. Okay, and you have to stay still on one leg. wealth

and breath and have a good rest. And so let’ s do the whole process here for a second, very small Kitchen. We’ Re never getting back with any other, with any other kind of motion that individual, tabletop then slowly expose; Let’ s come back to our table top position. Now we will release any tension on our shoulder, neck, and also our upper back. Okay, let’ s start with lifting opening our shoulders. So, do three dynamic movement inhale, exhale, down, inhale. Now, we will hold for five breaths really, also paying attention to keep our hips in the center. Now, extending our hands forward, resting our ears and really feel the stress releasing any tension on your upper back, also your shoulders. After five breaths, slowly find your way back to your neutral tabletop position.

Then, let’ s do the other side again. Start with some dynamic movement just to slowly open. Exhale down one more round. Inhale, inhale really opening up. Then, exhale resting our head down again. Check in with our hips. Then, slowly bring your hands forward and again for another fiber. Try to bring also your shoulder away from your ears now. Then, slowly come up. The next posture we will do downward- facing dog. In this pose, it’ s a stretching and strengthening at the same time our core, back, and hamstring. So now let’ S lift our knees up hips up slowly pushing up now from here where you really push your hands down when you slowly bring your heels down you can still bend your knee slightly so you can really focus on lengthening feeling the stretch on your spine feel and really also push your core belly in to really engage your core, after five breaths

we can do the next posture; so now pigeon pose, now let’ s crunch our right knee then foot on the floor, so if you have any tightness on your hip you can bring your foot slightly in and in this pose try to level your hip. So when we experience back pain, sometimes hips, especially the tightness on our hip flexor can pull our pelvis forward, which causes back pain. So it is important also to stretch our hips to release the pain on our back. We do it for five breaths. Really level your hips and keep your both legs nice and active. Now, after five breaths, let’ s do the other side. Back to your downward- facing dog. Now, round your left knee, put it down, and let’ s set up for the left side, again maintaining your hips level and stay for five breaths.

Good. Now, after five breaths, we’ re going to turn off as this side. We’ ll come back to the right. No, we’ re not temperamental; let’ s come back to our downward- facing dog, and let’ s do the next pose, Bhujangasana. Now, bringing your shoulder forward, then slowly lay down on your front on the floor. So, in this pose, keep your legs active. Let’ s do another round of dynamic movement. Again, to slowly opening up our chest. Two. And three. Now, we hold it for five breaths. Really lifting your chest up from your core, pushing your shoulder away, and keep your legs active. Exhale down. Now, tuck your toes, lift your hips up, and back to your downward facing dog. Now, from here, let’ s step to the front.

And lay down on your back. Now, let’ s do bridge pose. In this bridge pose, we also working to strengthen. Sometimes, working with back pain, it So, not just focusing on stretching and opening, but also strengthening at the same time. So, this pose, actually, allows us to engage, build strength on our glutes and our core. So, after you bend your knee, you press your feet firmly to the ground, keep your knees in, tuck your belly in, really engaging your glute, belly in, then inhale slowly. Lift your hips up, press your chin down and hold it. For five breaths. Three… And exhale down. Now, the next pose, that is really good to come after this pose. Good to know, girls, observe when your boss weighs in, concentrate on flexing muscles. It’ s reclining knees to chest, push, apanasana. It s really good if you have any lower back pain to release any pain on your back. So you bring your knees toward your chest, grab your opposite elbows, push your chin down. You can stay here for five breaths, or you can rock your body side to side to give your back a gentle massage.

Then, and release. Okay, and on the next pose, it’ s another variation. So you bring your knees forward. Then you twist to the right, keeping your shoulder down, gazing to the opposite direction, gentle twist for the spine. It’ s really good to release any tension and bring the spine back to its natural curve. And release. Now inhale, let’ s do the other side. Lift the other knees toward your chest, and twist. Stay for five breaths. Now inhale, and exhale. So the last one, we can do savasana. Resting all our body to the floor, opening your feet apart. And if we do variation to focus on back pain, we can bend our knees and bring our knees slightly in. And stay there. Okay, so this pose will To conclude, my simple 10-minute routine consists of 10 postures that will help you to ease back pain. So you can practice this gentle flow every day and I hope it will help you to restore your spine and give it a good vitality. Thank you.

This simple 10-minute routine consists of 10 postures that will help you to ease back pain. You can practice this gentle flow every day to restore your spine and give it a good vitality.