Best Breathing Exercises For Lower Back Pain Relief
Pain can wreak havoc on your central nervous system, especially after dealing with it for years. Even the trauma from surgery can spark fear and uncertainties, which could alter the way your body operates if left alone.
If you’ve had lower back pain for any amount of time, odds are your breathing has been impacted. It may come and go, but the way you respond through breathing could be making your pain worse during those flare-ups or more sensitive times.
In your quest to go from the darkness, fear and pain can keep you in to confidently building strength and living with freedom, YOU have to take back control over your mind and body.
In today’s video, I am going to break down the simplest of exercises you can start doing right now to not only build a stronger core, diagram, and lunge capacity but bring you relief from your lower back pain.
If you want to learn more about how you can apply this tool to a back-friendly workout, be sure to grab my free guide: The Pain-Free Training Blueprint
Does Deep Breathing Help With Lower Back Pain?
The best breathing exercises for lower back pain focus on two things. First, the actual act of deep breathing (expanding the lungs, using the diagram), and the other aspect is the mental part.
When doing any breathing exercises for lower back pain, I want you to think hard about relaxing the body and allowing those breaths to soak deep into the musculature of the sensitive area.
This is where the mind-body connection takes place. You can’t just take a bunch of deep breaths and expect change. You have to use the breath to shut down the overprotective our bodies trigger when pain is present.
So yes, deep breathing does help with lower back pain, not just the act of breathing but the mind-body connection.
What Does Breathing For Lower Back Pain Relief Look Like?
I’ll give you the Spark-Notes version of what you want to be doing.
STEP 1:
First, establish what type of breather you are now.
For example, are you a tummy breather or chest breather?
Hint: You don’t want to be either one.
STEP 2:
Shift your thinking and breathing to more of a base of ribs breather.
This takes practice and can be made even better by learning to relax the back muscles and expanding out the back of the ribs as well.
STEP 3:
Challenging this new “base of ribs breathing” with simple movements ensures that once an activity is added (exercise), you can maintain this breathing technique without form breakdown.
I break this down even more in this week’s full episode!
What Types Of Breathing Exercises Are Best For Lower Back Pain Relief?
There are a lot of breathing exercises that I think are great for lower back pain relief.
The ultimate goal is to reduce tension, stress, and the stiffness these things can bring on when you’re dealing with lower back pain. I did a post a few months back breaking down a strategy I love when it comes to tension and fear.
It’s called Box Breathing, and you can check out the video here!
