Low Back Exercise: Use the Standing Forward Bend for Lower Back Relief

Anyone who has to sit in front of a computer all day knows the importance of flexibility. If you don’t get up every once in awhile and stretch out, your lower back becomes stiff and sore, and good posture hard to maintain throughout the day. So it’s your job to take the necessary steps to keep it from getting worse. The best way to do this is by utilizing the standing forward bend low back exercise.

Actually it helps maintain the entire back and hamstrings, but focuses in on the lower back. Can you remember the last time you got up from your desk and didn’t have some sort of pain back there? Probably not, and if you don’t do something about it you’ll wind up hunched over or worse when you get older. So let’s talk a bit about the way the standing forward bend works and how you can add it into your daily routine.  It helps you have correct neck posture, helps with poor sitting posture, and can relieve a sore tailbone.

All you basically have to do is stand with your feet together and exhale as you bend forward from the hip joints. Now, while this yoga exercise can be more advanced, we recommend only doing what feels natural in a very relaxed way. You should be able to take advantage of this at work since you can do it standing up.

While eventually you may be able to put your hands flat on the floor, there are many individuals who won’t be able to do the more advanced versions. The advanced version requires a lot of warming up. The version I’ll show you here can be done immediately without extra warmup, so it is ideal for doing occasionally during the day. The best thing is a complete posture program, but this will help a lot, too.  Slow and relaxed are the best way to do it. Here are the instructions for a version anyone can do:

• Stand straight with your feet hips’ width apart
• Place your hands on your hips
• Keep your knees straight and drop your upper body forward towards the ground
• Let your arms hang down towards the ground
• Breath and relax
• Hold the position for one minute
• Roll back up to standing.  Your head should roll up last

Throughout the exercise, pay attention to any points of tension that you may have.  The mere act of body awareness will bring relief to the tense areas.  This is a wonderful property of attention: it can calm many discomforts in the body.

This version of the forward bend is very good for relieving tension all throughout the back, but especially in the lower back area that receives so much abuse while sitting. If you take advantage of this low back exercise then you’ll be able to relax those muscles and get the relief needed to keep your productivity levels high and eliminate the low back pain.

However, it’s important to understand that your best option is making this a part of your daily routine. Only you know what you need to do to add this to your daily schedule, but we recommend before bed, when you wake up in the morning, or a couple times a day during your break times (especially your lunch break). This will not only relieve the pain you’re experiencing now, but also prevent it from returning.

In the end, lower back pain can be an irritating obstacle to overcome. While over-the-counter medicine can give you short term relief, you need to take advantage of a complete posture exercise system if you want a long term answer. You’ll gain more flexibility, less tension, and all the psychological issues that come with chronic pain. Best of all you can do it all naturally.

Tag: low back exercise

Category: Natural Back Pain Relief