Yoga Therapy for Back Pain

Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 11:41 am

Yoga Therapy for Back Pain includes 13 routines to help restore proper function to the entire back. These safe and gentle exercises increase mobility and reduce pain. This beautifully filmed DVD features five 15 minute & five 30 minute routines for the upper back, sciatic pain, bulging disk and sacro-iliac joint pain. Each condition is addressed separately, so you will get the proper care for your condition. There is also a general back maintenance routine in three time options (17, 32, & 44 min.) as well as a 20 min. Chair Yoga routine and a short Guided Meditation for relaxation. Whatever the level of your pain, or if you just want to strengthen your back, this DVD has the safe and appropriate therapy for you! If you are not sure exactly what type of back pain you have, this DVD also explains the different types so you can have a better understanding of your pain. Filmed in Santa Barbara, California in high definition.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Keeping my back healthy
The last time I injured my back (by merely bending over) I knew I needed to find a way to strengthen my back. I was in pain and semi-incapacitated for over a month. Yoga Therapy for Back Pain is my salvation and I have incorporated it into my daily routine. I have focused on the General Back and the Bulging Disk routines and I especially like having the option of routine length. With Emily’s guidance I feel I have found a safe, gentle and relaxing way to end each day knowing I am conditioning my back against future injury.

5 Stars very helpful and flexible routines
My partner and I recieved this DVD as a gift. We both have had back pain in the past and I had surgery to remove a ruptured disk nine years ago. The routines offered in this program are a great supplement to the other stretching and aerobic exercises we do. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. Having a choice of longer or shorter routines is great too.

4 Stars Very gentle, perhaps a little too boring, but quite therapeutic
First, I do not recommend video yoga unless you have taken classes from a qualified instructor – this is because an instructor will personally make sure you understand what is meant by various instructions, and how to make the most of a pose.

I am just an amateur, but I find yoga to be very therapeutic both physically and mentally. At 58, I find that my lower back aches frequently, and I have had neck and shoulder issues for years, due to an old whiplash and being an accountant. My chiropractor always says that I am in better shape whenever I’m doing yoga consistently (which is not during tax busy season!)

What I like about this DVD is that it provides groups of routines for general back health, for the upper back, and then for three specific types of lower back issues. Each one of these provides two or more routines of increasing length, with the shortest being 17 minutes, and the longest about 45 minutes. The instructor also goes over the types and symptoms of different back issues in an overview segment, but I checked with my chiropractor to see which lower back routines she thought I should use (she suggested a combination of the routines for disk bulge and for the sacro-iliac joint)(upper back is a given).

This DVD does not provide advanced or difficult poses. I haven’t finished going through all of the longest routines, but the beginning of each seems to be exactly the same for all back issues, and it’s extremely gentle. I have no problem doing the poses as Emily Kligerman does them, which means they are not very extreme, and her video partner illustrates the same poses even more gently than she does them. Her voice is very nice and soothing and the repetitive background music is also soothing, although clearly the video has been spliced between poses because you can hear the break in the music – this is a minor grouse – it doesn’t rise to the level of an annoyance.

You should check with your doctor first, but it seems that this would be a fine DVD for someone who has pretty extreme back pain, because it’s so gentle. I also think this would be excellent for someone in injury recovery even if the injury is not in the back, because any injury involves trauma, and trauma tightens up muscles all over. I wish I’d had it last year after a bike accident and hip injury – my lower back started hurting from too much sitting around during the recovery, so I think these therapeutic routines would have been an excellent addition to my hip PT.

Buy/More Info