Back pain can have any number of causes, from physical injury due to lifting badly, to accidental impact, to poor posture, to poor muscle tone, or to imbalances in the meridians of the back.
As with any other symptom, when a client presents with back ache, Shiatsu practitioners make every effort, by careful questioning and observation to find the root cause of the problem.
As a result of poor posture or bad lifting habits, the back can become traumatized and weakened. This, in turn leads to a subconscious process of protection in which the body ‘protects' the injured part of the back by putting more load onto other areas. This in turn leads to more problems as this area also becomes damaged, and so on. In these cases, the practitioner attempts to teach the client's body to return to its natural pattern by a series of manipulations and pressure point work. As part of this treatment it is obviously important that the client makes changes to his or her work posture or lifting habits. Simply changing the habit, however, will not undo the damage already done.
Very often, a pain in the back, particularly the lower back is closely linked with a lack of mobility in the hips. This too could be for many reasons; old age, sexual trauma, inactivity, excess weight and many more. In these cases, a few simple stretches, rotational exercises and techniques for freeing hip movement are of huge immediate benefit. Once the hips have been allowed to move, back pain may reduce, but then the root cause of the hip immobility will have to be addressed in order to stop the same thing happening again.
Many women have back pain associated with their menstrual cycle. Often this goes hand in hand with other symptoms such as clotting, excess bleeding or PMT. Shiatsu aims to relieve many of the negative aspects of the menstrual cycle, and as a secondary effect, back pain may be relieved.
By far the most common cause of back ache that I come across in TCM/Shiatsu terms is kidney deficiency. This doesn't relate to the kidneys as physical organs, but rather in their energetic role. The major function of the kidneys in Traditional Chinese Medicine is as the batteries that provide the motive power for life. When people become overtired, depressed or when they do not pay proper attention to diet and exercise, according to Traditional Chinese Medicine, kidney energy can become depleted. The kidneys are situated in the lower half of the back, and deficiency of kidney energy results in an ‘emptiness' in the lower back leading to a dull, ever present ache. The answer here is to boost kidney energy by tonifying the related meridians and encouraging the production of more, better quality ki.
Finally, many practitioners use a technique called Central Channel Release which is designed to isolate and release traumas that have been ‘stored' in the back. The theory is that this storage occurs every time the back is injured or when the client is otherwise traumatized. We are all aware of how we hold our backs during times of stress. They become hard and knotted with tension held deep within the muscles. When the trauma is over and the cause of the stress has gone, according to the theory, the back retains an imprint of the stressed position and often holds on to it for far longer than it needs to. This can go on quite literally for years and years. The technique we use enables practitioners to address each traumatic state and its pattern individually, slowly unravelling or unwinding the back until it has let go of all of its past traumas. The results are often dramatic.
Obviously there are far more examples, but those above may give some idea as to how Shiatsu may help your back pain. For further details, contact me via the contacts page .
