The Most Important Low Back Pain Exercise You Can Do!

If you’ve ever dealt with low back pain, you know it can feel like an unwanted roommate who shows up at the worst possible time. Getting out of bed? A chore. Bending down to tie your shoes? Practically an Olympic event. Sitting at your desk? A slow descent into discomfort.

Trust me, I know! Having dealt with low back pain for 35 years, I get it and then more!

Most people are told to stretch the back, strengthen the core, do deadlifts, and much more. While some of those strategies can work, what people are being sold is that these are complete solutions to their low back pain. When the pain doesn’t go away or pops back up, people feel defeated. Which leads us to one of the most effective but also CRAZIEST ways to help chronic low back pain, but also extremely well founded in research

Meditative movement. Mindfulness. Breath work

If that sounds a little too “zen,” don’t worry. We’re not talking about chanting on a mountain or twisting like a pretzel. We’re talking about practical, research-supported techniques that calm the nervous system, relax protective muscle tension, improve movement quality, and help restore confidence in your body.

Let’s break down how these practices work and why they matter so much for low back pain.

Your Back Pain Isn’t Just “in Your Muscles” It’s in Your Nervous System Too

You can think of your nervous system as the body’s security alarm. Sometimes it’s perfectly calibrated: danger = pain.

But other times, the alarm gets a bit… overprotective.

Stress, fear of movement, long-term tension, and even the anticipation of pain can turn the alarm up too loud. When this happens, your brain may send a pain signal even when tissue damage isn’t actually present or dangerous.

This is where mindfulness and meditative movement shine. When you slow down, connect with your body, and breathe, you send a very different message to your nervous system:

“I’m safe. I’m okay. You don’t need to guard so tightly.”

When the alarm quiets, pain often decreases sometimes immediately, sometimes gradually.

Breath Work is Basically a Remote Control for Your Pain System

Breathing is one of the fastest ways to shift your brain and body out of “fight-or-flight” mode (tight muscles, shallow breathing, hyper-vigilance) and into “rest-and-restore mode” (relaxed muscles, calmer mind, better mobility).

Here’s why that matters for low back pain:

• When you breathe shallowly or from your chest, your low back muscles pick up extra work. They stay rigid and tense.

• When you breathe from your diaphragm, your rib cage expands, your core stabilizes naturally, and your back muscles get to relax.

• A relaxed back moves better and a back that moves better hurts less.

Most people are shocked at how much back tension melts away after a few minutes of diaphragmatic breathing. You’re not imagining it your diaphragm and deep abdominal muscles are literally built to support your spine. When they kick in, your low back no longer has to do their job for them.

Meditative Movement Helps You Move Without Bracing, Guarding, or Fear

When your back hurts, your brain says, “Don’t move too much.”
Your body obeys by tightening up and stiffening around the painful area.

This guarding response is very common and very sneaky. Even long after the original irritation heals, your muscles can hold onto tension, as if they’re still expecting danger.

Meditative movement practices that are slow, intentional mobility exercises encourage gentle, controlled, comfortable movement. This teaches your nervous system:

• movement can feel good again

• your spine is not fragile

• you don’t need to brace constantly

• slow motion = safe motion

You’re retraining both your muscles and your brain creating new movement patterns that feel secure instead of scary. This is a great way of offering exposure therapy that can greatly help people.

Mindfulness Helps You Notice What Your Body Is Actually Doing (Not What You Think It’s Doing)

A lot of back pain comes from unconscious habits:

• Fear of pain

• Fixating on the pain

• Focusing on the pain

• Frustrated by the pain

• Constantly trying to fight the pain

These patterns feel automatic, but they’re learned. And anything learned can be unlearned.

Mindfulness helps you notice these “hidden habits” so you can change them.

Using such strategies may help change the individual’s relationship to pain and other experiences, rather than focusing on changing the content of the experience itself (which, might not be possible). It has the potential to uncouple the physical experience of pain from pain-related suffering. In chronic pain conditions, pain severity and pain-related suffering have been conceptualized as overlapping but unique entities, further supporting the understanding of chronic pain as a multidimensional construct

It isn’t about turning into a monk it’s about gently paying attention to what comes up in your mind and the feelings around them. So much of suffering from issues like chronic low back pain come from how we emotionally experience the sensations, not just the physical experience.

My personal experience and challenges with chronic low back pain is where my passion comes from Myofascial Integrated Movement (MIM), knowing that there are challenges about pain that often never get addressed. Giving people evidence based strategies that address all aspects of pain and not just the ones that LOOK like solutions is really key. When you address the whole picture and person your results go up!

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