Copyright 2018 by Dana Santas
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photography istockphoto, 2018
Author photograph Aaron Lockwood/Lockwood Studios, 2018
ISBN: Print 978-1-93975-434-9
eBook 978-1-93975-435-6
R1
A s the Mobility Maker, a mind-body coach in professional sports, Im probably one of the last people anyone would expect to have suffered from back pain. In fact, teams and athletes often hire me to create programs for alleviating and preventing back pain.
Yet, like you, and the other 80 percent of the population who has suffered from back issues, Ive felt your pain. I know what its like to hurt so much that you question if youll ever be able to perform everyday tasks pain-free, like bending down to tie your shoes or picking up your child. You are not alone. According to a recent Consumer Reports survey, one in four people have had an episode of back pain that severely interfered with their daily life.
For the athletes reading this, Im also familiar with the performance-hampering anxietyeven depressionyou must overcome after a back injury to return to play. The treatment and prevention of back pain is not only a large part of my career, its also personal. My experience from both perspectives has enabled me to identify the most efficient and effective ways to relieve current, and prevent future, back pain. As a result, this book includes easy-to-follow, practical solutions designed to empower readers experiencing back pain to take a proactive approach to relief.
But before I jump right into the solutions, you might be wondering how I ended up with back pain. Thats a fair question. As I discuss in greater detail in , back pain can have numerous causes, from a traumatic event or illness to simply feeling that we moved wrong. And those of us whove experienced a serious bout of back pain are 80 percent more likely to experience another. I am no exception. The first time I experienced an acute back issue was in my mid-twenties. At the time I worked in corporate America, and, like many stressed-out workers, I turned to yoga. Although Id spent several sedentary years behind a desk and hadnt exercised regularly since I was a high school gymnast, my ego believed I could jump into advanced yoga practice because of my previous athletic background. Consequently, after a couple of months forcing extreme backbends and twists I hadnt done in over a decade, I herniated two lumbar discs.
I want to be clear that yoga did not hurt me . I hurt myself by leading with my ego and not listening to my body. I went full throttle into the physical practice of yoga without working on the mind-body connection aspect, which research shows is a beneficialif not the most beneficialpart of any yoga practice.
Because I didnt know then what I know now (and you will learn from this book), I believed my only course of action was to take the Vicodin my doctor prescribed and passively wait until the pain subsided and my mobility returned. But after about ten days of going stir-crazy in bed, and still in pain, I instinctively felt I needed to do something to help my body heal and help me get back to my life.
As counterintuitive as it seemed to return to the scene of the crime, I went back to my yoga mat. But this time I practiced only gentle movements and meditative techniques to help me regain a sense of body awareness and reduce the fear and stress I was experiencing in response to the pain. After only a few sessions, with an increased mind-body connection and decreased pain, I was able to progress my exercises over a month until I was finally pain-free. Unsurprising to me, a study published in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association in 2016 found that mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques are more effective at relieving pain and restoring function than pain medication.
As horrible as it was to hurt my back, it was undeniably a valuable, life-changing experience. I was inspired to learn more about the profoundly effective mind and body exercises that enabled me to feel better and that eventually led to my career as the Mobility Maker in pro sports, my role as the yoga expert for CNN, and, of course, the author of this book.
All of that said, sometimes, even when we know better, we still make painful mistakes. Thats exactly what happened when I reinjured my back two years ago, 14 years after the first incident. By then, having spent more than a decade working in pro sports as a mind-body coach as well as a certified strength and conditioning specialist, my own exercise program had evolved to include weight training. My favorite weight-training exercise was, and still is, the deadliftbending over a heavily weighted bar and using a hip-hinging movement to lift it. Weighing in at 105 pounds, I was quite proud of my ability to lift 210 pounds, double my body weight.
