Healing Our Backs

Having back pain can be very debilitating and cause us to become depressed.

I am only expert in my own experience of it and unqualified in any of the approaches I might recommend, so I ask you to bear this in mind and use your knowledge of your own body and health needs to guide your own thinking and decisions. However, sometimes describing our personal experiences can be helpful in thinking health concerns through.


I often wonder at the demands we place on our bodies, I think we are unreasonable in them sometimes. I also think we ignore things that are inconvenient and sometimes this is both understandable and even necessary. The twinges you feel whilst lifting a small child, for example, have to be borne; the needs of the child and our love for it override any possible side effects.

So we must prepare our bodies as best we can for the unreasonableness of our lives and when they give way sometimes, forgive ourselves and our flimsy carcass.


There was a time when I thought that pure determination could get me through most things and it did to a large extent, but when that's your modus operandi, sooner or later, something must give and it was usually my back. It got so bad in my late thirties that I thought I would be disabled by it and that’s when I took myself in hand.


I went to an osteopath for several months. Her manipulations were not painful and actually for me personally, probably not hands on enough. I think if I’d found a good masseur and been able to have the two therapies in conjunction, I would have recovered quicker.


I have friends who swear by someone locally who is a qualified and very experienced acupuncturist. I’m not really keen on the idea of having needles stuck in me, even if they aren't painful, but apparently he does a very good deep massage beforehand and will sometimes put hot towels on the affected area which appeals to me, as does the idea of him leaving you lying in a relaxed state listening to ambient music for twenty minutes. I’m not sure whether he leaves the needles in for this period of time. That might deter me from this type of therapy.


I’ve never found the physical manipulations of a physiotherapist very useful on the couple of occasions I’ve resorted to them, but I have found a set of exercises and instructions given to me to improve the strength of the muscles protecting my hips and knees really effective over time. I have incorporated them into a quirky little half hour routine I have established for myself that I do most nights before bed. I have learned over the years to neither be zealous nor diligent about anything, but to enjoy the feeling of well-being that exercise and movement, especially dancing, gives me.

I try to walk for at least half an hour some time in the middle of the day. This is a good time after the exertions of the morning, mental or physical, to allow the body and mind to readjust. Tension can fall away whilst walking, although it’s hard if you’re in pain and I have learned to not go too far or up steep inclines if I think it will only cause more inflammation later.

I’ve realised that it’s often afterwards that we feel pain. You can’t always pinpoint it’s cause, because the effects can arrive sometimes days, sometimes years later. Anniversaries of painful times can lay us low without any warning. I believe illness and pain can sometimes be seen as a symbolic thing. Whenever I have pain in my back, after considering all the obvious things like, oh I shouldn’t have filled that bucket up to the top with water before taking it upstairs, or, I really shouldn’t stoop over my ‘phone for such a long time, or, the height of this chair is wrong for this computer, I really should adjust it, I think about the spine and how beautiful it is, how it carries us upright from the time we learn to stand, how it lengthens as we grow and carries all our major nerves encased in it’s amazing shell. It symbolises so much of who we are. 

Standing upright means such a lot to us, as does bearing the weight of ourselves, and from time to time, the weight of others. It can feel a little overwhelming. We find ourselves needing to lie down for a rest sometimes.

These kind of thoughts help me to gently relax my skeleton and muscles, if only momentarily, and even in this moment, I can begin to remember how to hold myself without tension.


There are occasions when I like to do this ;  lie flat on the floor, knees bent, push gently with my feet and think about each bone in my spine from the base of my back until each one lies flat against the floor. You can’t force it all to, but in just imagining it, the spine lengthens and somehow this relaxes it a little.

Then I kneel up, or sit on a chair if my knees are too tight, and allow all the muscles in my face to really drop, my shoulders to really really drop and in that position, try breathing in and out really deeply and slowly. I gave up trying to breathe “ properly “ as recommended by yoga teachers. I just do a type of breathing that feels natural, but deeper than the way I do in the day.

and I do all this to music.

To put an end to this rambling, I will give you a recipe for my favourite thing, an aromatherapy bath;



To 10mls of a carrier oil such as wheatgerm, add 5 drops of lavender oil, 2 of mandarin and 2 of neroli oil,

Swish it around in a hotish bath.


This is an evening thing as it’s super relaxing.

It does make the bath rather greasy, so you have to take care getting out.

You can, alternatively, use half a cup of milk or a spoonful of honey to disperse them in.


Aromatherapy oils are very concentrated and surprisingly stimulating. Before having a bath in them, you should always ensure you are not allergic to them by testing them on your skin first, dispersed in a base or carrier oil in the correct proportion.


For a nice massage, I take a tablespoonful ( 10mls )of wheatgerm oil and put;

5 drops of lavender, 2 drops of rosemary, 1 drop of tea tree oil.

This is really good for your circulation. So good in fact, you should take care and perhaps just experiment on areas like your legs initially.

You should never put a total of more than 10 drops of aromatherapy oils in 10 mls of base oil.


It will be obvious to you, I’m sure, that the oils work best if you like their aroma !

There are many different oils and if you don’t like the smell of the ones I use, there are many others to experiment with.


Not exactly to do with taste, though taste is bound up with it. The way we live is and the effects are all interconnected.


May we be well. May we be well and happy.