Upper Back Stretching

Almost 3 weeks after I posted Body in Motion, I’m still experiencing upper back pain. The pain seems to be centered on the muscles and tendons most commonly referred to as the Erector Spinae and it’s significantly worse in the early morning.

Although the pain is still there, it’s not as severe as it was before. A combination of attention to posture and upper back stretching have seemed to lessen the pain.

I’ve found one technique on Howcast.com site that I’m really enjoying.

Although you can use a rolled up towel to do the exercise, I’ve found that using a foam roller (shown in the video) is more solid and can help to massage the back by gently rolling back and forth on it.

I’ve also ordered a Viniyoga DVD specifically targeted for the upper back, neck and shoulders. This is my first foray into any kind of yoga. Last night, I popped in the DVD and decided to give it a go.

Before you get to any techniques, there is an anatomy primer and Viniyoga primer that are interesting to watch (although you can skip them). After the primer, there is a tutorial section that goes through each technique and form in detail and finally there is the portion of the DVD that you follow along with.

Before I get to anything else, for some reason the DVD is not in widescreen format so on a TV like mine (Sharp Aquos) you’ll have bars on each side of the screen unless you adjust the aspect ratio. This is a minor niggle, so I’ll leave it at that.

The techniques appear solid and do quite a bit to target my specific pain points but as a beginner it seemed quite daunting and difficult to get down. It almost seemed mechanical at times and reminded me of the mental gymnastics that I perform while attempting to play golf; Put head down, bend your knees slightly, swing back and twist keeping you left arm as straight as possible – you get the idea.

In fact, I felt so awkward that I enrolled the help of Dear GF (a frequent practitioner of some form of yoga) to coach me through it.

The DVD isn’t bad, but it’s a bit more complicated than I thought. I’m sure that I’ll eventually get the techniques down and when I do that, it’ll help a great deal.