Why Does My Back Hurt?
Pain happens for a reason.
Why does my back hurt is a question uttered by some thirty million Americans each year.
People have back, or any kind of, pain for a lot of different reasons but knowing why is essential to getting relief.
There is always a source or origin of pain. The body usually offers many clues but often a client telling his or her story unlocks the mystery.
I fancy myself as a pain detective.
In my relatively short years helping people out of pain I have come across many different causes of back pain.
I have found that they can be grouped into three categories that tend to mix and match— physical, structural, and emotional.
By structural I mean things like stenosis, scoliosis, birth issues, surgeries gone bad.
This can include accidents such as an auto crash, or falls that break bones, or other skeletal damage.
On one level these are relatively easy to work with.
They can be diagnosed and sometimes treated.
Sometimes being key.
But where I think physical and emotional pain is definitely treatable, sometimes structural issues can be so powerful that maintenance and support are the best one can hope for.
It is painful to deal with but if your spine is degenerating it is degenerating.
And for that, maintenance and support are absolutely required if the body is not to degenerate further.
Physical pain refers to muscles, ligaments, tendons, and poor body mechanics.
So much pain that people suffer is purely due to weak, tight, or imbalanced muscles. The pain results when our imbalances won’t let the body work as designed.
As a result, dysfunction can ultimately lead to pain.
Or not. Because the body is a mystery and some people can get away with what others cannot.
Emotional pain is very different than either of the first two categories.
Emotional pain refers to the body’s inability to handle different kinds of stress.
The idea that stress and emotional trauma causes back and other body pains seem ridiculous to some people that I highly respect.
And I guess it requires a leap of faith to suggest that an overbearing boss (on the simplest level) can cause someone to suffer pain.
But if what I am saying resonates with you, I have seen so much of what I describe as emotional pain find ease with new movement patterns and trauma release exercises.
The bottom line is if you are in pain you want to get out of it.
The first step in this direction has to be identifying why the pain began.
And why does my back hurt is simply the first question to consider. The why is everything.
This is easy for some and not so much for others.
But any effort expended in that direction will pay dividends in pain relief if you stick with it long enough.