Many people have lower back pain because they lean backward when they stand.
If you are willing to indulge me and accept this as true, a good question would be why?
The best answer I‘ve got is we lean backward too much because we can.
Which is not meant to be snarky. We have this curve in our lower back that allows us to lean backward and we have no clue how to deal with that.
We are the only species on earth with an inward curve in the lumbar spine. The. Only. One.
Homo Sapiens Sapiens is us— the ones who know they know— and we haven’t been around for very long. 300,000 years, give or take.
Considering that the earliest forms of life on earth were more than 3 billion years old, we are truly a pimple on the face of evolution.
Because of this miraculous curve in the lumbar spine, created by the psoas muscle but that is another story, we can stand and walk around on two legs.
The problem is as early adopters of this fairly new feature we really have no idea what we are doing.
We’ve had to figure out what to do with this upright posture and we are doing a terrible job of it.
Just look at the number of spinal fusion surgeries and discectomies happening all day every day in hospitals around the world.
We lean backward because we can and don’t know better. What a trip!
Honestly, it needs to stop.
Which is easier said than done as we aren’t meant to think too much about our posture. It is kind of an automatic thing that just happens.
But I promise you it’s worth the effort to try.
Changing your posture requires some patience and perseverance, but over time you can establish new patterns that are healthier, can alleviate your pain, and ultimately prepare you to age in a world where aging ain’t easy.