Helpful Tips on How to Overcome Chronic Back Pain
- Brainz Magazine
- Nov 24
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 25
Lisa Tibando had devoted decades to the healing arts, specializing in guiding others through empowered self-care and personalized transformation by blending ancient wisdom and modern science. Her practice blends deep spiritual insight with a highly educated foundation in anatomy and physiology, reflecting an unwavering commitment to holistic health.
Do you ever feel hopeless about the years you have spent suffering from back pain? Do you think you have tried everything and asked everyone, with no sufficient solutions or results? Do you believe it's possible you have normalized this pain, concluding it's a result of old age or self-inflicted? It's time to get the answers and help you have been seeking.
Pain is the number one, and basically, the only way the body can speak to us. We have to take responsibility to listen to the body and give it the caregiving it requires. For most of us, our bodies have been taken for granted. We were not taught that taking care of our bodies is a number one priority. We assumed that the body just cared for itself.
It's time to start thinking of our bodies as belongings. Something we own, something we have been given, something of a possession that we need to protect and care for. Within our bodies, there are many muscles, and these muscles all have a purpose, a role, a job, just as we do as human beings. Every human needs care in some way, so we need to consider that when it comes to our muscles and, therefore, our bodies.
You are not in a hopeless situation with your chronic back pain, and you are not just old and worn out.
Let's take the analogy of a car. Two people buy the exact same car. Same make, model, and year, on the same day. Person 1 is told immediately how to care for their car. They are taught about regular oil changes, tune-ups, and maintenance. Person 2 is given no advice and simply drives away, thinking they have an amazing vehicle that now gets them faster and easier from A to B.
Ten years go by, and the two people cross paths with those exact same cars they purchased. What do you think has happened? Person 1 has an amazing car still. It’s had tune-ups, regular oil changes, rust touch-up, etc. Person 2 has a car that is breaking down and is now unreliable and not running well at all. Same car, but one person knew how to care for their car and did, the other took the vehicle for granted.
That is what has happened to our bodies that are screaming at us with chronic back pain. The knowledge of the body was saved only for those choosing to study it, not for the average person. A lot of the time, education was also only about how the body works as opposed to how to really take good care of it.
What causes back pain?
Back Pain, like most body pain, is a result of tight muscles, congested tissues, poor postural/mechanical habits, and lack of awareness. Muscles are very resilient and can take an enormous amount of mistreatment until they get to the “end of their rope”, as they say. It's like the story of the straw that broke the camel's back.
Muscles can take a beating, a heavy load, decades of mistreatment from not being cared for, until that one little moment where the straw breaks the camel’s back. It's a slow, insidious process that is built over decades of heavy burdens, so it seems, to the unaware mind, that it's older age that is making us sore and stiff. No! It’s a lack of self-care and neglect of not tending to the muscles that have served us right from childhood. These muscles helped us learn to stand, walk, sit in our school seats, learn to ride bikes, play hockey, and dance. To the vast majority, the important habits of stretching the micro-torn tissues, icing the inflamed sore spots, and deep breathing were not taught, just to name a few. The only way the body can let us know there is a compromise in the motor functions is to send a signal of pain, and it mainly only does this when it's ready to scream that it's had enough, when it's in an emergency situation. Regular daily stretching is preventative and a way to care for our bodies, so pain doesn't have to be experienced to make us finally stop taking the body for granted. Tight muscles, ignored inflammation, lack of self-care, and self-love will create chronic pain in one way or another.
3 tips on how to care for your muscles causing back pain
1. Daily stretching
Do you brush your teeth every day? Yes, because you use them. Teeth need that to stay healthy. Do you eat food every day? Yes, because you need to provide it to your body. We need food to stay healthy. We have many daily practices and habits to tend to ourselves. Stretching is needed to keep muscle tissue healthy. We use muscles to keep us seated in our car seats, our desk chairs, standing, walking, and even breathing. Those muscles require acknowledgement of their performance in our everyday lives, every single day. When we do the laundry regularly, it doesn't pile up into an overwhelming amount. When we clean our spaces regularly, a huge mess isn't created or built up. Well, the same concept applies to our muscles. If we stretch every day, we don't let tension accumulate to the point that it's a huge mess, and therefore cause us pain.
2. Deep breathing
You have heard of the term "fight or flight." It's our Sympathetic Nervous System firing into action. It’s a response that happens in our Central Nervous System, which is in either one of two states, Sympathetic or Parasympathetic. “Fight or Flight” or “Rest and Digest”. The “fight or flight” is there to protect us from danger. When we are in a “fight or flight” response, our muscles are ready to act accordingly to protect us from danger. How would we find protection from danger? It's right there in the term. Fight the danger, punch, kick, and defend. Or flight from danger, run, climb, flee from it. How would our bodies make those activities happen? We would use our leg muscles to run, our arm muscles to punch, and our back and buttocks muscles to kick.
The body is prepping for those actions the second we go into the “fight or flight” response. Stress of any kind causes activation of “fight or flight.” But mostly, we are never actually running or kicking, we are simply in a traffic jam, or mad at our partner, or worried about some circumstance in our lives we are dealing with. Still, the body has prepared for these actions, so our muscles have been affected. When we have awareness of this, we can then act and bring our Central Nervous System into the other state of “rest and digest”, Parasympathetic. Using breath is the primary way to alter our state from “fight or flight” to “rest and digest”. Breathing into and from the belly is the optimal way to breathe relaxation back into our system and therefore into our muscles. Breathing deeply regularly throughout our day is a way to care for those amazing muscles that have jumped into action to help us throughout our daily lives. Periodically throughout every day, throughout all our activities of daily living, we can bring attention to our breath and make a conscious choice to relax by taking long, slow, deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. This creates a calmer state in our bodies, it tells our muscles they can relax because there is no life-threatening danger.
3. Cold compresses and icing
Do you know how to put an ice pack on an acute injury? If you sprained your ankle or badly bumped your head, would you put ice on it? Most people would. We put ice on these things because we assess that there has been an injury. When the body sustains an injury, one of its primary responses is inflammation, and this is why we apply ice packs. When we gain the awareness that our body is going through micro-injury daily, simply by living our lives, we can then tend to it accordingly. Most of us are in a lifestyle of daily work duties that put us in repetitive body mechanics. We either sit all day, or stand all day, or labor hard all day in some repetitive way. These activities create micro tears in our muscles, muscles that we have repetitively strained due to our repetitive lives. Mostly, it’s either one or the other, sitting in one position too long or standing in one position too long. Hence, tired, exhausted, micro-torn low back muscles. A micro tear is a small injury, and therefore, the body creates some inflammation. Having awareness of this inflammation, even though we don't feel or see it, can help us care for those muscles and apply cold compresses at the end of our day to help remove the inflammation, which will cause pain, soreness, and stiffness if left unchecked and allowed to build up.
When we have normalized daily stress, when we are not breathing from our belly deeply, when we haven't taken daily maintenance care of our vehicle, the result is a body that is in chronic "fight or flight". Therefore, the body is not getting enough time, if any, to be in rest and digest, where we get rid of inflammation, have healthy cellular digestion, recalibrate into homeostasis, heal, rejuvenate, and revive. Without this parasympathetic balance in our Central Nervous System, we will suffer from chronic pain areas that are our weak spots due to the life we have lived. We can take back control, empower ourselves, and reverse chronic pain by beginning a practice of these three simple daily choices. Stretch, take a deep breath, and tend to our muscles that have been through repetitive strain in our daily lives. We can walk toward a path of pain-free when we develop consistent self-care daily habits that serve the body that serves us in reciprocity.
Read more from Lisa Tibando
Lisa Tibando, Business Owner, RMT, Bioenergetics Facilitator
Lisa Tibando is a leader in self-awareness, self-care, and self-love. After overcoming a history of multiple childhood and adolescent traumas, she embarked on a profound healing journey that transformed her life, mentally, physically, and emotionally. Today, Lisa is dedicated to guiding others through their own healing, drawing from both personal experience and decades of study. Her deep compassion and intuitive understanding create a safe, empowering space for individuals to reconnect with themselves and embrace the transformative power of self-healing.
