Your spinal cord likes space, and it let’s you know when something is pushing on it. This can feel like pain, pins & needles down both legs, or buttock pain.

Take a deep breath. This is more common than you think, and movement is good. That includes yoga.

Let’s start with this, lumbar spinal stenosis has been increasingly diagnosed over the past 20 years as our imaging techniques have improved. We can now see the narrowing of the spinal column, where the spinal cord lives, and we call this spinal stenosis. It is extra bone growth, and is really a more specific way of noting the location of arthritis in the spine. This has led to a significant increase in surgery for this diagnosis. In fact, lumbar spinal stenosis has made it to number one on the list of spinal surgeries for people over 65 (Zaina et. al). This does not mean you need surgery, at least surgery should not be your first intervention.

Conservative treatment, meaning physical therapy (I like to add yoga to my PT treatments), exercise, acupuncture, mobilization, and pain management education are the best first options for learning how to live and move with spinal stenosis. And there are no side-effects to conservative treatment. Surgical intervention can have life-altering side-effects, and the rate of side-effects ranges from 10-24% (Zaina et. al).

Child’s pose with a rounded back can relieve spinal stenosis symptoms.

Why is yoga a good choice for learning how to move and stay strong with spinal stenosis? One reason is that yoga is going to keep you moving and keep you strong. There are many yoga poses that I have found to be effective at reducing the pain and discomfort of spinal stenosis. In general, you are going to pick yoga poses that have more flexion or forward bending, than backward bending. Of course, if you also have osteoporosis, you need to be careful about too much forward bending.

Some poses with a good amount of forward flexion include Child’s Pose, Seated Forward Fold (especially when done in a chair) and even downward-facing dog. For dog pose, you may have to ignore the “normal” cues and round your back a bit more to find relief. Sometimes doing a pose “wrong” is right!

Do you have spinal stenosis? If so, try movement rather than extended rest. Find a PT who can help you figure out positions that alleviate your symptoms but still keep you going. You may need to switch from one exercise, such as walking, and replace it with something else, like a recumbent bike, or row machine. Or maybe you try yoga, knowing that not all of the cues given are going to feel good to you. You may need help figuring out your modifications. That’s where we come in. Give us a call, keep moving and avoid surgery.

Reference
Zaina, F., Tomkins-Lane, C., Carragee, E., & Negrini, S. (2016). Surgical versus non-surgical treatment for lumbar spinal stenosis. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews, 2016(1), CD010264. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD010264.pub2