Spring has sprung and we are called outside into the garden. As wonderful and nourishing as it is to care for our gardens, gardening is one of the primary causes of lower back pain. But it doesn’t have to be that way. My yoga students often come into class on Monday mornings asking for help with their back and hip pain after working all weekend in their garden. Certainly their discomfort could be avoided with a short yoga practice before and purhapse after the garden. Patanjali, who outlined the historical eight fold path of yoga in a book of Sutras, has a yoga sutra that addresses just this point. Heyam Dukham Anagatam, (say that three times fast!) which means – the pain that is yet to come can ( and deserves to) be avoided.

How to reduce lower back pain before you garden.

In the first section of my book, Healing Our Backs with Yoga, an essential guide to back pain relief, you will find my “Basic Low Back Series” to be a very helpful 20 minute routine that addresses every aspect of the lower back to relieve pain and improve function. You could do this routine a few times a week to keep yourself in shape for any weekend activities. You will even find a “12 Minute Short Form” in my book to get you off to a good start on your gardening day.

Tips to Keeping Your Lower Back Safe in the Garden

After a bit of research with the American Council on Exercise and Spinalhealth.com, offering 11 ways to keep gardening with back pain. I found some very good tips for you to keep in mind while you garden. Warm up before you garden with some yoga or a 10 minuet walk, refer to SpinalHealth.com for some good lifting techniques, then consider these points;
1. Practice good lifting posture by bending your knees and lifting with a vertical spine, using your legs not your back as much as possible.
2. Do not lift more weight then your body can handle. Example; a 50 pound bag of soil can be divided into smaller buckets for ease of transport.
3. Use tools that allow you to stand more upright.
4. When raking, use your legs as much as possible and switch dominant sides often.
5. Spend some time sitting on a bucket rather than stooping forward, and/or spend time kneeling with kneepads. ( Ie; Hero’s Pose)
6. Don’t twist and reach, actually get up and walk over to what you need even if it’s only a few steps. Most spinal injuries happen when lifting and twisting.
7. Change positions often and take breaks to do a few yoga poses!

4 Yoga Poses to Relieve Lower Back Pain in the Garden

It is always helpful to incorporate yoga poses in amongst our daily activities. The practice of yoga is after all a choice of lifestyle and awareness, for the expression of a life well lived. Here are the four main poses I recommend for you when you are in your garden.

Serola Sacral Belt

Attention… Special Circumstances 
a. If you are a person with an unstable or asymmetric pelvis, I recommend you purchase a Serola Sacral Belt on Amazon and wear it while you’re gardening. This will help support your hips and low back making up for weakness in the muscles or ligaments of your pelvis.

b. If you have consistent low back pain or an old injury that often gives you trouble, I recommend you wear some kind of back support to help stabilize the muscles, support the space between the discs, and prevent you from folding too deeply in the lower back thus pinching nerves.

Pose 1. Tadasana, Mountain Pose, raising your arms overhead. Stand up straight and tall, dig your heels into the earth, pull your tailbone down and lift the bottom of your belly. As you inhale, raise your arms overhead and extend your elbows as if to welcome the sky into your body. Repeat with the arms lifting up and down for several breaths. Benefits: releases tension in the shoulders, spine and upper back.

Pose 2. Ardha Chandrasana, Half-moon or Side Stretch. From Mountain pose with your arms overhead, grab your opposite wrist or elbow. Lift your spine up out of your pelvis, and as you exhale tip to the side. Do your best to maintain the length on both sides of your spine. Repeat three or four times tilting to each side. Benefits: releases tension in the side body and decompresses the lower back.

Pose 3. Virabhadrasana 1, Warrior pose or Standing Lunge. Take a short stride forward with your right leg. Anchor your left heel into the earth, extending that knee completely, then lift the bottom of your belly and draw your tail down.  As you exhale turn your hips to face forward. Inhale to lift your arms overhead. Reach down into the rear heel and raise your back ribs and spine out of the pelvis using the lift of your arms. The front foot can be up on a step of some sort or flat on the ground. Benefits: extends the spine fully while also releasing the hip flexors on the front body that get very tight when we sit or squat.

Pose 4. Prasarita Padotanasana, Wide-leg Forward Fold in the flat back position. As we tend to over use our hamstrings and round our lower back to the point of back pain when we garden, this pose will help relieve and balance both of those actions. Stepping the legs wide apart makes hinging from the hip joint more accessible so we can maintain the spine in a flat back position. If your hands do not reach the ground place them on the side of the wheel barrel or a fence railing so you can fully flatten and extend your back. Benefits: relieves fatigue by lengthening the hamstring muscles and toning the muscles of the lower spine.

Along with the four yoga poses mentioned above you might also find my 3 Best Yoga Poses to Reduce the Negative Effects of Sitting a great addition.

Blessings to Our Time in the Garden!      Yours in Yoga, Lillah

Who am I? Lillah Schwartz is an advanced yoga practitioner with 38 years experience, a teacher trainer, mentor, Yoga Therapist and author. Lillah’s book, Healing Our Backs with Yoga offers the yoga practitioner a valuable resource of 22 different pose sequences that address different areas of the body to relieve pain and improve function. You can also enjoy courses on my Resources page for lower back pain relief, pelvic asymmetry. Consider joining my Yoga Wisdom Membership for many other classes including yoga for better posture and bone density.

Looking to make your back feel better now? Lillah is available for Private Lessons, in person as well as online thru zoom.us.  Consider subscribing to my e-list. You will find a new addition to my Free Resource Library of two additional yoga sequences to relieve lower back pain one for before and one for after the garden.