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It’s really hard to feel bold and audacious when you are feeling overwhelmed, over-burdened, under-supported, and unsafe. This post is to help you understand how you are held back from AUDACITY, and what you can do to remedy that.
4 Energetic Causes of Low Back Pain
1 - 😬 Lack of Support
Are you the backbone of your community?
The matriarch?
The patriarch?
Are you the support system for many people?
While you are holding up and supporting everyone else, who supports you?
If everyone leans on you, who do you lean on?
If you are the major support system (backbone) for those you love and work with, your back might be buckling under the pressure of holding too much weight. Even though that burden may not be physical, bearing the weight of the world, managing the responsibility of making sure everyone around you has all their needs met can be too much for your energy to handle.
2 - 😰 Fear & Anxiety (feeling unsafe)
Are you constantly worried, anxious, afraid that something might happen, or happen again, or might go terribly wrong?
Are you forever putting up safeguards to protect against chaos, disorder, dysfunction, or disaster?
If you are living in fear of what might be, or what could happen, or a repeat of what has happened in the past, you are likely living metaphorically as if the rug could always be pulled out from underneath you. This is a sign of feeling unsafe, constantly walking on unsteady ground. As a result, your legs and feet are always a bit on the shaky side, and your low back has to compensate for the shaky roots.
3 - 💰Money Worries
Are you living in scarcity?
Paycheck to paycheck?
Always worried that you won’t have enough?
Often saying “I cannot afford…”?
In today’s modern society, all of our basic needs in life require MONEY. If you don’t have money, you can’t get your needs met. Money is quite literally the backbone of our society. Everything depends on money, just as everything in your body depends on your backbone for structure and support.
If you feel like you cannot get your needs met monetarily, you low back will often seize up from feeling like it doesn’t have what it needs to support you.
4 - 😒 Over-Independence
Do you have a “do-it-myself” mentality?
Do you not trust others to do for you (because they never really show up)?
Do you take care of yourself (and everyone else) because no one takes care of you?
If you’re living a life of always taking care of yourself and never really trusting or depending on anyone else, your low-back could be exhausted from the over-work of it all.
It is human nature to live in community, to be inter-dependent on each other. But if you are part of a community and you do not trust others to support you, and you are constantly in service to the community, that amount of work is exhausting to your system. Your back is not only buckling from the weight (see #1 above) but it is also fatiguing from never getting a break.
Your spine is the BACKBONE of your body, and your lower back is the ROOT of your spine. If you think about this symbolically, the BACKBONE of anything is the base support system. Thus, base support of your body is your low back.
If your life does not provide the base supports you need for your BACKBONE to support you, AND you are constantly living in fear of more needs not being met, your low back will revolt.
While the obvious solution is to change your lifestyle so that you have more support in your world, this is not an easy feat to accomplish.
Relinquishing responsibilities is often not an option (especially as a parent).
Soothing lifelong fears and anxieties is an impossible task when life is always bringing you new unexpected uncertainties to manage.
Making more money and/or finding better ways to manage your money is a long-game.
Changing your relationship dynamics so that you can fully trust and have faith in people to support you is often completely out of your control because it requires other people to change.
The good news is that there are a couple of very simple MINDFUL exercises you can do that will energetically nudge you onto the path of making these bigger changes in your life.
At the same time, these mindful exercises provide instantaneous short-term relief for low back pain and the emotions that come with not feeling safe or supported in life.
How To MINDFULLY Release and Prevent Low Back Tension
1 - 😬 Lack of Support
It is quite possible (and quite likely) that there are muscles in your body that you aren’t using right, which means other muscles are picking up slack for them. (sound familiar?) If you re-arrange the muscular responsibilities in your lower body, and start using muscles that aren’t doing their jobs, your low back will release, and your energy will start recognizing ways in your life that you can shift responsibilities to places that are more appropriate.
2 - 😰 Fear & Anxiety (feeling unsafe)
When certain muscles aren’t doing their jobs and others have to compensate, those muscles start to quiver (like fear and anxiety) and make you feel unsafe and ungrounded. If you start using ALL your lower body muscles the way they were supposed to be used, your body won’t quiver in fear and anxiety or exhaustion anymore, and neither will your moods.
3 - 💰Money Worries
Unfortunately, because money is so important in society, it ends up being what is blamed for all our biggest problems in life. All the “manifestation gurus” out there will tell you that money isn’t the enemy, it’s your relationship to it. One great way to change your relationship with money is to change your relationship with fear and anxiety is to get more stable and secure in your body, particularly your lower body.
4 - 😒 Over-Independence
The muscles of your low back are not meant to be the main support system for your whole body. They are too small! In fact, there is a different pair of muscles that you can activate that will take a huge weight off your low back muscles. And this muscle pair, sadly, tends to be lazy. They behave like the guy in the room who won’t lift a finger because he *knows* everyone else will do it for him if he waits long enough.
This is one key action that you can engage that will address all four of the issues mentioned above.
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MULA - Activate Your Adductors
In my experience of watching thousands of yoga bodies over two decades, I have come to realize that the adductor muscles tend to be lazy-bastards! They don’t like to do their jobs, and they wait for and expect all the other muscle groups to do their work for them.
But when they do step up and do their jobs, EVERYTHING changes.
The Adductors are the inner thigh muscles that connect from your knee to your groin. The plug your big thigh bone (femur) into your hip socket…providing ultimate support. See image below ⬇️
And, the biggest meat of these muscles live right around the center of the Root Chakra. When you engage these muscles properly, they hug your MULADHARA (root chakra) which is an intersection of nerves at the base of your spine that manages and governs all your feelings and actions around support, stability, safety, and basic needs.
This little exercise is the easiest way to balance and align and calibrate your root chakra.
If you do this simple MULA exercise many times a day, you will
teach your adductor muscles to stop being lazy
take the excess burden off the other smaller muscles that are overworked doing their own jobs
train your brain and nervous system to relax because you are adequately supported, and you know how to find the right support.
Resources
I have found the following articles by other Substack writers to be very useful.
I hope you check them out.
This article shows pictures of a 70+ year old woman practicing very doable poses for the low back. A great complement to what I offer here.
Are You Okay - by Dr. Lucy McBride
This article, although mainly about a “pain in the neck” references the low back. I love her medical perspective to how our body talks to us about the stress in our lives.
Comment
Let me know how this works for you.
Take note of how you feel in your body and mood right now.
Watch the video above and follow the exercise.
Leave a note in the comments below about how your feeling in your body and mood changed as a result of the MOZI MULA exercise. (I love hearing from you)