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I’m pretty sure I am not the only human out there that suffers from back pain. I wake every morning extremely stiff and sore. Some mornings just bending to put a sock on my foot is painful. It was 22 years ago now that I injured my back while working. It turned out I herniated a disk in my lower back. There were days I couldn’t walk never mind even stand. On those days the only relief I got, and it wasn’t much, was to be on my back hugging my knees. I went through months of physical therapy to strengthen my core because your abdominal muscles support your back so core strength was a key component to reaching the goal of being pain free. The neurologist I was seeing told me quite matter of fact that at some point I will need surgery to relieve the pain. I am horrified at the prospect of having surgery on my back so I did everything I could to give myself a pain free life. Of course over time I slacked on the exercising and my core was less than strong.

Four years later pregnant with a large little boy who is now 18 all the pain I endured the first day I injured my back returned. I had absolutely no idea birthing this boy would be so traumatic. I had already had a couple of babies and mind you I had no medication by choice and everything went fine. This time was going to test my limits. The pain was close to unbearable. The burning in my back, the feeling of someone plunging a hot fire poker into my spine was a pain much greater than relieving my body of the almost 10 lb child that had taken nine full months and one week of residency within it. The only and very little relief I got was from my sister applying counter pressure on my lower lumbar with all the strength she could. You see, when I child is being born they turn into the correct position in exactly the location of my injury. I thought for sure this was going to kill me.

Eventually the way I was able to get relief from the pain which ran the spectrum of soreness to completely debilitating was with yoga. Never in a million years did I think deep muscle stretching could possibly relieve the pain my body felt each and every day but with a regular gentle routine of stretching the muscles protecting the damaged area around my spine while strengthening my core I got the relief I was looking for. Over time of course I have gotten off track and had to get back into a routine but it seems I always come back to the yoga to find the relief I need.

Homestead life puts a lot of strain on our bodies and we have to take precautions to not injure ourselves. There is a lot of lifting, lugging, squatting, stretching, pushing, pulling and hauling that goes on when you are working on a homestead. Much more than you would guess if you have never done the work. Taking time to take care of yourself is important and yoga is a great, gentle way to strengthen your core, to stretch and loosen sore overworked muscles and to meditate and ground yourself mentally. Taking just 10 minutes each morning to yourself for self care is not a lot of time. It only takes 10 minutes. At least my routine does. I used to just stretch with the positions I remembered that worked for me but recently I found a guided 10 minute morning yoga routine on YouTube. YouTube is your friend people, get acquainted with her/him. This could become your new best friend. There is so much free informative content on there for you, FOR FREE. Why not use it to your advantage? Foolish to not in my opinion. Below is the link to the morning routine I now follow. I hope you take the time to check it out and maybe try it for yourself.

Namaste’

xo