Lower back pain often comes from a tight piriformis muscle at the SI joint. Learn to release it with a ball against a wall, then stretch it pigeon-style for 20 to 30 seconds. Breathe into the belly and adjust pressure so it feels tender, not painful.
I've got another video about lower back pain, and we're going to talk about something you can do to help relieve that. One of the areas that we often get pain is called your SI joint. It's where your sacrum and your iliac crest meet. Now, your iliac crest is kind of the hip bone. The sacrum is kind of the tailbone, just to kind of simplify it for you. And the muscle that attaches from the upper leg bone across to that sacrum It's called your piriformis. Now you have 2 piriformis muscles, one on each side. They attach to that sacrum, so if one gets tighter, the other one gets stretched, and then you end up with this off-kilter sacrum, and then you end up getting lower back pain. Generally, you will feel pain for this not on the spine, but slightly to one side or the other. That is your SI joint. So what we want to do is start to loosen up that piriformis muscle. So 2 things we're going to do. One, we're going to use our lacrosse ball or a tennis ball. You can use a racquetball. The harder the ball, the more intense this is going to be, and we'll talk more about that in just a second. But we're going to use this ball and we're going to use the wall. You're going to take this ball and just place it right where that piriformis muscle is. So if you're having trouble finding it, start with the top of the hip bone or the leg bone in the hip and the bottom of your sacrum and just draw a line straight across, put that ball right there, and then lean into the wall. Now, we don't want this to be incredibly painful or excruciating. This should feel tender. You want to find the tender spot. You'll move around until you do, just like so. And then once you find it, just kind of sit there for about 30 seconds. Work on breathing into the belly, trying to relax. If it's so intense that you're tensing up, then you need to back off a little. Either use a softer ball or bring your feet closer to the wall and put less pressure into the ball. After about 30 seconds, you should notice a difference. Now, which side to do, you don't know. You'll have to try one side. Then try the other. One side will most likely feel more intense if you're experiencing that back pain. Spend a little more time on the side that's a little bit more tender. After you do that, we're going to go into a stretch. Now, you can do this on the floor. If on the floor is too advanced for you, you can use your bed or a bench or something that's a little bit higher. But all you want to do now is take that foot across. So I'm going to use this on the floor. This is called a pigeon stretch in yoga. You're going to come down and put this leg across this way. You're going to extend the other leg back. Start with your hands here, and then as you feel that stretch, just kind of let your, your hips sink down towards the floor. You can advance this by going down to the elbows and then eventually all the way down that way. Once you get into that stretch, again, hold for about 20 to 30 seconds, then stand up, move around a little bit. You can even revisit that lower back roll that we did in the previous video if you want to.
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