There is a correlation between tight hamstrings and back and neck pain. Similar to other muscle groups in the body, the hamstrings don’t function independently. Firstly, they are connected via tendons to bones. This means they can cause skeletal misalignment when tight. Equally important, they are enveloped by fascia, connective tissue that runs along the whole back of the body. The particular fascia of the back body is called the superficial back line or superficial dorsal line and runs from underneath the feet to the top of the skull. In this blog, I describe what causes the hamstrings to be tight and how hamstring flexibility can impact back and neck health. The hamstring stretches that are suggested below are generally safe to do when you have back pain. They do not include bending forward to reach your toes!

If you sometimes find yourself overwhelmed and frazzled, this blog is for you. Physical pain or stress make it hard to find calm and joy, but even social media and the bombardment of negative news can create a constant underlying anxiety. It takes away our ability to have fun, to laugh unreservedly, and to marvel at the beauty of simple things. In this Easter weekend blog, I suggest some simple ways of finding calm and joy by focusing on the here and now. They are simple but powerful ways to revitalise and nourish yourself.

In these changeable and uncertain times, yoga can help us feel more balanced and at ease. This blog with uplifting yoga that can also ease lower back tightness, is meant to help you move, breathe and feel good. Focusing on the movements and the breath helps us connect with what is here right now. It enables us to forget repetitive thoughts and worries for a while and connect with something enjoyable. The sequence is also designed to soothe lower back tightness.

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Whether you are a mother, grandparent, daughter or aunt, today’s yoga is for anyone in need of a nourishing and uplifting yoga session. It’s nourishing because caregivers give so much of their time to others that self-care is often put on the back burner. This session is also meant to be uplifting. After all, apart from tremendous love and joy, motherhood or a caring role can bring exhaustion, fears, guilt, and having to let go. Therefore, this self-care yoga routine centres on the heart area: stretching chest muscles, strengthening and lengthening the upper back, it mobilises and engages an area that can often be held quite tightly. I’ll start with some reflections on motherhood and mothers, and then we’ll move and breathe deeply.

This blog is for you if you were diagnosed with hip osteoarthritis. It is also for you if you would simply like to keep your hip joints healthy. Although osteoarthritis cannot be reversed, yoga for hip osteoarthritis can ease the pain by reducing stiffness and strengthening the muscles that stabilise and support the hips. Practising daily can help you manage the pain and slow down the progression of hip osteoarthritis. As opposed to other practices, yoga includes breathing and relaxation, which help with the stress that having arthritis can cause.

Back, neck or hip pain can radically improve when you sleep in the right position. After all, this is a position we hold for several hours. No wonder we wake up in pain during the night, or stiff in the morning. With my students, I have found that changing the sleep position is part of a better back care regime, alongside movement, relaxation and breathing practices. This blog gives a few suggestions about what to do for your back before going to bed. It then goes on to explain which have been found the best sleeping positions for people with back, neck or hip pain.

In my blogs about yoga for back pain, the emphasis is often on relaxation, releasing tightness and relaxing the body and mind. However, even with back pain we need a bit more ‘oomph’ sometimes. This need can be even more acute in January. We’ve had a seemingly interminable, grey January so far, with more than one ‘blue Monday’. The cure for me is to move in nature daily, whatever the weather, and to practise more stimulating yoga poses. These include standing poses, back bends and dynamic flow sequences. Unfortunately, quite a few of them could make your back pain worse. Try this feel-good yoga sequence if you want to feel energised in a way that is still gentle and caring enough for your back.

A herniated disc in the lumbar spine can take a long time to heal. Even when the often-accompanying sciatic pain has gone after a few months, the healing process can last about a year. During this time, it’s crucial to aid the recovery by avoiding certain positions and practising the right ones. This blog about yoga therapy for a herniated disc discusses which movements are important to avoid. It also describes one relaxation position that may relieve the pain. I have re-written this blog in memory of my mentor Robin Monro, a pioneer in the field of yoga therapy in the UK. He dedicated decades to researching yoga therapy for lower back pain. It is thanks to him that yoga therapists know the particular approach that a herniated disc requires.

There was a time when I regularly woke up in the morning with neck pain. Once, on holiday, the pain was so bad I could barely lift my head off the pillow. I thought my acute neck pain was due to wrong pillows: too low, too high, going down during the night. I would do gentle neck stretches during the day and wait for it to pass. One time, during the first lockdown, I started to have nerve pain going down one arm and into my thumb. Since then I have researched neck pain more seriously. I am happy to say that even though I have to be careful, I don’t wake up with neck pain any more, not even on holiday. The nerve tingling and numbness in my arm and thumb have disappeared. In this blog I am sharing my insights and hope it will help you to prevent, manage and relieve acute or chronic neck pain.

Did you know that the ability to balance can be a reflection of how well your brain functions? On the Radio 4 programme ‘Just One Thing’ the late Michael Mosley mentions a study that connects the ability to stand on one leg in your 50s with your eyes closed and being alive 13 years later. This is because balancing requires the brain to integrate the different physiological systems that are needed to balance. If the brain is struggling to coordinate these different messages, it could point at a more general decline in brain function. Luckily, it’s never too late to improve one’s balance, and doing that will have a positive effect on the brain. Mosley’s report suggests that it may even slow your chance of developing dementia. This blog takes you through different stages of learning to balance, gradually increasing the level of difficulty. If you would like to learn how to improve your balance and boost your brain health, this step-by-step guide can help you.