A Massage Therapist's Guide to Treating Lower Back Pain

I would like to show you some of the most common lower back pain presentations that you will see in your clinic to get the ball rolling.

This will undoubtedly be the most common lower back pain clients that you will see in the clinic. Here I start you on the journey of what you will see when this client arrives in regards to symptoms and when their pain is generally worse or better and what you should do for them.

Let's just touch on sciatica and how it presents for the vast majority of clients. Later in the course I will go into much more detail on treating sciatica and the two most common causes.

Spinal stenosis is a narrowing of the spinal canal and is generally seen in your older clients. Here I just introduce you to this condition and later we look at it in more depth on how to treat it.

As always, its always a good idea to make sure that there are no red flags to treatments. If in doubt, get them to see the Doctor first.

Throughout the course, we will be focused on the presentation rather than any labels. In other words, we will be focused on what movements and postures make the person's lower back pain better or worse to structure our treatments protocols.

This lecture is so important for you to understand! When you understand how lower back pain continues because of pain triggers and keeping it painful and sensitized, you then understand the importance of removing the painful triggers.

Now let's take a look at the client questionnaire and what is important to ask them.

Here is a seated test to help your diagnosis even more and then what you should do about it based on your findings.

Here is a seated test to help your diagnosis even more and then what you should do about it based on your findings.

This is the first of your pain relieving techniques that I have used to help thousands of lower back pain and sciatica clients throughout the world.

Here is an alternative exercise for pain relief that can be done when the client can not lie down to do it.

So, what do you do if the previous exercise made the lower back pain and sciatica clients worse? This is what.

You may come across lower back pain and sciatica clients that are worse after they start walking. Let's take a look at this scenario.

As you saw from the painful triggers and sensitivity lecture, that keeps your lower back pain and sciatica clients  in pain again and again, its important that we teach them what TO DO and what NOT to do to have any chance of success.

Here is another incredibly important technique to help your lower back pain and sciatica clients that needs to be formed into a habit to help their pain.

Let's look at correct and incorrect sitting postures.

Standing when not done correctly, leaves the lower back pain muscles switched on creating excessive compression and pain.

Here I show you how to find the Goldilocks zone to get the lower back into a pain free position

You must get your clients to not be 'ker-plunkers'.

You absolutely need to get your clients to stop flexing at the lumbar spine and start hip hinging to settle down their lower backs

Cleaning teeth, doing dishes, standing at benches working are all places where your clients can heal or harm their lower backs.

Here is another techniques to save there lower backs as well.

Lower back pain and sciatica clients can have problems putting on their shoes and socks especially in the morning when they are stiff. Here is how to counteract this.

Here is how to use spine saving techniques for cleaning.

This is a great technique to relieve pain and stiffness by decompressing the spine.

You MUST emphasize the importance of therapeutic walking for your lower back pain and sciatica clients. It is one of the most valuable pain relieving techniques in your therapeutic toolbox.

Dr Stuart Mcgill, professor emeritus at University of Waterloo for 30 years, clinician and researcher is THE man to follow about fixing  back pain. He works with athletes and general population, covering the principles to cure back problems and sciatica. He’s published over 240 papers, and written several books about back pain.

These are his evidence based exercises commonly known as 'the big 3' which strengthen and stabilize the lower back muscles.

The cat-camel is to mobilize the spine gently before we start the strengthening exercises.

We now do the modified curl-up to strengthen the abdominal muscles

The side bridge is now performed to strengthen the lateral muscles such as the quadratus lumborum muscles

The bird dog is now performed to strengthen the posterior muscles to finish the big 3

Make sure that your clients are not doing these exercises at all.

Now that you have all of this information, I am going to go through some cases to show to you just how much you now know when it comes to treating clients successfully.

Here is a typical case that you will see in your clinic often.

So what do you do when someone has pain on extension ? This is what.

Now let's take a look at treating sciatica clients

Another excellent pain relieving technique for your sciatica clients if needed is to floss the sciatic nerve

Piriformis syndrome is so commonly misdiagnosed. It is actually extremely rare to have piriformis syndrome. Most commonly it's nerve radiated symptoms and thus stretching the buttucks and hips is the OPPOSITE of what should be given.

How to deal with the client the gets back pain after walking for a while.

You may see clients from time to time with spinal stenosis especially if you see lots of elderly clients.

These are the videos from your client booklet that I have provided you with so that you can send to your clients to educate them on what to do between your treatment sessions.

This is the collection of all of the following videos that I have for you all strung together. If your client wants to watch it all instead of watching each video separately they can do that in the booklet.

Getting your clients to understand the importance of removing the causes so that they can desensitize their painful backs and finally allow them to settle down is key.

Here is the Sitting, standing and walking video

Here I show how to do the abdominal bracing in a video for your clients

Here I show how to do the pain relieving extension exercise in a video for your clients

Here I show how to do the bending and lifting techniques in a video for your clients

Here I explain how to do the therapeutic walking  correctly in a video for your clients

This is the video where I show how to do the cat-camel exercise correctly

This is the video where I show how to do the curl-up exercise correctly

This is the video where I show how to do the side bridge exercise correctly

This is the video where I show how to do the bird dog exercise correctly

Here I have many different treatments for lower back pain from my other courses

This is something that I was guilty of in my early days as a massage therapists. Don't do what I originally did and you will see happier, healthier clients and grow your business quickly.

If you are a massage therapist and you are not doing this, there is a very good chance that YOU will be the one with the shoulder and back pain.

OK! Now I am going to show you my deep tissue massage routine and explain to you the most important aspects.

Let's continue with the deep tissue massage techniques for the back

And here we finish the back and shoulders

An introduction to treating lower back pain with acupressure for pain relief

So before we get started let's take a look at what we know about how acupressure works from a Western medical perspective and how we are actually affecting the body.

Using your thumbs correctly is vital.

It is very important to apply the correct pressure so here i explain what you need to be aware of. Too little pressure and your treatments will have little effect and too much pressure will also be problematic. You must also be aware of the person's age, fragility and physical condition.

How to get the pressure correct

These two points are very powerful for pain relief that you can teach your clients if you want to

OK, now it's time to get down to doing the acupressure for lower back pain and sciatica.

Gua Sha is also known as spooning or coining because they use traditionally Chinese porcelain soup spoons or even coins to do Gua Sha. There are other things that are in the kitchen that you can use as well. Here I go through what you can use if you do not already have a Gua Sha tool.

Ok, let's do some practice. As you will soon see, it is easy to do and feels fabulous!

This is great for lower back pain. Try to work up as high as you can and work the areas that are more sensitive more than the other areas. If you find ashi points then concentrate more on this areas as well.

An introduction to clinical cupping therapy

Ok, as promised, I am going to teach you the basics of doing cupping in under 2 minutes.

Here is the reason that I do not like making big red or purple spots when doing cupping. However, if you have no problems with it then you can leave the static cups on for longer but I see no additional therapeutic benefits by doing this.

So how exactly does cupping work and what can it treat? Let's find out.

I really like these cups as well and they are great to regulate the pressure accurately. You can also put a lot more pressure into the cups with these too. However , I still prefer the silicone cups over these. It is just a personal thing I guess..

I will show you how to do cupping on my sons' back and neck to give you a bit of an idea.

Here we look at treating the lower back with cupping.

How to set up for doing shiatsu for the back

I cannot stress this enough. Weight transference, body mechanics and correct techniques are essential

It is time to learn how to safely apply more and less pressure so that you are in complete control and do not hurt yourself or your client/partner

Here I show you the different ways that I use my palms

This is a lovely way to start the massage or just use throughout the massage somewhere during your sequence. It is different and also very powerful in that it mobilizes the joints and also relaxes the client.

We should always use our thumbs sparingly. They are small joints and often get injured because of overuse from poor techniques and poor instruction.

The back is the best place to start the massage sequence. It does not feel vulnerable like the front of the body can and also people love getting their backs massaged as it is the storehouse for so much tension.

Now that we have loosened up the back we work our way onto the buttocks and legs

How does kinesiology taping actually work?

So, with all of the hype about kinesiology tape these days, where in fact did it actually originate?

There are a few things that you are going to need to do kinesis taping. They are simple but there are a couple of things to be aware of.

So let's go through the basics of Kinesio tape.

Here I show you the steps to applying the kinesio tape

You want to take the tape off carefully and correctly. Let's not just 'grip it and rip it'.

This is how you do your own lower back taping. It takes a bit of practice but it is possible to do

Ok, and now I show you just how easy it is to tape someone else

Congratulations! You have finished the course!

Bonuses!