Heart of Motion

Rethinking What You Know About Back Pain

• Susannah Steers • Season 2 • Episode 18

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Back pain touches almost everyone at some point, arriving either as a sudden jolt or a slow-burning ache that transforms how we move through our days. Whatever your experience, know this: you're far from alone. Nearly 80% of people will face back pain in their lifetime, with 1 in 13 adults currently experiencing limitations in their daily activities because of it.

This episode dives deep into the fascinating science behind back pain, challenging common misconceptions that might be holding you back from recovery. Did you know that pain doesn't always signal damage? Or that gentle, consistent movement often outperforms rest, medication, and many passive treatments? We explore how your nervous system, beliefs, and movement patterns all play crucial roles in your experience of pain and your path to feeling better.

The conversation moves beyond simplistic solutions like "strengthen your core" to examine how motor control—the way your nervous system coordinates your movements—influences back pain. When these patterns get disrupted, some muscles work too hard while others remain underactive, creating a cascade of compensations that can prolong discomfort.

Back pain isn't just a mechanical issue but a blend of biological, psychological, and social factors. This holistic perspective offers more entry points for healing than a purely physical approach.

Whether you're currently managing back pain or simply want to understand how to move well for the long term, you'll discover practical strategies for reclaiming your strength and mobility. Remember, you have more power over your recovery than you might think—and with patience, consistency, and the right approach to movement, you can find your way back to a life of greater freedom and joy in motion.

 *This podcast episode includes information based on the latest research and international guidelines on back pain management, but always consult a qualified health professional for advice suited to your unique situation. 

Heart of Motion Podcast, Season 1, Episode 8: Resilience, Healing and Connection through Somatics with Amy Kiara Ruth

Lorimer Mosely TED Talk: Why Things Hurt (Explain Pain) 

I'd LOVE to hear from you! Send me a text!

Heart of Motion Podcast host Susannah Steers is a Pilates & Integrated Movement Specialist and owner of Moving Spirit Pilates in North Vancouver, BC. She is passionate about movement, about connections and about life.

Through movement teaching, speaking, and facilitating workshops, she supports people in creating movement practices that promote fitness from the inside out. She loves building community, and participating in multi-disciplinary collaborations.

Along with her friend and colleague Gillian McCormick, Susannah also co-hosts The Small Conversations for a Better World podcast – an interview based podcast dedicated to promoting the kind of conversations about health that can spark positive change in individuals, families, communities and across the globe.

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Susannah Steers:

Welcome to the Heart of Motion podcast. I'm Susanna Steers and I'll be your host as we explore the heart, soul and science of movement as a pathway to more active, vibrant and connected living. Nothing happens until something moves, so let's get started.

Susannah Steers:

Hello and welcome. Today I want to dive into a topic that touches so many of us, literally to our core, and that's back pain, how it affects our lives, the truths and myths that swirl around it and, most importantly, how intelligent movement can help us return to a life we love.

Susannah Steers:

Maybe back pain landed in your life like a thunderbolt, a sudden jolt that stopped you dead in your tracks, or maybe it's a slow, burning ache, that unwelcome shadow you carry from the moment you get out of bed to the minute you crawl back in. However it shows up, back pain is deeply personal and it can be truly life-altering. Pain can be isolating, but remember you're not alone.

Susannah Steers:

Today I want to explore with you what the latest research and years of teaching movement have taught me about moving through back pain and reclaiming your strength and vitality. Like most good things, that last, it's not a quick fix, in my mind, learning to move in a way that not only improves your situation, but likely also creates more capacity in ways you didn't expect is a valuable way to spend your time.

Susannah Steers:

Before I go any further, though, I want to remind you that I'm not a medical professional. Your first conversations about back pain will be with your physician, but if you are cleared for exercise, let's explore some choices you can make that may lead to more freedom in your movement and perhaps a change in your experience of pain. I simply want to share my thoughts and my experience on this, after more than 30 years as a Pilates and integrated movement specialist, teaching people experiencing all kinds of different challenges to their movement. Honestly, it's going to be less about what you're doing and more about how you're doing it, and if you're up for that conversation, let's go.

Susannah Steers:

I want to talk about the big picture for a moment Back pain, by the numbers, if you

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will

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.

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Back pain is astoundingly common. Did you know that nearly 80% of people will experience it at some point in their lives? Right now, almost 1 in 13 adults is living with back pain that limits their daily activity. Right now, almost 1 in 13 adults is living with back pain that limits their daily activity. That means that the weekly golf game is getting postponed. Picking up the kids and emptying the dishwasher might be tough, and maybe you can't sit at your desk long enough to get any work done at all. Sitting, standing, driving, lying down maybe even the quality of your sleep is affected. Back pain is the leading cause of disability worldwide and in Canada it's among the top reasons people under 60 see a doctor, and the associated costs and lost productivity are staggering.

Susannah Steers:

It's not just your physical life that suffers either. Enduring pain takes a lot out of you. Your emotions might be less stable and you might find yourself in kind of a brain fog because you can't think as well or as quickly as you'd like. Pain can isolate you from others, affecting relationships and families and even how you engage with your most important communities. When I said that back pain can be life-altering, I wasn't kidding. Okay, so we know it's prevalent in the population and we know it can really mess up our plans in life.

Susannah Steers:

What actually causes back pain? Let's get specific. Back pain isn't just one thing and every case will not be handled in the same way. Recent research highlights many, many different, broad causes of back pain. As you might expect, something like a traumatic event, like a bad fall or a car accident, can injure the spine in ways that cause severe injury and pain. Degenerative changes over time can alter the shape of the bones and the cartilage and the ligaments and shift support structures in a non-optimal way, placing load in places it might not be equipped to handle it well. Inflammation, infections and even metabolic issues can be causes of back pain too. Beyond that, there are postural issues, referred pain patterns, congenital issues and even pain with psychological origins. In my experience, back pain is not easily placed into tidy boxes that we can check off and find ourselves free of it, understanding that there are likely many different factors at play and that diagnosis of the problem and the treatment plan and, when we're talking about exercise, the movement plan must be highly individualized. Whatever the source of the pain, it's always a good idea to check with your healthcare provider before starting a new movement exercise plan, especially if you have warning signs like unexplained weight loss fever or changes in bladder or bowel function. These things in particular should prompt you to see your doctor as soon as possible. So those are not things you brush off, but here's a ray of hope.

Susannah Steers:

The most common experience of back pain is typically that chronic, non-specific low back pain. Basically, that means pain lasting over 12 weeks where your doctor can't really find any clear, definite injury or disease, and that's the kind of back pain we're going to spend some time talking about today. It can be stubborn, but with time, simple movement and with mindful self-care, many people find ways to manage or resolve their back pain problems for the long term, especially when it's intense. Back pain can bring up some really primal survival instincts. Our ever-helpful back brains immediately jump in, because when it hurts to move even a little bit, how will we survive?

Susannah Steers:

Many of us have beliefs about back pain that are not actually supported by science and they are not in our best interests for recovery. So I want to talk about a few of these for recovery. So I want to talk about a few of these. The first one is the idea that back pain always equals back damage. Think about it you feel a twink or a spasm of pain in your back and if it doesn't resolve pretty quickly, you start thinking that something is really wrong. And the more it hurts, the more you think you've damaged yourself and that you're broken somehow. The more you think you've damaged yourself and that you're broken somehow. But here's the thing Pain does not necessarily indicate damage to the structure. That might sound surprising, but it's a truth shared by doctors, scientists and pain experts all over the world. In actual fact, most back pain is not caused by serious injury or ongoing damage. Often it's your body's way of telling you that some part of your structure is irritated and unhappy and that you've moved in an unfamiliar way or you're not supporting some part of your body well, or perhaps that you've just been still for too darn long.

Susannah Steers:

Think of this kind of back pain as your body's early warning system. Your body, your brain and your nervous system just want to keep you safe and they're letting you know that something is a little hinky and you better pay attention when something feels off, even just something like minor strain or tightness, your nervous system can send pain signals even if there's no real tissue harm or immediate threat of damage. The soreness is not a sign of serious injury and typically these episodes resolve relatively quickly. If it resolves well, but keeps happening, there may be movement habits that need closer attention. Stress, tension and bad posture can tense up your muscles too, making your back complain and let you know it's not happy. I see a lot of that in the Pilates studio as people learn to support themselves better, move more and balance their stress. They often experience less of this kind of pain and recover more quickly when they do.

Susannah Steers:

If you're someone who's been in pain for a while, your nerves can become though sensitive. They might react to normal movements with pain signals, even when your back is safe to move again. It's like the nerves have become hypervigilant and they respond to even the slightest trigger. Time and gentle exploration of a pain-free range is usually the best way to build confidence that it's safe to move again. It's like retraining your nervous system and sometimes it's like the volume dial on your entire nervous system gets turned up to 11.

Susannah Steers:

Research shows that people can feel quite a lot of pain even when scans and tests show that their tissues are healed or healthy. In these cases, the work isn't so much on the back itself, where you feel pain, but on finding ways to balance the nervous system so it's not responding at full volume every time you make a move. So you can see that back pain doesn't always equate to back damage. If your first thought when you experience back pain is, oh no, I'm broken, you're probably not. It might feel that way temporarily. You can chalk it up to age and throw a bunch of Robaxacet or other drugs at the problem, and that might provide temporary relief. If you've checked it out with a doc or your physio and you're cleared to do more, get moving. Once you can bring awareness to what might be going on in your own body and learn some strategies for moving forward, you'll be back in the driver's seat in terms of your own healing, and that can feel really good.

Susannah Steers:

Another myth we should bust right now is that rest is best. It's tempting now, isn't it? The last thing we usually want to do when we're hurting is move, but the research shows that staying active aids recovery, bed rest can actually make things worse. You may have heard me say in the past how you move matters. Let's look at how it matters when it comes to chronic, nonspecific low back pain. Activity strengthens muscles that support your spine, especially in terms of your core, your hips and your lower back. Stronger muscles mean more spinal stability and better posture, which can directly reduce pain in future episodes. When you're hurting, though, we're not immediately talking about building power. We want to build robust connections in your systems of support. First, we can add more load once we know all those are working well and in an integrated way.

Susannah Steers:

Moving your body increases your blood flow, bringing oxygen and nutrients to soft tissues, helping them heal and flush away waste products that contribute to stiffness and lingering pain. Movement helps to restore mobility and range of motion. Gentle stretching and movement can help to combat stiffness, improving flexibility in the muscles and the tendons and the ligaments around the spine, creating greater ease in daily activities and less risk of re-injury. When you've been in pain for a while, you might start to be afraid of moving in particular ways, for fear of inducing more pain or concern over creating further harm. Ironically, avoidance can increase pain and disability over time. Instead, controlled, positive movement experiences can help you to retrain your brain and your body to trust your motion, breaking that cycle of fear and avoidance. I get it. It can feel like a giant leap sometimes, so it really helps to be able to work with someone you trust to guide you in the right direction. Exercise really any kind of exercise even walking, increases your body's natural production of endorphins, which are pain-relieving chemicals that lower your perception of discomfort. Movement helps you to recalibrate your nervous system, making pain signals less intense over time, and any kind of moderate aerobic exercise has been shown to decrease inflammation in tissues, providing relief and preventing a more chronic situation.

Susannah Steers:

Now, having said all of that, it may or may not be possible for you to do all the things you like to do. When you're in the thick of a pain episode, it might be hard just to get out of bed. But taking time to explore what is possible for you right now, then moving in whatever capacity you can, will be beneficial for you. It's the start and we just build on that. So you know, maybe it's just simply walking a little bit and some very gentle stretches. Those are usually a safe place to start

Susannah Steers:

. Remember, as you go to progress gradually. You want to build up your intensity and the variety of your movement as your strength and confidence grow. That whole go big or go home thing is not your best friend here.

Susannah Steers:

Try small, frequent doses of movement that feel manageable at first, rather than going too hard too soon. I think this is true all the time, but in the case of back pain or really for recovery of any kind, consistency counts. The benefits of movement accumulate over weeks and months, not just days. Keep moving, but lose that boot camp mentality. You want to feel like you're just gently adding gains If we go too hard too soon and you can't do what you want to do for a few days. You've got a big gap there and your body kind of backs up in its capacity. You want to be able to do a little bit. Really often those big interruptions in our ability to keep moving are just going to slow down the recovery in the long run.

Susannah Steers:

On the scientific front, clinical studies have shown again and again that exercise outperforms rest medication alone and many passive treatments in improving pain function and mental health outcomes for most people managing back pain. Over the years, one of the most striking things I've noticed is that movement consistently gives people a sense of agency over their own healing. They recognize that they have the power to affect positive change in their own situation. They're not just waiting for a therapist to fix something. The movement they choose to do improves the whole outlook for their body, mind and spirit. Now I hope you'll forgive me for getting on my high horse for a minute. You know I do this sometimes.

Susannah Steers:

A lot of the things I've just described around the power of movement for back pain could easily be true for injury prevention and general fitness too. Movement matters for every single system in your body, not just your muscles and your bones. Consistent, mindful movement is a powerful tool on the pathway to long-term health and well-being. The big fancy workouts are what gets the airtime and the attention on the socials. It doesn't need to be flashy or even wicked. Just keep moving in as big a range as you can, as often as you can, and give yourself time for recovery too. And give yourself time for recovery too. Movement heals. It really really does. Okay, let's get back to the topic at hand.

Susannah Steers:

Another common misconception is that you need a super strong core to prevent or fix back pain. Yep, you heard it. That's me, the Pilates teacher, telling you that core strength isn't a panacea. Early on in my career, the belief was that core strength was the solution to just about everything. Ah, but we evolve and learn More. Recently, research has shown that, while core muscle capacity and function does matter, strengthening the deep core in isolation isn't a magic bullet. What matters is how all your muscles and systems work together and how you move as a whole. Integrated function is the key for robust physical health and motion.

Susannah Steers:

Now the integration part is where I get really excited. It's something I've worked hard to learn about and spent years exploring, and I can see this most readily when I look at a person's motor control strategies. Broadly speaking, motor control refers to the way your nervous system coordinates your posture, your movement, your muscle activations to support and protect your spine and other parts of your body during daily activities. In the case of chronic, nonspecific low back pain, these patterns can get disrupted, which means that some muscles may be working too hard and others too little or at the wrong time, and this disorganization can cause overload or stiffness or having a hard time stabilizing your structure, perhaps prolonging your pain and interfering with your full recovery. Now, if you've spent any time with me at the Pilates studio, whether you're in pain or working at full capacity, you'll know that I'm constantly looking at your movement patterns and your motor control strategies as I'm watching you do the exercises in your program. I'm less interested in the specific choreography of an exercise and a whole lot more interested in how you make a movement happen. Everybody has their own unique way of doing things. Why do I care?

Susannah Steers:

When underlying motor control is disrupted somehow, it doesn't matter what exercise protocol you might be following to improve your back pain. Your access to integrated support will be elusive and you may not get the results you want. Integrated support will be elusive and you may not get the results you want. Here's what I mean. People with chronic low back pain often show changes in how their trunk muscles fire, especially those deep stabilizing muscles. You might have experienced this yourself, like you've had the core muscles working and then all of a sudden you've got this back pain and you just cannot connect to your core. Some muscles are getting overworked while others get a little sleepy. This alone can compromise spinal stability and efficient movement. So we got to address that.

Susannah Steers:

In terms of efficient movement, disruption in motor control leads to less coordinated, slower or more limited movements. Poor control makes everyday tasks feel harder and increases the risk of ongoing discomfort and sometimes re-injury. Inefficient movement means it takes more energy to accomplish less. You're working harder for less gains. Usually the larger muscle groups find a way to compensate for the deeper, smaller and sometimes harder to feel stabilizing muscles, and it's important to rebalance those.

Susannah Steers:

Some people adopt overprotective bracing strategies, tensing everything up to find some measure of control. This has been my pattern, especially when I'm stressed what can I hold on to Everything? It would be funny if it didn't mess with my movement so much. Other people have loose, underactive patterns where there's not enough tone or capacity in the tissues to stabilize appropriately for the tasks at hand. These maladaptive strategies can increase tissue strain or limit normal, healthy movement and can get in the way of healing. So understanding your strategies of choice can go a long way to understanding how your body moves around in space, and it might begin to give you a little bit of a window into your pain patterns.

Susannah Steers:

Identifying and improving less efficient motor control strategies is a way to improve the integration of all the tissues and systems of the body into a comprehensive whole, integrated whole body movement Exercises with this in mind need to be done mindfully and frequently in order to make a change. Movements aimed at improving motor control won't likely bring on a hard sweat and a burn. Remember that we're working not just with the muscles here, but with the brain and the nervous system. It might feel more like mental gymnastics at first, but you're building structural integrity that will improve your recovery and prevent re-injury. The good news on this is that this process ends up rewiring pathways that leave you with access to more strength, better patterns with less effort, so your overall fitness may improve too. So is that it, then? We improved some motor control and we're good to go.

Susannah Steers:

Well, maybe and maybe not, science now understands that back pain is not just a mechanical issue like oh, my back is out, but as a blend of factors Biology, yes, but also your mood, your stress, your beliefs, your sleep patterns, even your relationships and your social supports. If we define motor control as a way your nervous system organizes and activates things, if we define motor control as a way your nervous system organizes and activates things, then we have to understand that the state of your nervous system is a powerful force when it comes to recovery. If the sympathetic nervous system, our fight, flight or freeze response, is ramped way up, it can be challenging for deep system support to respond and come online as it should. Naturally, if you're in that heightened state and trying to recruit your deep abdominal muscles, for example, it might feel almost impossible. But breath work, release work and meditation are all great ways to begin to balance the nervous system, bringing on the parasympathetic or the rest and digest, which are more associated with your postural muscles, so that you can do things differently, and in conjunction with a movement practice, these tools can really help to improve both function and pain.

Susannah Steers:

Sometimes it's our beliefs that hold us back. If we hold beliefs about what is or isn't possible and we can't imagine that something different might be available for us, we could limit our ability to improve past a certain point. And this is where I think the power of community comes in. If you've got a great coach or teacher working with you, they'll probably hold a vision for your progress that it's even greater than you might imagine for yourself. They'll gently guide you into places you might not have thought possible, and if you can find an environment where there are people working together in a way that feels really good to you, you may just find that the group elevates your sense of what you can do too. I love the small group classes at Moving Spirit for this very reason. People connect, they support each other, they motivate each other and cheer each other

Susannah Steers:

on as they work, learning about themselves and their bodies and dedicating themselves to consistent practice. I have one client who actually calls moving spirit her oasis of limitless possibilities. I think I'd like to put that on a bumper sticker.

Susannah Steers:

Our sense of safety is something that we don't often talk about. Right, we go into these places and we just assume it's all fine, but if we're in an environment or in a circumstance where we do not feel safe, for whatever reason. We may experience movement, avoidance, tension, stiffness or pain. If you don't feel safe, respect that you are the boss. Find a way to shift the situation. Claim your space. Change your environment. Ask questions. Change what you're doing so that you do feel safe. Have a conversation with your teacher about what doesn't feel right and, if your teacher or coach is maybe the problem, find someone else to work with. If there is a constant, pervasive sense of unsafety, exploring what that means and how you can work through it in multiple different ways can be very helpful. Trust your gut If you're not feeling good. Trust your gut. Sometimes we're not even aware that we don't feel safe If we've gotten used to bracing ourselves and pushing through fear.

Susannah Steers:

Bringing a gentle awareness to what we feel as we move and any thoughts or emotions that come up along the way can help us bring those thoughts and feelings we've buried to light. And sometimes those thoughts and feelings show up as tension in your body or areas where you feel weak.

Susannah Steers:

You don't know how to engage the strength in that particular path. We can choose what we want to do with takeaways:

Susannah Steers:

One: and feelings we have in the moment, but becoming aware of them is the first step to

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Two: inviting some kind of positive change. We like to think that we can separate the physical, the

Susannah Steers:

Three: mental, the emotional, all of that. We like to think that we can separate the physical, the mental, the emotional, all of that. Really, it's all happening in our bodies at the same time and the same place, and the more we can find ways to pull those things together it's not to say you have to be a victim to your emotions, but respect them, know that they're there

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Four:

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Five: with them rather than trying to stuff them away.

Susannah Steers:

I had a client years ago with pretty severe pack pain. She had exhausted the medical interventions available to her, but she still experienced significant discomfort every day. She'd been in pain for a long time and her nervous system was in a state of real hypervigilance around any movement that might cause her more pain, real hypervigilance around any movement that might cause her more pain. She was profoundly hesitant to move At first. Even the smallest movements would cause her to say things like oh, oh, I feel that, and she would stop and tense up. She wanted to just stop doing what we were doing and it took us a little while to navigate that. I'll admit it was a little tough at first because she didn't want to move in even the smallest ways and I obviously didn't want to cause her more pain, but we were really trying to get some movement happening. She'd been in pain for so long that her entire system seemed to interpret every sensation as pain. I decided that perhaps we could explore and qualify her sensations a little more specifically, as she felt them, to see whether we could determine which sensations were simply her brain becoming aware of something happening in her body and which she could actually classify as pain. Was that pull she felt as she extended one leg really pain, or was it perhaps a sensation of lengthening tight tissues? Was the shortening she felt in her side pain, or was it the sensation of a muscle contracting? As you can imagine, this process took some time and reclassification of her sensations in her experience helped her find a way into a greater capacity for movement and improve both her pain symptoms and her overall fitness, and she was able to more easily find peace with her movement. It wasn't such a scary thing anymore.

Susannah Steers:

So, regardless of where you're at, if you're experiencing chronic, non-specific back pain, I believe it's important to take a wide view and incorporate all the possible areas where you might make a difference. Strengthening your core might be part of the solution, but it's likely not the only one. I've thrown a lot at you in the last few minutes, so let's get practical and lean into some quick, evidence-based takeaways. One nearly all the major guidelines now encourage staying active as a first-line strategy for back pain. Two exercise helps. Doesn't have to be Pilates, yoga, walking, strength training. All show benefits. Three manual therapy, pain education and a multidisciplinary approach can help. I am a firm believer in multidisciplinary approaches. Just don't do it all at once. Start with one thing, see how you respond. Add another thing. See how you respond. Are you experiencing some level of better? A little at a time gives you a chance to know which interventions are the ones that are really giving you the most benefit.

Susannah Steers:

Four imaging like x-rays and MRIs, is not always necessary unless your doctor suspects a serious underlying cause. Most people of a certain age will show degenerative changes on a scan, whether or not they experience any pain. Sometimes a scan will show all kinds of crazy things going on in somebody's spine and there's no pain patterns, there's no movement issues, so the scan is not necessarily going to tell you what you think it's going to tell you Osteoarthritis or spondylosis appearing on a scan may or may not be the cause of your pain. It may give you a starting point, but what you do moving forward will be more important and more likely than not. The advice will be to keep moving. Five importantly consistency and individualization matter much more than the specific type of exercise you've chosen. We know the research shows that pretty much any movement is beneficial.

Susannah Steers:

But I want to zoom in on Pilates for a moment, because that's what I do. Research reviews show Pilates can offer small to moderate improvements in pain and function for chronic low back pain, which is about the same as any other exercise approach. But Pilates brings something special a focus on body awareness, controlled movement and whole body integration. That means you're not just gaining strength, you're learning how your body works and how it moves, so you can do that with greater confidence and joy. So why, as an integrated movement specialist, do I believe so deeply in Pilates for back pain?

Susannah Steers:

Well, I initially started Pilates for a pain problem in my 20s. I had chronic and sometimes severe knee pain. It took about a year of consistent practice, but Pilates did what nothing else could and, believe me, I had tried everything at that point. Pilates got me out of pain and actually gave me more strength and capacity than I had had before. I knew there was power in this work. Over the years since then I've witnessed profound changes in recovery and people managing a whole host of different kinds of back pain and dysfunction.

Susannah Steers:

What I see time and time again is this Pilates strengthens the deep core system in harmony with the breath, the pelvis, the hips, the legs, the shoulders and the whole body. It is the only form of exercise I've found, when practiced and taught well, that has a profoundly integrating effect on the body. The exercises in Pilates help to lengthen and decompress the low back and the hips and the thorax, all important for stability and freedom in the trunk. We build strategies for whole body support, not just bracing the spine. With guided, positive movement experiences, clients learn that movement is safe, rewiring those patterns in the brain.

Susannah Steers:

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. At Moving Spirit, for example, our approach is personalized. Everyone's story is different. Perhaps most crucially, pilates invites you to listen to your body and become an active participant in your own healing. It's not just about biomechanics. There's an educational, empowering and psychological support element, especially important when pain has eroded your confidence.

Susannah Steers:

So I'd want to give you some practical tips for everyday life when you're dealing with back pain. Practical tips for everyday life when you're dealing with back pain. I'd like to tell you to choose a skilled, compassionate Pilates teacher or movement practitioner who will listen to your story. Start with some private sessions and a thorough assessment tailored to you. And here's the thing Commit to regular, mindful practice.

Susannah Steers:

Movement is medicine, but only if you take the dose and it's not just one and done. You need to pay attention to what you're doing, to feel it, to recognize it, so that you take it beyond the hour or two or three that you spend with a coach or within a class and you can recognize that and take it out into your world with you. Look for small daily improvement, not instant perfection. Really feel what feels better. Be open to new movement experiences Like that's kind of a be coachable moment right Imagery, new movement strategies, mindfulness or even exploring how play and maybe joy can sneak back into your movement life. That can help you reframe how you're living and moving inside your own body. Maybe that sounds a little woo, I don't know, but I promise it's true. Support yourself outside your movement habits with good sleep, manage your stress and find a nurturing community.

Susannah Steers:

I read an article once by a woman whose name I can't remember right now, who wrote about her experiences working through back pain. She described finding someone she worked with as a back whisperer, and in that moment I loved it. She found someone who was able to listen to her problem, evaluate all the elements of what was going on for her and guide her toward a better experience over time. That doesn't happen in three easy lessons with a few standard protocol exercises. It takes some time, but the thing to remember is that it is possible to feel better and that the real back whisperer is you.

Susannah Steers:

All this being said, there are times when you must urgently see your doctor. If you notice sudden severe pain, unexplained fever, significant weakness or numbness or issues with bladder or bowel control, please seek medical attention right away. Don't mess around. Back pain can feel utterly overwhelming, but you have more power than you might think. By staying engaged, listening to your body and listening to your pain, asking for help and moving yes, moving you give yourself the

Susannah Steers:

very best chance of feeling well again. So move and move some more. Walk, stretch, play, breathe. Pilates can be a great companion, but also let your curiosity and a little playfulness lead the way. Every little bit

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of movement you add gives you more strength, resilience and, most importantly, freedom and independence. You are so much more than your pain and you're worth investing in.

Susannah Steers:

I'd like to recommend a couple of great resources talking about pain that might be useful for you if you're navigating a pain problem of any kind. One is a video by Laura Mermosley called Explain Pain. It's a great, really quick perspective on pain. You'll understand it differently after you hear it. Another is a book called why Things Hurt by local physiotherapist Brent Stevenson. I'll slide some links to those in the show notes. They may help you refine your perspective on your experience.

Susannah Steers:

You might also be interested in an earlier episode of the Heart of Motion, an interview that I did with a dear friend and colleague, amy Ruth. It's episode eight of season one called Resilience, health and Connection Through Somatics with Amy Kiara Ruth. Amy has some beautiful ways to talk about movement and pain and I hope you'll check it out. And haha, there's more. I hope you'll join me next time when I'll be talking to Anthony Abagnano, internationally renowned founder of the Alchemy of Breath and author of the book Outer Chaos, inner Calm, about the power of breath work. His insights in that interview feed beautifully into today's conversation about back pain and to the choices.

Susannah Steers:

We have to move through challenging situations. Tune in to the next. We have to move through challenging situations. Tune in to the next episode for that one. Before we go, I just want to remind you that this podcast episode includes information based on the latest research and international guidelines on back pain management. But always consult a qualified health professional for advice suited to your unique situation. Until next time. You matter, so keep moving. You got this. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Subscribe and, if you love what you heard, leave a five-star review and tell people what you enjoyed most. Join me here again in a couple of weeks. For now, let's get moving.

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Susannah Steers

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