Yoga for Back Pain
These poses target the muscles and structures that support the spine — releasing tension in the lower back, strengthening the core, and improving spinal mobility. Practise gently and stop if anything causes sharp discomfort.
Cat-Cow
Marjaryasana-Bitilasana
Cat-Cow is one of the most effective and most neglected poses in the practice. It takes two minutes, requires no warm-up, can be done anywhere there's a mat-sized piece of floor, and produces an immediate change in how the spine feels. Most people skip it because it seems too simple. Come to hands and knees, wrists under shoulders, knees under hips. On the inhale, drop the belly toward the floor, lift the chest and the sit bones, and let the lower back arch. This is Cow. On the exhale, press the floor away, round the entire spine from tailbone to crown, and let the head drop. This is Cat. Move between them slowly, one breath per movement. The goal is not big dramatic movement. The goal is feeling each vertebra participate. Start at the tailbone and let the wave of motion travel upward through the lumbar spine, the thoracic spine, the cervical spine, all the way to the crown of the head. Then reverse it from the crown back down. This spinal articulation keeps the discs hydrated, the facet joints mobile, and the muscles around the spine elastic. It's the closest thing yoga has to a prescription for spinal health. Do it in the morning before you get off the floor. Do it between longer holds. Do it when your lower back is stiff from sitting or from a long drive. The five minutes you spend here will consistently change how the rest of your day feels.
Child's Pose
Balasana
Child's Pose is the most reliable reset in the practice. When things get hard, when the breath shortens, when you need a moment, this is where you go. It's also where you can start a practice if you need to arrive slowly, and where you can return between challenging poses to find your breath again. Come to hands and knees. Bring the big toes together, knees either together or wide. Sink the hips back toward the heels and let the torso fold forward. Arms can extend in front of you or rest alongside the body. The forehead comes to the mat or to stacked fists if the floor feels far away. The wide-knee variation opens the groin and allows the torso to rest between the thighs. The narrow-knee version gives more lower back release. Both are useful; experiment to find which one your body needs on a given day. Child's Pose gently decompresses the lumbar spine, releases the hips and thighs, and quiets the nervous system. The forehead on the mat has a grounding, almost cooling effect. The breath into the back body fills the space between the shoulder blades and helps the upper back let go. It can be held for thirty seconds or thirty minutes. During a restorative practice it becomes a five-minute pose. As a rest between more demanding poses it serves in thirty seconds. There is no performance here. Child's Pose is just rest.
Happy Baby
Ananda Balasana
Happy Baby is a decompression pose that most adults approach with more self-consciousness than it deserves. The name describes it accurately: you're lying on your back holding your feet while your knees open wide, which is exactly what babies do when they're content on the floor. Lie on your back and bring your knees toward your armpits. Reach up and grab the outer edges of your feet, or your ankles, or behind your knees if that's what's accessible. Open the knees wide, letting them drop toward the armpits. Gently pull the feet down. The lower back presses into the mat. This is the lumbar decompression that makes the pose so satisfying after standing, running, or sitting for long periods. Feel the sacrum and lower back heavy on the floor. Rock gently side to side if it feels good. This motion massages the lower back against the floor and works any residual tension out of the sacroiliac joints. Happy Baby also opens the inner groin and hip flexors. The outer hip of each leg gets a gentle stretch from the external rotation. It's doing several things at once without feeling effortful. Common modification: if the hands don't comfortably reach the feet, use a strap or belt around each foot, or simply hold behind the knees instead. This is a good finishing pose before Savasana. It releases the hips and lower back from whatever the practice has built up, and the supine position is already close to final rest.
Cobra Pose
Bhujangasana
Cobra Pose is a backbend that works from the floor up. The chest lifts, the spine extends, and the back body muscles are doing the work rather than the arms. This distinction between using arm strength to push up versus using back strength to lift is what separates Cobra from other backbends and makes it so useful for people with weak back extensors. Lie face down, legs extended. Place the hands under the shoulders with elbows tucked close to the ribs. On an inhale, press the tops of the feet and the pelvis into the mat and lift the chest forward and up. The elbows stay slightly bent. The shoulders draw back and down away from the ears. The height of the lift depends on the strength and flexibility of the back. A two-inch lift with the back muscles working is more beneficial than a six-inch lift with straight arms pressing the chest up. To test which you're doing: lift your hands off the mat slightly while in the pose. If you can maintain the height, the back muscles are doing the work. If you collapse immediately, the arms were carrying it. The lower back should not crunch or compress. The lift spreads across the entire spine, not just the lumbar region. Cobra is the counter to prolonged sitting, slouching, and any forward-rounded position. Done consistently, it builds the back extensor strength that allows the spine to be upright and supported without effort.
Supine Twist
Supine Twist is the pose most people want at the end of a long day and the one they're least likely to skip. Lying down takes the effort out of it, the spine gets to release without supporting any weight, and the rotation happens through gravity rather than muscular effort. Lie on your back. Hug both knees to the chest. Extend the arms out to the sides at shoulder height. Let both knees fall to the right, stacking them on top of each other. The left shoulder stays on or near the floor. Gaze can go to the left. The rotation releases the lower back, the outer hip of the top leg, and the IT band. Most people feel it primarily in the lower back and the hip of the upper leg. If the knees are far from the floor, place a folded blanket under them so the body can relax completely. The key to getting the most from this pose: breathe into the left side of the chest. The exhale helps the left shoulder release toward the floor and deepens the rotation gently with each breath. Hold for eight to ten breaths per side at minimum. For tighter bodies or after a long run, two to three minutes per side is not too much. This is also a useful pose for SI joint tension, the area where the sacrum meets the pelvis. The rotation creates movement through the joint that daily upright movement doesn't access.
Standing Forward Fold
Uttanasana
Standing Forward Fold is one of those poses that looks simple from the outside and feels completely different once you're in it. The instruction is to hinge at the hips and fold the torso forward over the legs. What happens in practice depends enormously on your hamstring length and your ability to actually hinge rather than round. The common mistake is bending forward from the waist rather than from the hip crease. When you round through the low back instead of hinging at the hip, the hamstrings don't stretch much, and the lumbar spine takes load it doesn't need. To avoid this: bend your knees generously, feel the sit bones lifting toward the ceiling, and let the chest drape forward before you try to straighten the legs. Hands can rest on the shins, on blocks, or on the floor. The head hangs heavy. The neck releases. This is one of the few moments in daily life when the head is truly below the heart, which has a measurable calming effect on the nervous system. Some people feel a strong pull behind the knees. Others feel it more in the upper hamstrings near the sit bones. Either location is normal. What to avoid is any sharp or pinching sensation, which usually means the hips need more room. A useful variation: hold opposite elbows and let the upper body sway gently side to side, releasing the lower back one side at a time.
Legs Up the Wall
Viparita Karani
Legs Up the Wall is the most accessible and most consistently useful restorative pose in the practice. All it requires is a wall and a floor. The effect is immediate: the legs drain, the lower back releases, and the nervous system begins to quiet within the first minute. Sit sideways against the wall, hip touching the baseboard. Swing both legs up the wall as you lie back, scooting the hips as close to the wall as comfortable. Arms rest at the sides or on the belly. Eyes close. The position reverses the venous blood flow in the legs, which is why tired or swollen legs feel so much better afterward. The heart doesn't have to work as hard against gravity to circulate blood from the legs back up. The lower back benefits because the hamstrings, which often pull on the pelvis and create lumbar tension, are in a lengthened position without weight-bearing. The lumbar spine settles toward the floor. If the hamstrings are very tight, the legs will pull away from the wall as they try to straighten. Move the hips farther from the wall until the legs can rest comfortably. The goal is ease, not maximum hip-to-wall proximity. Stay for five to ten minutes. Set a timer so you don't spend the time wondering how long you've been here. This pose is particularly useful during perimenopause for hot flash management, after long runs for leg recovery, during high-stress periods for nervous system regulation, and before sleep for anyone who finds it hard to wind down.
Bridge Pose
Setu Bandha Sarvangasana
Bridge Pose is one of the most accessible and most effective poses in the beginner repertoire. It strengthens the glutes, hamstrings, and lower back in a position that most people never use in daily movement, which is part of why the results are so noticeable. Lie on your back, knees bent, feet flat on the mat hip-width apart. The feet are close enough to the hips that the fingertips can brush the heels when the arms are extended alongside the body. Press into the feet and lift the hips toward the ceiling. The glutes should be the primary driver of the lift. Squeeze them at the top. This distinction matters because many people lift from the lower back instead, which reduces the glute work and can cause lumbar compression. The pose can be held statically for five to eight breaths or done dynamically: lift on the inhale, lower on the exhale, for eight to ten repetitions. Both variations are useful. The dynamic version builds endurance. The static hold develops sustained activation. Interlacing the hands beneath the pelvis and pressing the arms into the mat creates a natural chest opener and helps stabilize the position. Bridge Pose is also a hip flexor stretch. When the hips are lifted, the hip flexors on the front of the thigh are lengthened. For people who sit all day, this reversal of the sitting position feels immediately good. Three sets of ten bridges, done most mornings, will change how your lower back feels within a month.
Thread the Needle
Thread the Needle is a thoracic rotation pose that targets the area most other poses skip. The thoracic spine, the middle back between the shoulder blades, should rotate significantly in daily movement. In most people it doesn't, because years of sitting and forward-facing activity have reduced its mobility. The neck and lower back then compensate by over-rotating, which is why neck pain and lower back pain often trace back to a stiff thoracic spine. From hands and knees, slide the right arm under the left arm along the floor, palm facing up. The right shoulder and the right temple come to rest on the mat. The left arm can press lightly into the mat to increase the rotation, or extend forward as in Extended Puppy Pose. The rotation happens through the thoracic spine. Feel the stretch between the shoulder blades on the right side. The hips stay stacked over the knees. Breathing into this position helps. On each inhale the spine lengthens. On each exhale the body releases a little further into the rotation. Five to eight breaths per side is a good starting point. People with significant thoracic stiffness, common in people who spend long hours at computers, will feel this intensely even at first. This pose is a good preparation for deeper twists and for any overhead shoulder work, because thoracic extension and rotation are prerequisites for healthy shoulder mechanics.
Pigeon Prep
Eka Pada Rajakapotasana Prep
Pigeon Prep is the pose most people come to yoga for and the one that produces the strongest sensations of any beginner pose. The outer hip, the piriformis, and the deep external rotators are tissues that rarely get stretched in daily movement, and when they finally do, the release can feel profound. From Downward Dog or hands and knees, bring the right knee behind the right wrist and extend the left leg back. Lower the hips toward the mat. The right shin can be at any angle: parallel to the top of the mat for more intensity, angled back closer to the hips for less. The hips drop toward the floor; if the right hip doesn't reach, place a folded blanket under it. Fold the torso forward over the shin and rest on the forearms or extend the arms forward. The lower you go, the more the nervous system has to accept the position, and the more the hip releases. The sensation is often intense. It's useful to distinguish between the intensity of a deep stretch, which is safe to breathe into, and sharp or shooting pain, which is not. Many people feel their entire hip and glute gripped in sensation here. That's the piriformis and the external rotators, muscles that haven't been asked to lengthen like this before. Stay for ten to fifteen breaths per side. Longer is better. The release happens over time, not immediately.
Half Lift
Ardha Uttanasana
Half Lift sits in nearly every sun salutation, usually as a transitional pose between Forward Fold and a step back. It moves quickly in a flowing practice, which means most people never actually feel what it's doing. Done well, Half Lift is a spinal extension exercise. You're working against gravity to bring the thoracic spine into a neutral or slightly extended position while the hamstrings are loaded. That combination is uncommon in daily movement, which is why it matters. From a forward fold, press your fingertips or palms into the mat or your shins, and lift your chest forward and up until the spine is roughly parallel to the floor. The back body engages, the shoulders draw back slightly, the crown of the head extends forward rather than drooping down. The key distinction: the lift comes from the back, not from pushing into the hands. Imagine someone placed a hand on your mid-back and gently pressed upward. That's the sensation to work toward. Gaze is forward or slightly down. Looking up strains the neck. The belly draws in lightly to protect the lower back from over-arching. For people with tight hamstrings, hands can be on the shins or on blocks. For people with more length, fingertips touch the floor. The spine position matters more than where the hands land.
Supported Forward Fold
Supported Forward Fold is the restorative version of Seated Forward Fold. The effort of reaching toward the feet is removed, and the torso simply rests forward onto a bolster or folded blankets that are stacked on the legs. The result is a genuinely passive release of the lower back and hamstrings, which is different from what happens when the muscles have to hold a position actively. Sit with legs extended. Stack a bolster or two or three folded blankets on the thighs, at a height that allows the torso to drape forward onto the support without straining. Fold the torso forward and rest the head on the support. Arms rest at the sides. The support height is the key variable. Too low and the body strains to reach it, which defeats the purpose. Too high and the stretch disappears. Find the height where the lower back and hamstrings feel a gentle but real opening without any effort or discomfort. The head rests completely. If there's any tension in the neck from holding the head up, add more height under the support. Breathe into the back body. Feel the inhale expand the back ribs. The exhale softens everything further. Let each exhale release a little more tension. Hold for three to five minutes. This is long enough for the nervous system to stop guarding the position and allow the deeper release that makes restorative work different from active stretching.