Exercise Library

​Low back pain (LBP) affects up to 85% of working Canadians. It can be caused by too much sitting, poor posture and movement patterns, sedentary lifestyle (including sitting at a desk for work!), narrowing of the space through which spinal nerves pass, stress and more. Massage therapy and exercise are natural remedies that can alleviate LBP. Massage allows the muscles that ‘brace’ against the pain to relax, and lengthens muscles that are shortening and potentially causing further nerve impingement. As well, both massage and intelligent exercise help to re-align the body so muscles don’t work as hard to support faulty posture. Both therapies go a long way in promoting a sense of wellbeing, and supporting the systems of your body to better heal itself.

Home Remedy for Low-Back Pain

Lie on your back with your hips supported, right in front of a chair or sofa. Your thighs should be more or less vertical, your lower legs resting on the chair. Knees and hips should be at a right angle. It’s ok if it’s not exact. Breathe in for 6 steady counts, breathe out for 8, steady counts. If this feels hard, you can simply focus on breathing steadily. Try to breath into your belly, not your shoulders and chest. Your belly and rib cage should expand, and your neck and jaw should remain relaxed. Close your eyes, and rest here for 5 or more minutes.

The hip joint, or acetabular femoral joint, is the large synovial joint that attaches your thigh bone to your pelvis. There are quite a number of reasons your hip(s) might hurt. If we are talking about functional muscle pain, the muscles on the side, front or back of the hips may become painful from prolonged sitting, strain from repetitive movement, injury from trauma or moving beyond the range of motion your muscles, tendons and ligaments, or imbalance of strength and length of muscles.

Osteoarthritis, fractures, bursitis, labral tears, cancer are some other potential causes of hip pain. We will focus here on muscular issues:

It is common for those of us who do a lot of sitting to become restricted in the hip muscles. As we age, our muscles atrophy unless we are actively building and maintaining muscle volume. Here is a 20 minute flow you can do to stretch, strengthen and balance the deep and superficial muscles of the hip. If your hip issue is functional, doing this routine everyday will help to alleviate your hip pain.

The thick band of tissue that runs across the bottom of your foot and connects your heel bone to your toes gets inflamed with plantar fasciitis. It is quite common in runners, as well as people who work long hours on their feet, like nurses, those in retail, etc. Being overweight can increase your chances of getting plantar fasciitis.

It can be caused by less than efficient function of the toes, feet, ankles, knees or hips. The repetitive overload on the fascia or connective tissue causes small tears, inflammation, and possibly scar tissue in the sole of the foot. The pain is often worse in the morning when you first get out of bed and bear weight on the feet. Typically, the pain can be felt just in front of the heel.

Home Remedy for Plantar Fasciitis

This thick band of connective tissue we call plantar fascia connects to the back of your legs. Stretching your calves and hamstrings may provide relief from plantar fasciitis pain. Lying on your back, bring one leg up and cradle it behind the thigh with interlaced fingers. Slowly try to straighten the stretching leg without rounding out through the spine. You can try to pull the toes down toward the knee.

Strengthening and mobilizing your feet is also helpful. You may also look into getting more supportive footwear, or even changing footwear throughout your work day.

Adhesive Capsulitis is commonly referred to as frozen shoulder. It is characterized by restricted mobility in the gleno-humoral joint, the shoulder joint, due to fibrosis of this joint.

Home Remedy

Neck pain is often caused by poor posture, too much time at the computer or looking down at your phone. Here, we are addressing symptoms for those who haven’t had an accident or have a pre-existing condition that caused the neck pain.

The muscles in your neck get sore because they are being over stretched, or working too hard and long holding your head up. If your shoulders round forward, your neck will drop forward, causing neck pain.

Home Remedy for Neck Pain

Minimize phone and computer time. Take a break every 45 minutes from your work station. Place both hands on the back of your hips, squeeze the shoulder blades together, and stretch your chin up. Hold this posture for 5 slow breaths.

The ripple effect of anxiety and stress that affect the body and signal pain can manifest in many ways: disrupted sleep, fatigue, tense muscles, poor diet, inflammation of the cells, decreased motivation to exercise, etc. Long term, any of these byproducts of stress and anxiety can adversely affect health. The incidence of illness related to stress is alarming. Some medical studies show that 90 percent of illness and disease can be associated with stress. You may be so accustomed to chronic stress that it isn’t recognized as such. It’s a good idea to periodically take objective inventory of your life. What are you putting up with? What are you accepting as “that’s just the way it is?” Do you sleep well and wake up happy and well rested most days?

Home Remedy for Anxiety and Stress

We demand so much of ourselves. Create a discipline to make time to simply be. Take a walk in the forest. Even 20 minutes a day can make a profound difference. Here are three things you can do to decrease anxiety and stress

1. Breathing meditation:  in for 8 counts, out for 6. Belly breathe.
2. Take a gratitude walk every morning, even for 5 minutes.
3. Enjoy one meal a day where you sit down at the table WITHOUT your phone. Take a bite, put down your eating utensil, place your hands in your lap, as you chew 10 times. Once you have swallowed, take another bite.

Measure your stress using the quiz on page two of this document.