Often, the act of doing something physically very different - something you’ve never done before - is enough to cause a stubborn back pain to shift. Yoga for stretching back muscles is super effective because it involves complex and highly structured interplay between stretching and strengthening.

But rather than simple stretches yoga uses complex stretches, undoing broad patterns of restriction over several joints and different parts of the body at the same time. This brings in all the major and minor muscle-players, as well as the vitally important invisible stabilizing muscles, without your ever knowing.  

Effective yoga emphasises the unfamiliar, un-functional patterns of movement; the very antithesis of our stooped working postures and repetitive patterns of restricted activity that make up our everyday lives.

'Knees Rocking' is the Number One in Simple Yoga for Stretching Back Muscles

Done properly 'knees rocking' is as gentle as it is subtle, opening the backs of the discs and lulling  the spinal muscles out of their protective clench (spasm)

This is the best yoga for stretching back muscles exercise when you are literally rigid with pain. It incorporates basic principles of anatomy, biomechanics and physiology to improve function and make you more comfortable immediately. It one of Sarah Key's main 'spinal appeasing' exercises. 

The knees rocking exercise is a gentle rhythmic oscillation of the knees to the chest to induce an approximate 10% tensile stretch of the back wall of the lumbar intervertebral disc at a rate of approximately 1Hz (one cycle per second). The same action also mobilises the very tight facet joint capsules at the back of the spine.

The knees rocking lower back exercise should be thought of as a pumping action, not a stretching one, with the aim of pulling fluid in through the pulled-thin back wall of the discs. The enhanced circulation of discal fluids helps evacuate inflammatory products from within the disc, which are highly noxious (read painful) in cases of acute low back pain.  

Using the BackBlock is the ACME of Yoga for Stretching Back Muscles

The BackBlock as a 'do-it-yourself' spinal decompression regime is the best way of undoing stooped spinal postures of our everyday toil