This is one of the reasons I love yoga therapy and the holistic approach to health! Last week I went a bit overboard with my workout and because I thought I was a pro at this, I did something unhelpful and didn’t stretch. 30 min of cardio in 90degrees weather, with no stretch before or after! Please do not do this yourself, I learned the hard way.

The next day, I started getting sciatica pain – that’s when the glutes and the piriformis (your buttocks muscles) get tight and press on your sciatic nerve, sending pain down your legs, usually just one. But this time, it was both for me and so much pain that I felt my lower back really tight (it was hard to fold forward halfway), I felt the pressure in my middle back and the worst part is that a few hours later I started getting a migraine. I never get migraines! It literally stopped me in my tracks and I felt overwhelmed for a bit, because it was such an intense pain and so new for me. I was in bed for a whole day and had to cancel some of my commitments for the day, that’s how intense it was.

This is where yoga therapy comes in. With the helps of the medical information we studied as part of the yoga therapy training, I knew enough to understand the connection between my workout and the sciatica pain. But I could not figure out the migraine. I was suspecting a connection but didn’t know enough about it.

So, I started researching and what do you know. There’s a study from 2013, which shows the link between chronic migraines or chronic tension type headaches and low back pain! For those who like numbers, there’s another article, which looked at 14 studies and concluded that there is a positive correlation between the two.

The beauty of the work that I do and the fact that I also use Qigong is that it allowed me to have a pretty rounded look at this and understand the underlying cause. I could have taken pain medication, but that only addresses the symptoms and not the cause. And I wanted to understand the cause.

In Qigong, headaches are connected to the digestive system and stagnation in the stomach. Sciatica…you’re probably going to guess…is also connected to the gallbladder meridian. Well, a few weeks ago we all had a stomach bug, which wiped out all the goodies in my stomach. So you see how it is all related? In addition to my workout which caused tension, my digestive system was still weak and sensitive.

So what did I do? In yoga, we usually do a seated or reclined figure 4 to stretch the piriformis and glutes and release the pressure off the nerve. This time, I used a variation of that, which comes from Qigong, and more specifically from Lee Holden’s Tao Yin. I found it to be the most effective movement and it allows me to work with my breath, the meridians, and the muscles. To see the full video and a full library of free resources, sign up for my newsletter.

The next day, believe it or not, I was up and running! So I’ve learned the hard way and I am sharing it with you all, so you don’t have to! 🙂