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Researchers say mind-body exercises such as yoga can strengthen your body as well as ease your mind. Getty Images
  • Researchers say mind-body exercise routines such as yoga, tai chi, and qi gong can help ease lower back pain.
  • Experts say these exercises can strengthen the body as well as the mind.
  • They note that the cause of a lot of lower back pain is unknown and the effectiveness of treatment can vary from person to person.
Dr. Nick Shamie spends a lot of time hunched over.
The chief of orthopedic spine surgery at UCLA says those hours he spent craning his neck to operate on patients were giving him grief.
Two decades ago, he found a solution: yoga.
“I had some neck pain from all the long hours of leaning over the patient when I’m operating and I saw that in my case yoga was very helpful because there are parts of yoga where you actually exercise your neck also, and that helped me as a form of exercise to maintain my spine health. Yoga is my primary form of exercise these days,” he told Healthline.
Many of Shamie’s patients have back pain, and they’re not alone.
About 80 percent of adults in the United States experience pain in the lower back at some point.
Now, a review by researchers at Florida Atlantic University has concluded that movement-based mind-body exercises such as tai chi and yoga are effective at treating lower back pain.
“The bad news is back pain is very common, and we’re all affected by this at times debilitating problem. So anything we can do to prevent this back pain is worthwhile, and that’s what this study is highlighting,” Shamie said.
“People think that yoga is just you sitting there and singing ‘om’ cross-legged,” he added. “But yoga… has modernized and transformed into not just yoga maneuvers but an aerobic exercise.”

People with lower back pain are often encouraged to initially try nonpharmacological treatments, such as exercise, to manage their pain.
The Florida researchers evaluated the efficacy of three such mind-body exercises: yoga, tai chi (which involves gentle physical exercises and stretches together with mindfulness), and qigong (a Chinese meditation therapy that’s centered on body awareness during slow and repetitive body movements).
“Back pain is a major public health issue often contributing to emotional distress such as depression and anxiety, as well as sleep issues and even social isolation,” JuYoung Park, PhD, a corresponding study author and an associate professor in the Phyllis and Harvey Sandler School of Social Work at the Florida university, said in a press release.
“We reviewed data to determine the effects of movement-based mind-body interventions on chronic back pain, psychological factors, coping strategies, and quality of life in people suffering with back pain,” Park added.
The researchers found that mind-body exercises such as yoga and tai chi were effective at reducing pain in the lower back, reducing pain-related disability, improving functional ability, and reducing depression and anxiety.
“Yoga, tai chi, and qi gong could be used as effective treatment alternatives to pain medications, surgery, or injection-based treatments such as nerve blocks, which are associated with high incidence of adverse effects in treating lower back pain,” Park said.