Most back pain is treatable, a persons habitual tendancy's need to be addressed. Qi Gong and Tai Chi practice can help radically in the treatment of back pain but there is a caveat that comes with this statement.

Your instructor needs to have direct personal experience in helping people with back conditions. They need to be expert in the body alignments and body balancing of their art and have some anatomical understanding. If you have very bad back problems you will need one to one attention.


another expert says.....

“The better physical condition you’re in, the less likely you’ll injure your back,” says Santhosh Thomas, D.O., medical director of Cleveland Clinic’s Westlake Spine Center. “That’s why everybody can benefit from strong abdominal and back muscles.”

My opinion of the above statement:

Poor mobility, a weak core structure,  even overly strong back muscles can cause back pain. However in my experience, a focus on strengthening stomach and back muscles as recommended by the medical professionals is a grossly simplistic view of back pain intervention. I think this because back pain is caused primarily by chronic tension, and the release of this tension is paramount. What is often overlooked is that back pain has much to do with the leg and the hip mis-alignments and imbalances.

A Qi Gong approach to healing the back

Firstly, one needs to identify tension patterns and address these through developing personal sensing skills. The felt sense approach if you like. Getting people into their bodies implies that they learn some method to release their tension. This has to used used in tandem with structural re-training  which is as much a mental process as a physical one.

Your physical structural and your habitual body positioning together with your mental and emotional state and the uses you put your body through, all can contribute to back pain and need to be addressed particularly with chronic conditions.

In another study:

The study, published in the May 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, is the second in a series reporting findings of the Spine Patients Outcomes Research Trial (SPORT), a five-year, multi-center study supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), a part of the National Institutes of Health.

Degenerative spondylolisthesis is a condition in which breakdown of the cartilage between the vertebrae of the spine causes one vertebra to slip over the one below. This can result in narrowing of the spinal column (spinal stenosis), which can put pressure on the nerves, resulting in pain in the buttocks or legs with walking or standing. The condition generally occurs after age 50 and it affects six times as many women as men.

Evaluation of long term conditions:

If you have any long term severe back pain it is advisable to seek medical advice to ascertain the level of damage which your spine may have undergone. Then you can evaluate the chances of benefit from alternative treatments . The above degenerative problem is extremely difficult to treat with Qi Gong once the cartilage is worn away, but not necessarily impossible. For example it is possible to create whole body strength through the re-education of your lower body in relation to your spine, meaning an increase in leg support and balance to create joint expansion. This expansion occurs through by fully  engaging the fascial connections which run trough the whole body.

In my experience most back pain stems from poor leg connection and poor balance. It is critical that people engage the legs fully, and quite frankly most people do not use their legs well in relation to their spine.