Sacrum tension and lower back pain: what you need to know
Lower back pain, especially around the sacrum, is a common issue caused by sitting too much, poor walking mechanics, and a lack of movement variety. Over time, these habits can dehydrate and tighten the muscles surrounding the sacrum, making them unresponsive.
When this happens, you may feel hip weakness, restricted mobility in the pelvis area, and ultimately, lower back pain—particularly near the sacrum.
The role of these muscles in movement
The muscles around the sacrum are not just there to support—they need to be mobile. Their primary job is to assist in standing up movements, rotation of the body, and hinging patterns like bending forward.
If these muscles lose mobility, the lower back takes on extra strain, leading to discomfort, stiffness, and pain.
How to manage pain and restore healthy movement
To keep the fascia surrounding these muscles hydrated and functional, two key approaches can help:
1. Myofascial release (MFR)
Using a tennis ball, lacrosse ball, or massage ball to target these areas can restore hydration and improve sensory awareness. This helps release tension and reconnect the fascia network from your feet to your lower back.
2. Movement integration
Engaging in movement that involves both the thoracic cage (upper body) and the hips is crucial. One essential concept to understand is thoracic and hip rotation:
When your thoracic cage rotates (for example, when you twist your upper body to look behind you), there should be a natural rotation of the hips in response.
However, if your fascia is tight and your sacral region lacks mobility, this connection gets lost, leading to compensation patterns and added strain on the lower back.
Restoring this coordinated movement through rotational exercises and mobility work can significantly ease tension and improve the way you move.
Have a look at this exercise, the rotation of the legs are very subtle on this video, I hope that will help you understand what I mean 🙂
The impact on daily movement
Combining MFR and movement practice will help restore natural function to these muscles, reducing tension and improving the way you walk and stand.
By maintaining hydrated, responsive fascia, you give your body the ability to move with less restriction, better support, and less pain.
Take care and remember if you want more inforamtion and you are struggling with making progress in your pain free journey, get in touch via wahtsapp or make a free call appointment to discuss your questions.
Let me give you two examples to help you grasp one fundamental aspect of fascia.
First, picture the scaffolding used in construction—structures that connect the bottom of a building to its very top, providing stability and support. You see it, right?
Now, think about the fascinating documentaries on trees—how they communicate through their root networks, spreading signals across vast distances. A single tree can warn another miles away about a potential threat.
Now, put these two together: a scaffolding system combined with an intricate communication network. That’s one way to understand fascia.
Fascia is a supportive, connective tissue embedded with neurotransmitters. It runs throughout your entire body, influencing how you move, stand, and feel—and it all starts from the plantar fascia.
Why does this matter?
When you experience pain (excluding injuries from contact sports or accidents), the culprit is often weak or poorly connected fascia—most commonly due to dehydration.
A weak fascia network forces the body to compensate, creating inefficient movement patterns. Over time, these compensations lead to overload and excessive stress on certain areas, resulting in pain.
The big mistake in pain management
If you treat chronic pain with a muscle-segmented approach, focusing only on the site of pain instead of the fascia’s structural integrity, you’re setting yourself up for a long and frustrating battle.
This outdated method often leads to mediocre results, increased fatigue, and even more stress on your body.
The key? Address the fascia. Hydrate it, restore its connections, and give your body the structural support it needs to move efficiently and pain-free.
Lower back pain is a huge problem that affects lots of people all over the world, making daily life tough for many. There’s a lot of advice out there, but also a lot of misunderstanding about what causes lower back pain and how to fix it. This post will help clear up some of those misunderstandings by showing how everything in our body is connected, which can lead us to better ways of dealing with the pain. You’ll get an idea of how I approach treating lower back pain.
Understand the Job of Your Joints/Sections of Your Body🦴
Our bodies are like well-oiled machines, with each part doing its own thing to keep us balanced and moving. Scott Hogan talks about this in his book “Built from Broken” (website). He says our ankles need to move freely to walk on different surfaces, while our knees need to be stable to hold up our upper body. Our hips need to be loose for all kinds of movements, like walking or bending, which means our lower back needs to be strong to hold up our upper body. Being able to move our upper body well is crucial for movement and breathing right. Knowing how all these parts work together helps stop lower back pain and keeps our body working well.
Do Not Focus Where the Pain Is 🎯
A lot of people try to make their lower back stronger because they think it will stop the pain. But if you don’t also work on making your hips and upper body (thoracic cage) more flexible, you might actually make things worse. This shows that just working on the sore spot isn’t enough. We need to think about our whole body to really solve the problem.
Understand How Your Spine Can Move Is Key🗝️
The spine’s ability to bend, stretch, twist, and turn is really important for how we move. Keeping our spine flexible and strong means we can do our everyday activities without pain. The best way to keep your spine happy is to use it in all the ways it can move. This includes standing up straight and making sure your feet, ankles, knees, and hips are all lined up right.
I know this might sound complicated, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. Just by being aware of how you move your body in daily activities, like walking or squatting, you can make a big difference.
TIPS FOR YOU, TO ACT ON NOW
Understanding Body Mechanics
Stay Active Throughout the Day: Keep moving around during your day. Changing how you sit or stand and taking short walks can help keep your hips and upper back flexible.
Incorporate Movement Variety: Do different activities that get you moving in various ways. This could be gardening, dancing, or anything that gets your whole body involved. Movement is key, so keep moving but don’t push through pain. See instagram post for movement to get you out of sitting position
Core Engagement
Core Engagement: Pay attention to using your core muscles during your daily activities. A strong core helps support your lower back and lowers the chance of getting hurt. Practicing deep breathing helps support your back too. See instagram post for optimal breathing
Lifestyle Adjustments
Ergonomic Adjustments: Change your workspace and home to make sure you’re sitting and moving in ways that don’t hurt your back. Use chairs that help keep your spine’s natural curve and make sure your screens are at the right height.
Stress Management: Being stressed can make your muscles tense, especially around your shoulders and mid-back. Trying out deep breathing or mindfulness can help relax these muscles.
Listening to Your Body
Recognize Pain Signals: Pay attention to your body and notice when it’s telling you something hurts. Changing how you move or taking breaks can help avoid making the pain worse. Include break every 20/30 minutes
Hydration and Nutrition: Drink plenty of water and eat well to help your body, including your muscles and joints, work better. Be careful with coffee though—I love it too, but it can dehydrate you, so make sure it’s not all you’re drinking!
Conclusion
Getting to know the balance between moving freely and being stable helps us see lower back pain in a new way. By looking at our body as a whole, we can find better relief and improve our overall health. Remember, your spine is super important for everything you do—take good care of it!
If you have been struggling with chronic pain for too long and you are looking for a long term solution, I have been helping people with corrective exercises and functional training.
A question I get often at my studio in Rotterdam where I spend time helping people. They stand straight and ask me: ‘What do you think, is my posture good?’
To answer the question, what is good posture? I would simply say that it is the flawless way you move in space. Considering your skeleton and muscles, without creating unnecessary tension in certain group of muscles.
We often examine posture while we sit or stand. These two positions of course do matter. To emphasize the importance of posture I would rather push it further by claiming that it is the way you move that actually matters the most. The question should be: ‘How do I move?’
Having a poor static forward head posture with the pelvis tilted anteriorly (drawing 2 and 4) is indeed not ideal at all. For me this is one of the signals on predicting how you probably move afterwards.
For a good static posture you want to have your pelvis aligned with you feet and your thoracic cage right above your pelvis (drawing 1) and not backward or forward.
Based on the knowledge of the body and my experience that I have cumulated over the years, I would like to tackle two points before we go any further.
One in particular that has been going for way too long: the army posture.
I have nothing against army people. I actually have lots of respect for what they do and their dedication to their country.
What I am trying to say here is that if there is one thing you should not desire it is their posture. When they are on “garde a vous”, focus on their organization and discipline for your everyday life, not the posture.
Often talking about posture with patients in my practise they almost immediately acknowledge that their posture can be improved. In their attempt to show the good way, they automatically bring their shoulders backwards and lift their chest up. This posture definitely transcends more confidence than the one with the infamous forward heard posture (which has the tendency to create neck pain and headaches). However, this confident look will create tensions: the muscles between your shoulder blades and neck (rhomboids, inferior trapezius, posterior deltoid, lats and more) are constantly contracting and shortened. While the (pectoral) muscles at the front of the body will be in constant stretch tension. Which can weaken the muscle and in the long run create trigger points.
This brings me to the other point I wanted to touch: tools to ‘improve’ posture and in particular the brace for shoulders.
Source: somewhere on the world wide web, definitely not planning to do any advertising.
Again I know that in nowadays world having rounded shoulders and forward head posture is a big issue. I also admit that it is not the most esthetical posture to have. Many companies also figured that out. Posture correction braces have popped out in the market. As I mentioned above you do not correct a posture by simply bringing your shoulder backward and your chest out.
This tool can be good for only two points in a really short (!) term gain:
It will release the tension on your back, mostly top and shoulder muscles, as it is going to hold back your shoulders from the tension you have most likely cumulated at the front (pectoral muscle, front line).
You won’t have these rounded shoulders which no one likes to have.
However, on top of the monetary price there is also a physical price tag. Braces take overthe work of some of the muscles involved in helping the extension of the spine (opposite flexion). You will slowly inhibit those muscles and as you do not use them you might end up…losing them!
Having your shoulders forced backward on an unadapted system creates more constraints than anything else. As the back side of your ribcage is losing mobility and cannot expand due to the braces holding your shoulder back, it has negative impact on your breathing. Then that could also reducerotational mobility of the thoracic cage as your ribs move when you rotate to the right or left.
If you have rounded shoulder it is a result of the entire body, shifting into that position it is not only your shoulders rounding. Your pelvis has a big share in how you move and stand as it is the gravity center of your whole body.
I look at the body with lines (that’s actually where the name MotionLine is based on 😉). Considering the whole body as one, directed by many lines helping the body to move in different plans. Above is all about the ‘front’ and ‘back line’ of the body. Tom Millers and his team did a brilliant work in the book Anatomy Trains by explaining how we move via lines. The book takes into account the different interrelated myofascial meridians that make us move.
Be gentle with your body and do not create unnecessary tension.
Now as promised, I give you two tipsto work on your posture and especially helping to get rid of the tension you might have on top of your shoulder and neck.
TIP #1
Release the muscles in front of your shoulders. We tend to forget those ones way too often. I created two videos using two different tools.
Section : Shoulder / releases / movement Video : 02 and 03
TIP #2
While sitting or standing in front of a mirror, put both hands on your sternum (chest bone). Make sure you are not curving your lower back to get your sternum to move away from your spine.
Take a deep inhale intentionally making your chest bigger, feeling it moving away from your spine. Exhale while keeping the same posture, feeling your chest moving towards your spine.
Do that 5 times while looking at yourself in the mirror. Now let your arms hang next to your body and repeat 5 more times. Notice your shoulders automatically adjusting themselves without almost any effort.
To close this article I would like to accentuate the fact that you do not correct a posture by just changing one thing on the body. Bringing awareness on the matter is probably the best thing you can start with.
If you notice that you have more and more difficulties doing certain movements, holding yourself straight, cannot breath properly…start thinking about your posture!
If you need help I am more than happy to help you in that journey, check the link below for my page move better, and book a 30 minute assessment session to plan your journey back to pain free.
In my opinion, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to breathing. Instead, it’s about understanding the different breathing possibilities available to us and learning to adjust our breathing in various situations or activities.
In this article, I will share my top five breathing points for transitioning from autopilot breathing to conscious breathing and improving breathing quality. Tip at the end of the article.
1# Nose breathing
I wanted to start with nose breathing as to my opinion it is the most important aspects to take into account in our breathing system. Below you will see several aspects explaining the why. And you can start right away … close your mouth and breath !! 🙂
Improved Oxygen Intake: When you breathe through your nose, the air is warmed and moistened, making it easier for the lungs to absorb oxygen.
Increased blood flow: Nitric oxide (NO) is a gas that is produced naturally in the body and has many important physiological functions, including regulating blood pressure, promoting blood flow, and supporting the immune system. In addition to these functions, nitric oxide also plays an important role in breathing. If you want to read more I linked an article.
Filtering and Protection: The nose has tiny hairs called cilia, which help filter out dust, allergens, and other particles from the air. The nasal passages also produce mucus, which traps bacteria and other harmful substances before they can enter the lungs.
Improved Lung Function: Nose breathing helps to regulate the amount of air that enters the lungs, which can improve lung function and oxygen uptake.
Relaxation and reduced Stress: Nose breathing has been shown to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which can promote relaxation and reduce stress levels. Improved
Sleep: Nose breathing can improve sleep quality by reducing snoring and sleep apnea, and promoting better oxygenation of the body during sleep. I will be writting an article to go more into depth in that topic with some tips to work on it as it is a serious matter.
2# Belly breathing
Belly breathing, or diaphragmatic breathing (see diaphragm drawing below)uses the large muscle at the base of your lungs to take deep, slow breaths. This technique provides numerous benefits for your physical and mental wellbeing.
Increased oxygenation: Belly breathing allows for deeper and more efficient breathing, which can help to increase oxygen intake and improve overall lung function.
Reduced stress: Belly breathing has been shown to activate the relaxation response, which can reduce feelings of stress and anxiety as it is linked to the parasympathetic nervous system (video instagram). It can also lower heart rate and blood pressure, and promote feelings of calm and relaxation.
Improved Digestion: Belly breathing can stimulate the digestive system and improve gut motility, which can help to reduce symptoms of indigestion, constipation, and other digestive disorders.
Strengthened diaphragm: Regular belly breathing can help to strengthen the diaphragm muscle, which can improve breathing function and support overall respiratory health.
3# Chest breathing
The infamous one 🙂 Technically there is nothing wrong with breathing through the chest. It is part of our breathing system. Try to get a deep inhale starting in the belly then through the chest you will most likely feel better and a bit more energized !(did you do it?).
So what is the matter with chest breathing?
Breathing through the chest is a natural part of our respiratory system. However, breathing through the belly first and then through the chest can be more effective in promoting deeper breathing and providing a sense of energy and relaxation.
The main issue with breathing exclusively through the chest is that it can be inefficient and lead to feelings of fatigue and breathlessness. By relying solely on the chest muscles to breathe, we are not utilizing the full potential of our respiratory system and decrease the intake of oxygen.
This will lead to shallow breathing, which can also create a build up of CO2 in the bloodstream (hypercapnia), leading to dizziness, fatigue and shortness of breath.
Additionally, poor posture can exacerbate the problem. Our tendency to sit for prolonged periods of time, coupled with a forward head posture (drawing skeleton far right/ source unknown), can cause our ribcage to collapse and restrict our breathing.
To improve breathing function and overall health, it’s important to practice both belly and chest breathing, and pay attention to maintaining good posture throughout the day using breathing as well.
4# Breathing capacity
Breathing capacity refers to the amount of air that can be inhaled and exhaled during a single breath. Using the whole breathing system involves engaging both the chest and belly muscles to achieve deeper, more efficient breathing.
When we breathe, the diaphragm and intercostal muscles in the chest and ribcage work together to draw air into the lungs and then expel it. By utilizing the full capacity of our breathing system, we can improve our lung function and overall respiratory health.
Improving breathing capacity can have a range of benefits for our physical and mental health. By taking in more oxygen, we can increase our energy levels, reduce feelings of fatigue, and improve mental clarity and focus.
Deep breathing exercises can also help to reduce stress and anxiety and more. It’s important to note that building breathing capacity takes time and practice. I recommended to start slowly and gradually work up to longer periods of deep breathing exercises.
This is one of my major focus on helping people with breathing. I made up some practice either online or physical that are focusing on improving the full breathing capacity. If you are interested I added a link of my next online session (“wednesday evening session”). If you are not a big fan of online which I can understand, I also do it physically in my practice in Rotterdam.
5# Autopilot breathing
Autopilot breathing is a term used to describe the unconscious, automatic breathing pattern that most people use during their daily activities. This type of breathing is characterized by shallow, rapid breaths that do not fully engage the diaphragm and other respiratory muscles.
Autopilot breathing is often associated with stress and anxiety, as well as poor posture and other lifestyle factors. While autopilot breathing can be useful in certain situations, such as during physical activity or in response to stress, it can also be detrimental to our overall health and well-being. Shallow breathing can lead to a buildup of carbon dioxide in the body, which can cause feelings of fatigue, dizziness, and mental fog (like I mentioned above).
Additionally, shallow breathing can lead to tension and strain in the neck and shoulders, as well as other parts of the body. To overcome autopilot breathing and improve respiratory function, it’s important to practice deep breathing exercises on a regular basis.
My tip for you, every time you think about it while sitting, take 2 or 3 deep inhale going from the belly and the chest, then try to breath slowly in the belly for as long as you can control/think 🙂
Try whenever you think about it to get in control of your breathing, that is a great start to control stress and focus.
Do that as often as you can !!
In conclusion, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to breathing, and it’s essential to understand the different breathing possibilities available to us and learn to adjust our breathing in various situations or activities. Nose breathing, belly breathing, and chest breathing all have their benefits, and it’s essential to practice each technique to improve breathing capacity and overall respiratory health.
By using the full capacity of our breathing system, we can increase oxygen intake, reduce stress and anxiety, improve cardiovascular health, and promote relaxation and calmness.
Regular practice of deep breathing exercises involving good posture can also help to improve breathing function and capacity.
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