Back pain & posture
For the people who have quietly stopped doing things — lifting the grandchild, sitting through a flight, sleeping on one side — and have started calling it age.
It is almost never the back
A lower back that hurts is usually the loudest part of a quiet chain: a hip that stopped rotating years ago, a glute that switched off after an old injury, ribs held rigid by a breathing pattern learnt under stress.
The back is where the bill arrives. Treating it there is why the pain comes back a fortnight after every massage, every adjustment, every good week of stretching.
Sukhdev’s work starts one or two links up the chain from where it hurts. That is why the first session is spent watching you move rather than treating the sore spot.
What he sees most weeks
Chronic lower back pain
Years old, worse in the morning and after sitting, comes and goes but never truly leaves. Usually a hip mobility and glute recruitment problem wearing a back-pain costume.
Neck, shoulders and headaches
Desk posture plus upper-chest breathing. Tension headaches that arrive around 3pm. The trapezius doing the job the diaphragm has stopped doing.
Sciatica and nerve pain
Referred pain down the leg, numbness, pins and needles. Needs careful screening first — some presentations belong with a doctor before anyone touches a mat.
Post-injury stiffness
The knee, ankle or shoulder healed, but you never moved the same again and the compensations have now created a second problem elsewhere.
Poor sleep and shallow breath
Waking at 3am, never fully rested, chest that will not settle. A nervous system stuck in a gear it does not need to be in.
Stiffness that arrived with fifty
Nothing acutely wrong. Just a body that has slowly narrowed the range of things it is willing to do. This is the most reversible group of all.
What actually happens in an assessment
- History. Every injury, surgery, sport and desk you have had. Most answers are in here.
- Breath. Where you breathe from, at rest and under mild load. This alone changes the plan for most people.
- Standing screen. Front, side, back — photographed so you can see what he sees.
- Movement screen. Squat, hinge, rotate, reach overhead. Filmed. This is the day-one benchmark.
- Load test. What happens to the pattern when the body is asked to do something rather than hold still.
- The plan. Written, in plain language: what to do daily, what to do weekly, and what to stop doing immediately.
Back pain, honestly answered
I have a slipped disc / herniation. Is yoga safe?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and it depends entirely on the disc, the stage and what else is going on. Sukhdev will ask for your diagnosis and imaging on the free call and will tell you honestly if this is not the right time. Where it is appropriate he works alongside your doctor or physiotherapist, never in place of them.
I have already done physiotherapy. How is this different?
Physiotherapy is usually excellent at the acute stage — settling the tissue that is angry right now. What it often does not do is change the daily pattern that made the tissue angry in the first place. This work is about the pattern: how you sit, breathe, rotate and load, every day, for the next thirty years.
How quickly will the pain go?
Most people feel a change in the first two or three sessions, usually in sleep and in morning stiffness. Real structural change in posture takes closer to ten. Anyone promising you a fix in one session is selling something.
I sit at a desk twelve hours a day. Can anything actually help?
Yes, but not by adding an hour of stretching to a day of sitting. The programme changes how you sit, how you breathe while sitting, and gives you two or three ninety-second interventions to use during the day. That is what moves the needle for desk-bound clients.
Do I need to be flexible to start?
No. Most clients cannot touch their toes on day one. Flexibility is an outcome, not an entry requirement.
How long have you been working around it?
Bring the years, the MRIs and the list of things you have stopped doing. Fifteen minutes, no charge.