How to Relieve Back Pain: Three Things You Can Do Right Now

You’ve probably already tried the obvious things. Rest. Being careful. Avoiding the movements that hurt. And yet here you are, still in pain, possibly more anxious about your back than you were six months ago. That’s not a coincidence, and it’s not a character flaw. It’s what happens when the advice you’ve been given is pointed in the wrong direction.

Here are three things you can do right now that will actually start moving the needle.

Stop Resting. Start Moving.

I know this sounds counterintuitive. When something hurts, the instinct is to protect it. Rest it. Wait for it to calm down. But with back pain, prolonged rest is almost always the wrong call.

Your body needs appropriate movement to heal. Not aggressive loading, not a heavy deadlift session, but gentle, daily spinal motion. The kind that reminds your nervous system that movement is safe. Because here’s the thing: a significant part of what you’re experiencing as pain is your brain’s threat response. It has decided that your back is in danger, and it is producing pain to stop you from moving. Rest reinforces that message. It tells your brain, “Yes, this is dangerous, we should avoid it.”

Gentle movement does the opposite. It sends a signal back: “I’m safe. I can do this.” Over time, that signal starts to reduce the pain response.

This doesn’t mean pushing through sharp, severe pain. It means finding the movements you can do without aggravating things and doing them consistently. A short walk. Some gentle spinal rotation. Breathing exercises. The specifics matter and they’re different for everyone, but the principle is the same: motion is lotion, as the saying goes, and in this case the saying is actually right.

What you want to avoid is the cycle where pain leads to rest, rest leads to stiffness, stiffness leads to more fear, and fear leads to more pain. That cycle is real, and it is self-reinforcing. Breaking it starts with moving, even a little, even gently.

Stop Catastrophising. Start Redefining What Pain Actually Is.

This one is harder, because it asks you to change how you think, not just what you do. But it is often an incredibly important shift a person can make.

When you feel a twinge in your back, what’s your first thought? For most people I work with, it’s something like: “That’s it. I’ve done something. This is going to be bad.” Panic sets in and then the pain gets worse. Not because the twinge was serious, but because the fear response amplifies the pain signal.

Pain is not a direct readout of tissue damage. It is your brain’s best guess about threat level, based on everything it knows: things like your history, your stress levels, your beliefs about your body, and yes, the physical signals coming from your back. When your brain perceives high threat, it turns up the pain. When it perceives low threat, it turns it down. This is not a theory or a fringe idea; it is how pain physiology works.

So what does “redefining pain” actually look like in practice?

It means, when you feel a flare, pausing before you catastrophise. Reminding yourself that pain is a signal, not a verdict. It means asking, “Is this actually really bad, or is my nervous system being overly protective?” Most of the time, for people with chronic back pain, the answer is the latter.

One client described it well: before working with me, any slight twinge would make them panic, which only seemed to increase the pain. Learning not to jump to worst-case scenarios was their first real win. Not because the pain disappeared immediately, but because they stopped pouring fuel on the fire.

This is what I mean when I talk about a nervous-system-first approach. Treating back pain as a purely biomechanical problem, something to be fixed with the right stretch or the right exercise alone, misses half the picture. The brain is involved. The threat response is involved. And addressing that side of things is not soft or secondary; it is central to getting out of pain once and for all.

Stop Stressing. Start Breathing.

Stress and back pain have a relationship that most people don’t fully appreciate. Chronic stress keeps your nervous system in a heightened state of alert. And a nervous system on high alert is a nervous system that is more sensitive to pain. It doesn’t take much to tip it over the edge.

So stress management is not a nice-to-have. It is a direct lever on your pain levels.

The most immediate tool you have for this is your breath. Specifically, slow, deep diaphragmatic breathing, where you breathe into your belly, not just your chest. This activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest and digest” side, which counteracts the stress response and lowers your overall threat level. Less threat, less pain.

But there’s a second reason diaphragmatic breathing matters for back pain, and this one is more structural. The diaphragm is a core muscle. Proper diaphragmatic breathing is actually a prerequisite for healthy core function. If you’re breathing shallowly into your chest all day, your deep core stabilisers are not getting the activation they need. That matters for spinal stability, which matters for back pain.

So a few minutes of slow, deliberate diaphragmatic breathing each day is doing two jobs at once: calming your nervous system and laying the groundwork for better core function. It is one of the simplest, most accessible things you can do, and it costs nothing.

If you’re not sure whether you’re doing it right, try this: lie on your back with one hand on your chest and one on your lower belly. As you breathe in, the belly hand and chest hand should rise up together towards the ceiling, with the belly hand rising at a greater amplitude than your chest hand. The chest hand only moves a little. If you’re only noticing your chest hand rising and especially if it’s rising up towards your chin, then you’re chest breathing, and that needs addressing.

What All Three of These Have in Common

You’ll notice that none of these three things are about finding the perfect stretch, or buying a new mattress, or waiting for the right diagnosis. They are all about changing the inputs your nervous system is receiving.

Movement tells it: safe.
Calm thinking tells it: not a threat.
Slow breathing tells it: we’re okay.

That’s the logic behind everything I do with clients. Pain is not your enemy. Pain is a signal, and signals can be changed. The right inputs produce the right output, and that output is pain-free movement.

This is also why generic information, however well-intentioned, only gets you so far. The principles above are real and they apply broadly, but how you apply them to YOUR specific situation, your history, your movement patterns, your stress load, your sleep, your lifestyle, is where the actual work happens. That’s where lasting change comes from.

What This Doesn’t Replace

These three things are a genuine starting point, but they are definitely NOT a complete programme. If you’ve been in pain for months or years, there are almost certainly specific factors driving your situation that need to be assessed properly before you can address them properly.

The breathing pattern that helps one person might need to be built on a different foundation for another. The movement that’s appropriate for someone with a disc issue is different from what’s appropriate for someone with a facet joint problem. And the catastrophising patterns that keep one person stuck might look completely different in someone else.

This is why I work the way I do: assessing first, programming second, reassessing constantly. The principles are universal; the application is always individual.

If you’ve been managing your back pain rather than actually resolving it, that’s worth examining. Managing it indefinitely is not the goal. Getting out of it once and for all, and building a strong, confident, pain-free body in the process, that’s the goal.

Where to Go From Here

Start with the three things above. They are not placeholders while you wait for something better; they are genuinely useful, and you will likely notice a difference if you apply them consistently.

If you want to go further, and you’re ready to stop managing this and start actually fixing it, the next step is a proper assessment. You can find out more about how I work and what a programme involves on the Back Pain Rehabilitation in London (EVOLVE Programme) page, or if you want to see what combining rehabilitation with physique work looks like, the Back Pain Rehab & Physique Transformation in London page covers that.

When you’re ready to talk, book a consultation and we’ll take a proper look at what’s going on. No pressure, no hard sell; just an honest conversation about your situation and what it would actually take to get you out of it.