Low Back Pain Caused by Muscle Knots

Low back pain…Do you wake up it and feel it through the day?

As you get out of bed, does the pain in your back ever take your breath away or make you wince?

Do you move slowly?  Do your hips feel “locked”?

As the day goes on do you find yourself massaging your low back or trying to find comfortable positions?

Many people go to their chiropractor for back pain and it feels better for awhile but the pain keeps returning.  Muscle relaxants, anti-inflammatory drugs and pain-management pills can make the pain subside, but they do nothing for the source of the problem.

Did you know low back pain, among a long list of other aches and pains, can all be the result of muscle knots!?!

You do now!!

(Muscle knots are also known as trigger points and muscle spasms.)

Ok..now for a greater explanation of low back pain and muscle knots!  Hang on….it’s a real life changer!

While it seems too simple of a solution that a muscle knot can cause so much pain; it’s actually easy to see if you take a closer look at the body’s intricacies……There are 600 muscles pulling on the 206 bones in the body.  And those muscles are busy!  Think of all the movements you do over the course of a day!

How Muscles Make You Move:  Muscles originate (begin) at a stationary point in the body.  The muscle then crosses over a joint and inserts (ends) onto another bone.  As a muscle contracts it pulls on the insertion point in the direction of the origination point causing the joint to bend.

Low Back Pain Could Be Coming From Your Psoas and Your Iliacus Muscles…..my what?! 

There is a muscle called the psoas (pronounced “so-as”) that originates along the front side of your lumbar spine.  The muscle passes along the inside of your pelvis and then inserts into the inside/top of your thigh bone.  When the psoas contracts you go from standing straight up to bending forward.

A second muscle, called the iliacus, is along the entire inside of your pelvis and then merges with the psoas, with both of them inserting at the inside/top of your pelvis.  When your iliacus contracts, you lift up your leg to take a step.

Together the two muscles are called iliopsoas.  These two muscles control your sitting, walking, and bending movements.  That’s a lot of work!

Do a little experiment:  Stand straight up.  Place one of your fingers a few inches above your belly-button.  Place another finger on the top of your thigh bone.  Now bend forward.  Can you see how your muscles have to shorten in order to make that movement?  Now stand straight again.  Lift up your right leg.  Do you see again how the muscles shorten to make this movement too?

Every time you sit down these muscles contract to pull you into that position and then stay shortened the entire time you are sitting.  Think of the hours you do that every day!

Sitting is actually the #1 cause of low back pain because it is a repetitive strain on the muscles.


And I’m sorry to tell you if you sleep with your knees bent you are doing the same movement; the only difference is you are lying down.  So in this case, sleeping on your side is a repetitive strain on your body!

Here’s where it can get painful. 

As your iliopsoas stays contracted the whole time you are sitting or sleeping with your knees bent, it is pulling your lumbar vertebrae forward and down. 

When you stand up, the shortened muscles pull on your lumbar bones and this can cause pain in your lower back!

All this repetitive motion causes pain!!!  Pain in the form of spasms. (aka trigger points or muscle knots)


You can easily release trigger points in your muscles with self-applied pressure techniques, the Julstro Method.

And once you have released the trigger points you can then stretch safely, Hatha Yoga style!


I cannot stress enough the importance of stretching for a lifetime of vitality, but before you ever stretch a muscle, you must release the spasms in the muscle fibers first.  This is why I joined Ana Johnson & JoAnne Schaub to create a system that combines the Julstro self-treatments taught in Treat Yourself to Pain-Free Living with the traditional stretching postures taught in Hatha Yoga.
