How did I fix my lower back pain in less than two weeks?

By learning belly dancing basics through watching free tutorials. I’m not selling any kind of exercise program, I’m just trying to give some information and inspiration.

I was born with some misalignments in my hips which didn’t cause many problems unless I wanted to do something that requires hip flexibility, such as gymnastics when I was a little girl and martial arts as an adult.

The misalignments started causing pain in my lower back in the last few years that I owned my fine dining restaurant. Bussing tables was an effective way to check in on my guests while also supporting my staff, and I enjoyed it A LOT! But, after a while, bussing tables two shifts per day every day took its toll on my lower back.

My chiropractor advised me to hit my heavy-bag more while working on tightening my core. This helped, but I still had work to do.

About a month ago, I started doing belly dancing basics. I’ve always known that belly dancing and hula were great for developing martial artists’ hips, so they’ve been on my list of things to try, but I never got around to it until now. I found some free belly dancing beginning tutorials and started doing them in my bedroom in front of my mirror and then in my garage as part of my karate warmups—that’s where I took this selfie. The improvement happened so fast that I went ahead and bought this hip scarf because I’m going to continue belly dancing.

As a life coach, I encourage dynamic movement with an emphasis on mobility and fun. Mobility becomes even more important as we get older, the old “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” We need to be able to get up. And exercising should be fun. I have clients who practice martial arts, weightlift, dance, and go on long rigorous walks/hikes with their dogs.

I’m not sure where this quote originates but I do agree with it, “Exercise is a celebration of what your body can do, not a punishment for what you ate.”

How are you celebrating what your body can do?

Additional:

When I was doing Original Hard Style Kajukenbo, our best knife fighter was a color belt woman who was a hula dancer. We did knife fight sparring by using sidewalk chalk so you could see the “cuts” on your gi. Some people use lipstick on the cutting edges of practice knives, but chalk is much easier to wash out. Real life knife fights don’t really happen like sparring matches, but this game served as really good exercise in agility. It was also a great confidence booster for women because we are generally more agile then men. Any color belt woman was expected to beat any man up through Shodan (first degree black belt).

But this hula dancer, NOBODY could touch her, not even our Sifu who was 4th-5th dan when I was training with him. I’m unsure if his mom, who was 5th-6th dan, ever played this knife fight sparring with the hula dancer while I was there? But this hula dancer, whenever you tried to cut her she would swing her hips out of the way and then swing them back to cut you. After the knife sparring, her uniform was always clean while everyone else was marked up, and the people she fought with were marked up the worst.

Of all the men I’ve trained with, the two with the best hip movement both attribute their agile hips to having dated belly dancers who taught them how to use their hips. Pre-pandemic, a martial art/self-defense guy-friend asked me to take a belly-dancing class with him, but then he moved and so we never did it.

Now I’m doing it! Now I’m belly dancing! And it’s improving my martial arts really fast. And it’s resolving my lower back pain, which means I can now get back to weightlifting and resistance band training. And yes, of course, I’m progressing slowly, I can’t pick up where I left off.

I only wish I had started belly dancing earlier.