Sciatica Relief With One Exercise

What's going on everyone? Welcome back to my channel. In today's video, we're talking about sciatica, which is back pain that radiates along the sciatic distribution. So it typically goes into the buttock, the back of the thigh, and if it gets really severe, even down into the calf and foot. Now there's one exercise that specifically targets the nerve that can really help reduce pain, but it's one that many patients don't know about. So in today's video, I'm going to show two variations of this exercise. You'll choose the one that is best for your current situation, and I'll explain how to choose it. And then once you start implementing it, it really can help improve the health of the nerve and reduce pain. So if you're dealing with sciatica, stay tuned for today's video. So as I mentioned, there's really two variations of this exercise we're going to do for the sciatic nerve, and really this is a nerve mobilization. We have these for other nerves in our body, but this is the one really we deal with the most because most people have, in terms of nerve pain, have sciatica. So this first variation of the exercise is going to be lying on your back. It's going to be the less aggressive version. So if you're unsure of where to start, maybe start with this one because if you pick the more aggressive one, it can flare your nerve up if you're not ready for it. So for this one, what you're going to do is lie on your back. You're going to take the leg that has the sciatica symptoms, and you're going to bring it up so the thigh is vertical, and then hold your hands back behind and stabilize it there. Now what's going to happen is that when the knee straightens, this is going to put my sciatic nerve, which is running through my buttock, between my hamstrings and down my leg, this is going to put it on tension. So there's going to be a point here when you raise it that's probably going to create stretch and maybe some pain, numbness, tingling. So the key is to find that spot where you just feel it starting to turn on. You don't want to aggravate the nerve, so we're just going to where we feel it turn on. And once you find that spot, now we're going to do what's called a nerve mobilization or sometimes called nerve flossing. So when I pull my ankle down, that's going to put the nerve on more tension. So when I do that, I want to leave my head just where it is, and then I'm going to alternate. As I point my foot and take tension off the nerve, I'm going to raise my head, and then I'm going to alternate between the two. So my ankle comes down, my head goes down, and then when my head comes up, my ankle points. This is going to kind of pull the nerve back and forth from my ankle to my head, and previous research has shown that doing these types of mobilizations for nerves can actually help improve blood flow to the nerve and reduce pain. So for this, if this is the position, the variation that works for you, you're going to just do 10 to 15 repetitions to kind of get blood into the nerve and reduce pain. And when you're done, just set it down, kind of shake it out, give it a rest, and then you can do that a few times throughout the day if it helps reduce pain. Now if that's way too easy and you don't feel your pain at all, then you'll want to go to the next variation. So now we're on to variation two of this sciatic nerve mobilization. Again, this is the one that's more aggressive. It's going to put more tension on the nerve. So if you didn't feel anything in the last one, then you'll want to try this one. So what we're going to do, this is called a slump position. We often have people put their hands behind their back. You can just put them in front of you too, but what you're going to do is slouch down. This will put tension through your spinal cord and wind the nervous system up. Then what I'm going to do is slowly straighten my knee. Oftentimes when people get into this position, they'll feel stretch and pain and might even recreate their back pain. So we're going to do a similar mobilization to what we did a second ago. When my ankle pulls up, I'm going to look up with my head, and then when my head goes down, my ankle's going to point. So we're just alternating where we have tension on the nerve. Sometimes the tension's down at the ankle, like right now, and then the tension's up at the neck. So I'm going to alternate back and forth like that, again, 10 to 15 times to help mobilize the nerve and improve blood delivery to it. So that's the slump mobilization, and the other one was called the straight leg raise mobilization. Those are our two main options when it comes to sciatic nerve mobilization, and again, it's an exercise that most people don't know about. Sometimes it's called nerve flossing, but it can really be helpful in terms of getting rid of sciatica type of pain. For a lot of people, it's the best exercise. So give those a try, and please let me know if you have any questions in the comments section. All right, you guys, I'll see you next time. Bye.