If you’ve experienced or are experiencing sciatica or back pain you’re not along. An estimated 80% of us experience some type of back pain regularly.

But what exactly is sciatica? It’s signature is a pulsing pain that can radiate through the hips, legs or feet and it really isn’t any fun at all when it strikes and can become quite debilitating.

It’s triggered by your sciatic nerve misbehaving. This nerve is make of five nerve roots that start at your lower back. These nerve roots join together and run from your lower back and down through each leg and then into your feet.

Occasionally these nerves can become irritated, injured or compressed resulting in what can be a lot of discomfort and pain. But depending on which nerve it is that is having an issue the sciatic pain can be experiences and felt in a range of locations and with different symptoms such as stabbing, burning, numbness, tingling or weakness.

Massage therapy and particularly deep tissue massage using trigger points and other techniques can be very helpful to help realigning and treat the issues causing the sciatica problems.

If you have a tight lower back or are misaligned this can put additional pressure on the nerves and cause or worsen inflammation so by working out any tight spots or knots it can help ease the pressure hopefully bring some much needed relief.

In addition those powerful ‘feel good’ hormones that are released during a massage can act as an all over pain reducer.

Another key component is baring in mind that when we’re in pain, other parts of our body tend to try and compensate and take on additional load or change their holding patterns to lessen the pain in the affected area.- but this can then create another problem in another area of the body that is compensating. 

Please note that you should always consult a doctor about your sciatica pain and help confirm any diagnosis that may need to be made.