If you have ever hurt your lower back or strained it, follow these steps to help loosen it up.

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent. Slowly pull your knees up to the chest until you feel a gentle stretch in your lower back.

2. Get on your hands and knees, walk your hands in front of you. Lower your buttocks down to sit on your heels. Let your arms drag along the floor as you sit back to stretch your entire spine. Once you settle onto your heels, bring your hands next to your feet and relax. “breathe” into your back. Rest your forehead on the floor. Avoid this position if you have knee problems.

3. Lie down with your feet on the floor, heels directly under your knees, arms overhead to relax your upper back. Lift only your tailbone to the ceiling to stretch your lower back. (Don’t lift the entire spine yet.) Pull in your stomach. To go into a bridge, lift the entire spine except the neck. The bridge isn’t a lower-back stretch (it actually stretches the abdominals and hip flexors), but it is a mobility exercise for the lower back that relieves lower-back pain. This posture lets the fluid in the vertebrae trickle down to the back of the vertebrae (usually, in a slumped seated posture, that fluid falls forward into the discs). When you move into and out of the bridge, move slowly, one vertebrae at a time.

4. Lie on your back with knees bent and feet flat on the floor.  Exhale and press the small of your back against the floor.  Hold for 15 seconds.  Return to the starting position.  Repeat 9 more times.