Originally Posted by globecanvas

After a few months of relative back health, today was a disaster. Long car ride followed by a bad motel bed and then too much coffee -- then this morning I stretched a little bit in the wrong direction and blammo, I can practically feel the disc herniating itself between my shoulder blades, hurts to move or even breathe.

Aleve, a bunch of lying on a hard floor, and then some careful counterstretches and the pain got manageable. Then an hour ago, I did the same stretch without thinking and blammo again. Counterstretched right away, which helped immediately, but it still hurts and feels super delicate and edgy. I feel like my spine is a stack of Jenga blocks just waiting for a bunch of pieces to slide sideways and collapse.

I doubt this is portable to anyone else's back pain, but the counterstretch that seems to almost push the disc back towards where it is supposed to be, is simply to grab something at chest height (steering wheel works, if driving) and try to push the shoulders straight down towards the hips, making the spine convex forwards, like a letter C if looking from the left side. Lying on my back and rolling the spine over a roller accomplishes much the same thing but is far, far more painful.