How to Use Tennis Balls for DIY Lower Back Pain Massage

Nearly everyone can benefit from massage therapy and its ability to relax muscle tissue and improve blood flow. This may be especially true for chronic patients who rely on frequent treatments from chiropractors or massage therapists.

In fact, those with chronic pain may find that they’d like to get more massages, but it's too expensive.

With this in mind, we searched for some do-it-yourself ideas and found great examples of how patients with back pain can seek pain relief through do-it-yourself massage techniques.

All that’s needed for this DIY massage is a couple of tennis balls, some duct tape, a floor, and no more than 10 to 15 minutes daily.

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Sound interesting? Here's what you'll need to do:

1. Place 2 tennis balls next to each other and use as much duct tape as needed to secure the balls in this shape. When completed, the tennis balls and duct tape contraption will look like a peanut.
2. Place the tennis balls on the ground and then lie on them in the supine position (lying down face-up), keeping the knees bent. The tennis balls should be parallel to your waist and centered just above the lumbar spine (lower back).
3. Adjust yourself until you feel balanced and comfortable, and then raise both arms with your fingers pointed toward the ceiling. Keep your arms as straight as possible.
4. Beginning with either your right or left arm, slowly lower your arm back toward your head. Once again, keep your arms as straight as possible and feel free to bend your neck backward when moving your arms.
5. Bring the arm backward to the ground. Hold this position for a couple seconds, then slowly bring it back to its original starting position.
6. Repeat the same action with the other arm.
7. Complete for each arm 4 more times.

You can also use an individual tennis ball to relieve lower back, buttock, or even sciaticapain.

See Types of Sciatic Nerve Pain

Place the ball under your back, buttock, or upper thigh while you lie on the floor and gently move yourself around to find sore muscle groups. Once you find a tender spot, you can focus and press there, but not too hard. Do not roll the ball directly over your spine. And stop right away if you feel any sharp or sudden pain.

Massage is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ways to relieve lower back pain. Exercise is crucial to keeping lower back pain at bay, and there are many low-impact options that can help you keep moving.

This article originally appeared in spine-health.com and was written by Stephanie Burke.