Sequence to support your back

A - Start with a few Cats (Cat-Cow in American yoga speak). From all fours, hands under shoulders and knees under hips, dip and then arch the whole spine, from the tailbone to the crown of the head. Breathe while you move and notice which way your breath tends to go - are you breathing in while you lift your head or while you curl it? Try it the other way round.

Next, you need to know how to measure 7 seconds. You might say 'One elephant, two elephant...' or 'ONE and-a TWO and-a THREE' or 'One Mississippi...' Most people I teach are at 7 seconds by the time they have four or five elephants. Try it out with an Online timer. 

B - Then lie down on your back, right leg bent and left leg straight. Tuck your right hand under the curve of your waist, palm down. Be aware of the shape of your spine as it is now. Put your other hand under your neck and skull. (The stick man's neck never bothers him when lifting his head, so he has put both hands under his back.) Keep breathing naturally through all the exercises - you don't have to match breath with movement. 

Raise your head so your face stays flat to the ceiling - your point of view doesn't change at all. You just lift a tiny bit - only your head and upper shoulders come up.Keep breathing naturally.

You come up just for 7 seconds at a time; release completely each time you come down. Do 4 like this, then change the arms and legs round.

C - The next one is Side Elbow Plank.. You can mix and match difficulty range to find something that suits you. You could do 2 with the bottom knee down and the arm to the ceiling then two with the feet stacked and the upper arm swept forward for example. Make the same pattern on each side though, and do four on each side, coming up for 7 seconds each.

Easiest version for legs and arm- bottom knee down, arm swept overhead

Top foot in front of the other makes balance relatively easy

Feet stacked and top arm resting is the most challenging

D - You don't have to have a pilates ball balanced on your back, but it helps to feel the stability you're looking for. As before, keep breathing throughout the exercise, come up for 7 seconds, relax when you bring the knee and arm back down, do 4 of one diagonal before you change to the opposite diagonal. Some people naturally raise the same arm and leg. It's much more difficult to keep the ball balanced, and this isn't the exercise we're doing here.

Spine what you might call 'flat' or 'neutral' - not dipped or arched

Once the basic version of this is easy for you, you can work on moving the arm and leg at precisely the same movement and at extending further, but not lifting into an arch - keep the arm, leg and spine on a level.

When you're happy doing 4 on one side and 4 on the other of exercises B, C and D you can add a few more till you do a maximum of 4 and 4, then 2 and 2, then 1 and 1. It's all the 7s - always doing 7 seconds and a maximum of 7 on each side.

Don't do them on tired muscles. Judge when you're pushing it and do them regularly till they're easy. This is not a feel-the-burn thing. This is a happy back thing. The whole thing will take between 10 and 15 minutes, depending how long you rest in between each one.

This little routine was inspired by the work of Stuart McGill and his team. Their work is infinitely more detailed than this little blog post and fascinating. Google around, there's tons out there.

I was taught this years ago by an excellent Cambridge osteopath, Mojo Rathbone. I'd gone in with a recurrent low back pain issue, at that stage in an acute phase, following years of chronic recurrences. I did it really regularly for a while and then eased off, now it's very occasional. I believe there's reasonably good evidence for the exercises, and anecdotally in the classes we have many students who've benefited from them.