02/02/2026
Join us in July for a deeply connected, paradigm-shifting week with one of Yoga’s great Teachers.
The Journey to a Pain-Free Back
I began suffering from back pain in my late teens and by the time I’d come to the end of my twenties I’d seen a long list of chiropractors, body workers, physiotherapists, neurologists and yes, yoga teachers. Some offered momentary relief, and others insight but no clear or cogent understanding of the cause of my back pain or a path towards recovery and resolution. It would be nice to say that “yoga cured my back”, but the truth is, many of the practices that were harming my back were also the ones I was being encouraged to do.
Over decades of teaching, I’ve learned that my experience is not singular. The World Health Organization calls back pain “the leading cause of disability worldwide . . . and the condition for which the greatest number of people may benefit from rehabilitation.” But what about prevention, and how can an intelligent yoga practice balance and strengthen the back? How does the health and mobility of the whole body contribute to a sense of ease, graceful posture and a pain-free spine? And why do more traditional allopathic approaches to back care so often fail to reap results?
In my late twenties and with a diminishing reserve of funds to pay for treatment, I went back to university and studied anatomy, kinesiology, physiology and interdisciplinary sciences. I scoured medical libraries, and devoured books such as Ida Rolf’s groundbreaking “The Integration of Human Structures”. I also began to question just about every instruction I was hearing in yoga classes from “hips square to the front” in standing postures, to the practice of pushing down on knees in Bound Angle. Most of those instructions and common “adjustments” were dead wrong and sadly they are still being parroted and practiced worldwide.
What I now know is much of what passes as inevitable back discomfort is avoidable, and indeed preventable when we understand the structure of our spine and work with rather than against our body. This has led me to practice and teach in an utterly different way to what I was originally taught. I no longer have debilitating back pain, and when I do get a ni**le, I know what to do about it.
If you’d like to upskill your understanding of the spine and its relationship to the whole body, there are two courses I’ll be offering this year. The first is an online course with my friends at YogaUOnline, Yoga for Lower Back Pain: Keys to Sacroiliac Stability and Ease of Movement.
https://www.yogauonline.courses/yoga-for-lower-back-pain-with-donna-farhi-2026-DF
There are four sessions to this course and two live Q & A gatherings. And if you are wanting Continuing Education Credits, you’ll receive 15 CES credits with Yoga Alliance or 15 APD Hours with the International Association of Yoga Therapy. Together with talented illustrator, Sonya Rooney, I developed conceptual drawings to make the hard stuff easy to understand. Between the PowerPoints and the experiential sessions, there’s a wealth of knowledge that can immediately be incorporated into practice. And if you like to review material, you can stop, rewind, and replay to your heart’s content.
The second course is LIVE, and offered in Denver, Colorado, July 10-14 (filling fast). In Foundations of a Healthy Back, you’ll have an opportunity to study spinal, core and sacroiliac anatomy and experience a treasure trove of practices for preventing, healing and maintaining a happy spine now and into the future. We have four teaching assistants for this event so that everyone gets the personal attention they need. https://www.myevolition.com/donna-farhi-intensive-2026
May you be well. May your spine be pain-free.
