Yoga for a desk-bound back

Your spine wasn't built for eight hours in a chair, a commute through Manama traffic, and an evening curled over a phone. It was built to bend, twist, and reach. When it doesn't get to, it stiffens — and that dull ache between your shoulder blades is the bill arriving.

The good news: a back tightened by sitting is one of the easiest things yoga can help. You're not undoing damage so much as giving your spine back the movements it's been starved of.

What sitting actually does

Long sitting shortens the muscles at the front of your hips and rounds your upper back forward. Your neck juts toward the screen, your chest collapses, and the muscles meant to hold you upright slowly switch off. None of this is dramatic on any single day — which is exactly why it sneaks up on you.

Five shapes your spine is asking for

• Cat-cow. The simplest spinal reset there is. Arch and round on all fours, slowly, with your breath.
• Standing forward fold. Releases the whole back line, from heels to neck. Keep the knees soft.
• Low lunge. Opens the front of the hips that sitting keeps clamped shut. Hold each side and breathe.
• Cobra or gentle backbend. The exact opposite of your hunched desk posture. Lift the chest, keep the shoulders down.
• Supine twist. Lie down, drop both knees to one side, look the other way. This is the one people sigh into.

The habit that matters most

More important than any single pose is breaking up the sitting. Every hour or so, stand, reach overhead, roll your shoulders back, take three full breaths. It takes fifteen seconds and interrupts the slow stiffening before it sets.

Do the five shapes above in the evening, and those micro-breaks through the day, and within a couple of weeks the ache that felt permanent usually starts to lift. Your back was never the problem. The stillness was.