Legs Up the Wall: Benefits for Your Back, Legs and Relaxation

Put your legs up against a wall for 10 minutes a day for four weeks, and here's what could happen to your lower back, your legs, and your nervous system.

Find a wall, lie flat on your back, and rest your legs straight up against it.

This simple position may help relieve lower back tension, reduce swelling in your legs, help your circulation, and help you relax.

Week one, start with three minutes. If your knees won't straighten, your hamstrings are probably tight.

They run from your sitting bones to behind your knees, so bend your knees or move a little away from the wall.

How you sit matters too. In one man with a sensor inside a spinal disc, slumping forward in a chair almost doubled the pressure of sitting upright.

Lying down dropped it to about a fifth of standing for as long as he stayed down.

Week two, go to five minutes. Tight hamstrings pull on your pelvis and can tilt it back, flattening your lower back, and they've been linked to back pain.

Relaxing here may ease that muscle tension, but it won't permanently decompress or rehydrate your discs.

Week three, 10 minutes. Now gravity helps your veins carry blood and fluid from your legs back toward your heart.

That can ease temporary swelling, heaviness, and discomfort in your ankles and lower legs after a long day of standing or sitting.

Week four, keep your legs up and add slow belly breathing, under 10 breaths a minute.

Across more than 200 studies, slow breathing raised heart rate variability, a sign your calming nervous system is more active.

It can also lower stress and help your muscles relax.

Skip it or ask your doctor if you have glaucoma, because in a New York study, this pose raised eye pressure, or if you're pregnant or have heart problems.

Sometimes your body doesn't need another intense workout.

It needs 10 minutes in a position that helps your legs recover, your back relax, and your nervous system settle.

Send this to someone who sits all day.