A Bad Back, or a Back That Hurts?
The words we use matter
In graduate school, we were taught to be careful with a particular kind of sentence. It’s been over a decade since I was in that classroom, but I have since carried it with me. And, sure, it sounds quite obvious as I type this, but stay with me here, I promise I’ll land the plane by the end of the post.
We were taught explicitly that you didn't describe a student by what they were. You described what they had.
The wording has since moved around since then but the principle underneath it stayed with me: the words we use to describe a person become the frame that person lives inside.
Nowhere do I hear that more clearly than on a yoga mat, the moment a student says, "I have a bad back."
Say it out loud and notice what it does. A bad back. It's a single, sweeping verdict. And once it's there, we're both quietly working around it.
Let me be careful here
I'm not going to tell you your pain isn't real, or that it's temporary. For many of you it isn't. Some of you have permanent damage, permanent restrictions, real limits confirmed by imaging and by years of living inside them. I'm not going to insult you by suggesting that the right words will make any of that disappear.
So this isn't positive thinking, and it isn't a promise that anything gets better. It's about accuracy. The trouble with "a bad back" isn't that it sounds pessimistic. It's that it's vague — and a vague restriction quietly becomes a total one.
Specific is smaller than "bad"
Think about what your doctor, or your surgeon, or your imaging actually said. It was probably specific: a level of the spine, a particular movement, a load to respect. Avoid deep loaded flexion. That is a real limit, and it may well be permanent. But it is also bounded. It names one thing to be careful with, and by leaving everything else unsaid, it quietly tells you what is still available.
"A bad back" erases all of that detail. It takes a specific, bounded restriction and swells it to describe the entire structure — and, before long, on you. The diagnosis said be careful with this one movement. The phrase says this part of me is broken. Those are not the same sentence. And you get to choose which one you repeat, all day, to yourself.
Watch how far the word travels
Here's the real cost, and notice it has nothing to do with whether your back ever improves. Once you let the sweeping version in, it doesn't stay put.
"I have a bad back" becomes "so I can't manage the long flight." "I have a bad hip" becomes "so I'm done hiking with my friends." Did your actual restriction require that? Sometimes, honestly, yes — some limits are real and some plans genuinely have to change, and I'd never tell you otherwise. But far more often, the specific damage never touched the flight or the hike at all. The word did. It expanded to fence off a whole life it was never entitled to.
Does adding a sentence fix it?
A student asked me a version of this once. What if I just qualify it — "I have a bad back, so I avoid deep forward folds"?
Well, that's better. Much better. It's specific, it's useful, and it tells me exactly what we're working with. But notice it still opens with the sweeping label. You've added an instruction to a verdict.
There's one more move. Watch the same facts across three sentences:
"I have a bad back." — a verdict on all of me
"I have a bad back, so I avoid deep flexion." — the verdict, plus an instruction
"My back doesn't tolerate deep loaded flexion." — the exact restriction, and nothing more
The third sentence may describe a permanent limit. It is not more hopeful than the first, but it is more honest. It names precisely what to respect, and by saying nothing about the rest, it leaves the rest available. That's the version I want in my students' mouths, and in my own. Not because it's nicer. Because it's true, and it keeps the restriction in appropriate proportion.
Catch it before it sets
You don't have to overhaul how you talk overnight. You just have to catch the phrase while it's still forming.
The next time you hear yourself start with "I have a bad —," stop on the word bad. Ask one question: am I naming the specific thing to respect, or am I slapping "bad" across a whole part of me and letting it spread? Then say the specific version instead.
It feels clunky the first few times. So does every new movement pattern, right up until it doesn't.
Try This
For one week, keep a quiet tally. Each time you describe a part of your body as "bad," just notice it. No scolding, no judging, just noticing (that is what mindfulness is anyhow!).
Then, once a day, take one of those sentences and make it specific. "I have a bad knee" becomes "my knee doesn't tolerate deep squatting." Maybe that's permanent — it doesn't matter here. You've just shrunk the restriction back to its real size: one movement to respect, instead of a whole joint written off, instead of the stairs and the garden and the getting-down-on-the-floor you'd quietly folded in along with it.
If you've been carrying a "bad" something for years, here's the gentle truth: bad is not a plan. It's too vague to act on. Come find out what is specifically going on — which movements, which loads, which ranges genuinely need respecting, and everything you can still safely build around them. Some of it may be permanent. All of it is more precise, and more useful, than "bad."
Already in Fundamentals? You've felt the difference between what your body genuinely can't do and what you'd simply stopped asking of it. The real limits, we respect exactly. The rest of the territory is usually far larger than the word "bad" let you believe could still be yours.