[r16w]

A lot of back pain, regardless of where is is felt, stems from the large Bundling of nerves in the cervical spine and in the sciatic nerve bundles underneath your glute muscles.

Do not stretch your spine, as your structure is likely weak, and you can further damage your disks/vertebrae and the nerves therein by improperly applying changes to where the pain resides most frequently.

I suggest you look into foam rolling, and fasciae work in the glute/hamstring areas first. There are a lot of mobility youtubers that talk all about different techniques.

Also I have been studying the effects of LaJin (Traditional Chinese stretch series) and so far found the prolonged relaxation in the fascia to relieve chronic pain, and uncover structural improprieties that are the root cause.

Here is a long write-up over self healing with paida-lajin (拍打-拉筋 Basically slapping-stretching). http://www.dontow.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/P...

As for how long it takes to get better... growth and entropy are in opposition. It may relieve your pain day 1 but it may come back halfway through the next day, it may take 6 weeks to feel the deep relief. Your structural damage could be well beyond simple tissue degeneration and nerve pain, in which case self treatment is not advised. You should have an MRI taken if you believe yourself to be in later stage deterioration of the affected area.

[Tipewryter]

    Do not stretch your spine

What do you mean with this? How does one stretch their spine?

[r16w]

I suppose that could be euphemistic. Excuse my previous terminology. You do not want to decompress your vertebrae, stretch the quadratus lumborum or the erector spinae to release tightness in the back. You are better off focusing on a bottom up approach with calves, hamstrings, glutes, and rarely directly stretch the areas around the spine.

[Yaa101]

He means going to a chiro that puts a strap to your head and starts pulling short and hard. Your spine should decompress slowly with exercises if you want to keep things safe.