Back to Back: Spiteful worm of back pain

Like many people, I've been plagued by lower back problems for years.

Despite the pain, I never found time to go to the doctor. Instead, I would pop muscle relaxants and other drugs. For years that worked.

But over the last two years the pain has been getting worse and worse, to the point that it has been almost crippling.

Back pain is a mischievous malady. It slithers up and down your spine like a spiteful worm, wrapped deep around the core of your physical being, biting viciously into the soft nerves and muscles or simply squeezing its hard, cankered shell around the bones and sinews, holding them in its agonising grip.

It's difficult to know what precipitated the worsening of my condition, but in mid-2012 I spent a number of weeks filming with the US Marines on the frontlines in Afghanistan. I walked for days through the rough, broken earth of the poppy fields carrying my camera and a heavy pack. I struggled to keep up with the young Marines and with every step I could feel the muscles straining up my legs into my back.

We were ambushed by the Taliban almost every day. I was constantly afraid, and that fear manifested deep in my lower back.

"Stress always finds its way to the weakest part of your body," a Pilates teacher told me.

Back home in Johannesburg I stretched my back, and, as the inner muscles began to resist with spasms of physical pain, I would flash back to Afghanistan.

In the early weeks the mind-body connection was so intense that I could smell the dust and the harsh aroma of the poppies.

This year, after a marathon filming trip through Africa, on top of the constant severe ache, my legs were tingling from pinched nerves. I decided to take a journey into the pain, to see what I'd learn.

It took some dedication, lost freelance work, and the cost of physiotherapy, until finally one doctor squinted at the prints of my X-rays.

''Were you ever in a car accident?" he asked.

''More than 30 years ago, when I was 19."

''Hmm, that's caused this. No surgeon will touch it. You'll have to do exercises for the rest of your life and hope for the best."

It happened in the few seconds that it took for a bakkie to slide off the road and roll across the Free State veld. I thought I had emerged unscathed. No one spotted the damage in my back, but it's there now, grown deep into the bone.

Luckily, 15 minutes of exercises a day have almost miraculously taken away 99% of the pain. But there are no short cuts. I have to do them every day.

More and more, as I grow older, I find that without contemplative time, my life starts to run amok. I become stressed and my ability to find solutions to my problems decreases as my mind narrows into fear-filled tunnel vision.

Then the growing tension manifests in my weak back. It begins to throb; the worm stirs. The cycle of pain begins again. The only thing that helps is forcing myself to lie down and do my exercises, gently, carefully. In the enforced calm that fills my mind, I am reminded over and over that maintaining this balance is the price we pay for being human.