Try This 5-Minute Morning Reset

Do you often wake up in the morning with back pain?
You’re not alone — and the good news is that the first few minutes of your day are one of the best opportunities to change it.

After a night of stillness, your spine, discs, and surrounding tissues can feel a little stiff or sensitive as they've been "pumped up" overnight. Like a filled up tyre, it can feel stiff and unrelenting. Instead of rolling out of bed and going straight into your day, giving your body a gentle “wake-up call” it can make a huge difference in how your back feels.

Usually once you've moved a little and been upright for 30 mins, the pressure seeps out a little and we have gained back some flexibility, and lost some tension/pain.

Here are three simple movements to try before getting out of bed.
They take less than five minutes in total, and they help your spine transition from rest to load more comfortably.

1. Pelvic Rocks

A small, slow tilt of the pelvis helps wake up the deep stabilisers around your core and lower back.
Think of this as switching the lights back on for your lumbar spine after a night of being “asleep.”
You’re not trying to stretch — you’re encouraging gentle activation and awareness.

How to do it:

• Lying on your back, knees bent

• Gently rock your pelvis forward and back

• Move slowly, without forcing range

2. Hip Swivels

Your hip and pelvis play a big role in how your lower back feels.
This movement helps reintroduce rotation and glide to the joints, reducing that morning stiffness and encouraging your spine to move more freely.

How to do it:

• Lie on your back, bring your knees up and rest your hands on them

• "Swivel" to bring the right hip towards the right shoulder, then left hip to left shoulder

• Alternate sides keeping the movement flowing quickly. Around 100 of these will take 1 minute.

3. Gentle Rotations

Rotation is one of the most effective ways to take pressure off the lumbar discs and help your nervous system relax.
This is like giving your spine a gentle “reset” before you load it by standing up.

How to do it:

• Let both knees fall towards one side then the other.

• Keep the range small

• It should feel relieving, not intense or too much stretch

Why This Works

These small movements gently hydrate the discs, warm the muscles, and signal to your nervous system that it’s safe to move.
Instead of going from zero to one hundred the moment you stand up, your spine gets a chance to transition gradually — which is often the difference between a comfortable morning and an achy one.

Give it a try

Five minutes, still in bed, before your day starts.
These simple resets can change how your back feels not just in the morning, but all day.

Let me know if this helps — and if you’d like a video walkthrough, I can put one together!