My chronic back pain was so bad I almost canceled my wedding then I found a fix without meds or physical therapy

Samantha Valencia was just months away from walking down the aisle two years ago when the unbearable back pain that had intermittently plagued her life began to rear its ugly head again.The 31-year-old yoga studio owner from Brooklyn and her soon-to-be husband had made all the preparations for a destination wedding in California when a familiar, unwelcome sensation crept back into her body.“I was getting married that year, so I was doing all of the classes, I was going to a gym with a friend and weightlifting… and, you know, making sure I looked the best in my wedding dress, as brides do,” Valencia told The Post.“And I lifted too heavy at the gym and I was going way too hard, not giving myself time to recover, and I activated that old injury.”For 13 years, Valencia had been dealing with the after-effects of a broken pelvis, two fractured vertebrae and two broken ribs — injuries she sustained while at summer dance camp between her freshman and sophomore years of college.“I took break dancing too literally,” she quipped.Valencia, who danced professionally growing up until she enrolled at a university, was always one to take on a challenge.“There was this move where I had to put all of my weight on one arm,” she recalled.“It was basically a single-arm handstand, is the best way to explain it.

And my arm gave out on me, and I landed on my chest and my feet tapped to the back of my head from behind.”She lay on the ground and thought: “Something is broken.”“I got scooted off to the hospital in nowhere Connecticut, and they’re like ‘Yeah, you fractured some things.You’re done,’” she said.“That put an end to my dance career… but every now and then that injury would flare up.”Fast forward to 2023.

With the pain re-emerging just as her wedding neared, Valencia was desperate for a solution that wouldn’t sideline her big day.She tried everything — physical therapy, acupuncture, ultrasound, stretching, cupping, heat packs.She ...