The deep muscles running alongside your spine have one job when you get hurt: clamp down and splint the injury so you can't move it and make it worse.
That is a smart response. For about a week.
The problem is in a back like yours, that clamp never switches off. Months later, years later, it is still locked on tight.
And a muscle stuck in that grip does not sit there quietly. It keeps squeezing your vertebrae together, holding constant pressure on the nerve.
So the original injury healed a long time ago. The pain did not, because the guard is still on.
Here is the part nobody told you. You cannot stretch a muscle that is locked in guard. Pull on it and it clenches harder to protect itself.
That is why the stretching, the yoga, and the "just keep moving" gave you nothing, or made it worse. You were not doing it wrong. You were trying to lengthen a muscle that was physically incapable of letting go.
And until that muscle stands down, the pain never truly leaves.
