The pain runs from your lower back into your buttock, sometimes down the back of your thigh, sometimes all the way into your calf or foot. It may be a burning sensation, a deep ache, a sharp shooting pain, or a persistent numbness. You have been told it is sciatica. What you have not been told is why it will not get better.
What Sciatica Actually Is
Sciatica is not a diagnosis in itself. It is a description of symptoms produced when the sciatic nerve is irritated or compressed somewhere along its path from the lumbar spine to the foot. The nerve is the longest in the body, and compression can occur at multiple points: between the lumbar vertebrae, within the piriformis muscle in the buttock, or at any point along its course through the leg.
Most clinical attention focuses on the lumbar spine. Disc bulges, vertebral misalignment, and facet joint dysfunction are all investigated as potential sources. For many people, identifying and addressing the structural cause resolves the symptoms. For others, the structural picture does not fully explain the pain, or structural treatment has helped but not enough.
When the Problem Is Neurological Tension
The sciatic nerve passes through layers of muscle and connective tissue. When the nervous system has stored stress in those tissues, as it does in response to physical or emotional overload, the sustained muscular contraction that results can compress the nerve from outside the spine entirely.
This means sciatica can persist even when the lumbar spine looks structurally sound, or when spinal treatment has corrected a disc issue but the surrounding tissue tension has not released. The nerve is still being compressed. It is simply being compressed from a different source.
This type of sciatica responds poorly to further structural intervention but often responds well to approaches that address the neurological holding patterns in the tissue directly.
How Body Stress Release Can Help
Body Stress Release assesses the entire pathway of tension from the lumbar spine through the gluteal muscles and into the leg, identifying precisely where the nervous system is maintaining a holding pattern. Using light, targeted pressure, the therapy prompts the body to release that tension without manipulation or discomfort.
Because Peter van Minnen works with the nervous system’s own responses rather than applying force to the structure, the release is sustainable. The nerve decompresses as the surrounding tissue lets go, and the pain reduces as a result.
For those whose sciatica has been present for a long time, the pattern may have become more deeply embedded in the nervous system. This connects to the broader process of how the nervous system stores physical trauma, which is worth understanding before your first session.
The relationship between persistent nerve pain and conventional treatment limits is explored further in our article on why some back pain ignores conventional treatment.
If your sciatica has not responded to treatment, book a session with Peter van Minnen at Hever Health to find out whether Body Stress Release can reach the root of it.