Quote Originally Posted by KnottedYet View Post

Please please tell me your PT exercises do not include any forward flexion or lying on your back lifting legs or arms or flattening back into the floor. Those are for anterior herniations, not for posteriors.

Doing anything that puts the lumbar segments into flexion (crunch, pelvic tilt, pelvic stability, cat-cow, etc, and all but one of the exercises on the cover of that book) will increase pain because they will shove the bulgy bit out farther. They are for anterior bulges, not posterior bulges.
We were working mostly on things to strengthen the multifidus and transverse abdominals - and lots of working in the other planes of motion. I can't really do anything that requires bending forward at the waist anyway. We did much the flexion work you mentioned (the cobra pose, standing back bends etc) and one of the therapists I worked with is a McKenzie practitioner. I don't really know how much of what we did was in line with it, though.

The cover of the book shows the more 'interesting' of the exercises, I suppose. I haven't done any of them but the transverse abs activation one.