This question comes to mind because a friend of mine has recently had to miss church services because of back pain.
A long time ago I suffered similarly, and I tried to find something I could do to relieve it without doctors or drugs.
What I found out was that bending my back backwards worked wonders. I have tried four different ways to cause my back to bend in the way it normally doesn’t want to:
Do a wrestler’s bridge (I was stronger and more agile long ago)
Lie back over a large, soft gym ball
Lie on my stomach with pillows under my chest and hips-thighs (this is what was recommended in a paper that some sort of natural healer wrote)
Stand beside my bed with the backs of my legs touching the edge of the mattress and lean back as far as I can without falling back onto the bed and hold that position for as long as I can. (If I start to fall, I can just jump up and back so that I land flat on my back on the bed.)
As with every post I make here, if you chose to “Try this at home” the results, good or bad, are your responsibility. I AM NOT offering advice, just information.
The foregoing is an edited copy of a post on my essentially inactive website, http://CharleysDomain.com, so please do not flag it as plagerism. I wrote it. It's mine. And I have the right to reproduce it here or anywhere.