Finally taking the time to tackle my back pain. Got x-rays, blood tests, and seemingly no severe / degenerative conditions. Went to the physical therapist and they gave me an answer to the effect of: "nothing is injured anymore, the pain is psychological", but also my back is clearly way weaker on one side / the other side compensates for certain motions. So supposedly I just need to make my body understand that using that muscle shouldn't trigger pain. Now I just need to get comfortable sitting on the floor in lab and doing an upward dog-esk stretch 4x a day. Lab going well, finally got the biologically-meaningful results that I'd been working towards for 8 months. Went to repeat it yesterday and it turned out I'd mixed up my cells when splitting them and the receptor of interest had disappeared. But if things going well next week I should have enough data to turn my thesis proposal into an NIH grant proposal!
Haven't tried Tai Chi, but Yoga's been on and off for the past three months. But while upward dog feels amazing (and is basically the stretch I've been assigned to do 4x10 times a day), forward fold will make things hurt in under 10 seconds. And that's been in spite of hamstring stretches twice a day for the past two weeks.