Basic Exercises

• You can perform many of your usual standing spine exercises while in a pool of water that reaches your hips or chest. You can even stretch and touch your toes if you don't mind your head going under water. But there are other exercises you can do without plunging underwater.
  
  Stand clear of the side of the pool. Place your hands on your lower back and slowly lean backward, arching your back. If you start to fall, relax, the water will catch you. Lean back, arching and stretching your upper back first, then lean deeper and add in the lower back for a fuller stretch.
  
  Stand next to the side of the pool for additional stability if needed. Raise one knee high, gripping it with your hands and press or squeeze it against your abdomen, stretching out those lower-back muscles. Try to get your knee to your chest. Repeat with the other leg.
  
  Again, raise the knee before you, but this time hold it out and add in another direction to the stretch. With the knee raised up high, your hands on your knees, swing or fold your leg across your body for a more lateral stretch.
  
  Face the edge of the pool and grip the side. Float on your stomach with your arms stretched out. Make as long a line as you can. Now flutter kick.
  
  

More Elaborate Exercises

• Because water also offers resistance, it can be a good medium for working out your muscles to strengthen them. Combine other exercise forms with water, creating your own aquatic yoga or aquatic tai chi. Both yoga and tai chi offer core strengthening to properly align and use the spine. Practice your tai chi form while standing in waist-deep water. Few tai chi moves require going low enough that you would have to submerge your head. If your form includes a low move, such as "Snake Creeps Down," simply perform the move at a higher level to keep your head above water.
  
  In yoga, there are numerous postures good for stretching the back, such as the warrior poses. Start in water that is waist deep because you will be standing lower for the pose. This should put the water at chest level for the duration of the pose. Move into warrior 1 pose and hold. Then move to the warrior 2 pose and hold.