Wed, why does it hurt?

Well - to give a little background, I had a re-visit to the painful side of this problem, last week. I got up at 0530, to get ready for work. As I slowly raised myself on my legs, I felt my upper body shift left, while my lumbar shifted right. Felt odd, then acute pain started. I sat back down on the bed and assessed how I felt. I went over a quick body-scan and when I felt that things were not too bad, I again began to raise myself on my legs. I told myself that I would be fine and that this happens from time to time, but it has been quite a while! Showered and got ready for work. I eased myself into the truck and drove in for 0620.
When I arrived at work and went to ease out of the truck, I noticed that there was now shooting pain down both of my legs. "This is not good" So I began to implement my emergency plan for myself. This means that I plan on not moving too much, I do stretch my back and legs on a constant basis and try to minimize the amount of unneeded movement as best I can. Pacing is the modern term. Well I paced everything I did that day. And yes, I used all of the coping mechanisms that I had available to relieve this a bit. I spent the day, going from 10 minute walks to 5 minute stretches and back again. I practiced meditation, almost immediately, at 0600 in order to gain insights into the issues I was dealing with. My employer, later in the day, asked me why I did not go home? Well, good question, I probably should have, but I felt that my staff had been here and they needed their days off too. I felt, at the time, that I would be able to learn a bit from this incident. Learn to more fully integrate meditation, practice mindful movement and in general, get a better understanding for myself. BTW - I also had a physio that morning and as I put it to my Therapist there, "you are seeing a 1 in 100 day, I don't normally have issues like this." He looked things over and quickly told me: "do everything that you normally would do for yourself, when your are in a high pain cycle and use all of the medications that you are allowed to use. Keep stretching all the time and I want to see you ASAP as well!"
I spent the rest of the day, just getting things down as best I could and really feeling like the best thing for me would be to stop all activity. The problem is that I know from 25+ years experience that doing this only results in my stiffening up really badly and with that it takes forever to get me loosened up again. So what is the plan? Hot, cold, TENS unit, walking, stretching, self massage, meditation, body scans, guided imagery of healing hands on my body. Trying to sleep at night and not make the incident catastrophic.