Six months have past since I was at the Naprapath’s with my hip.
I was feeling a little bit better for a while, but the pain never really went away. I found a book about pilates, that I actually thought was a corny form of yoga, but it turned out to be very good. Pilates is about the posture and I realized that mine is not a pretty one. Anyway, I learned to see how my hip was twisted and to be able to feel when it was straight, and practiced keeping myself straight at all times.
Over time I began to understand that my muscles were used to keeping my pelvis twisted and I had to stretch several times a day.
Daily, a horrible pain tingled down my thigh and stopped right above the outside of the knee.
I could not walk any long distances, but standing was almost the worst. However, I could still ride my bike and sit. Sometimes I was woken up by the pain, and could never find a good way to lie.
Finally, I wrote to my naprapath and asked what this problem was called in English, because I had moved to the USA. I had assumed this was a “pelvic twist”.
The answer was that the problem is called “piriformis syndrome” or ” trochanterit”.
I searched the Internet and have now understood that I have a bursitis on the thigh bone and that the muscles in the thigh and the hip cramp up and twist the pelvis and squeeze the sciatic nerve. I have a so called “false sciatica”.
There are many different reasons why this started, but in my case it seems to be a combination of many.
1. I worked as a guitar maker and while sanding, which I did several hours a day, I sat by a table with an air ejector and there was no room for the legs whatsoever. In order to be able to sand I had to sit completely twisted.
2. 1999 I was in a car accident and hurt my back a little bit. It is possible that the hip got a twist from it too. (Honestly the investigation of my injuries were not handled properly and I never had an x-ray).
3. I started to run after a break of many years. I took it easy, I thought, combined walking and jogging.
4. I didn’t stretch well enough after my running trips.
5. I didn’t exercise the rest of my body.
6. I sat hours after hours in a bed bent over a laptop in order to create this website:)
Yesterday, I went to the library and found a book about stretching and back pain. It is called “Relief is in the stretch” by Loren Fishman and Carol Ardman. It contained a whole chapter of yoga-poses for piriformis syndrome. Every pose had a simplified version for us who are as limber as a safe box.
I tried these simplified versions yesterday and this morning. Today is the first day in 6 months that I am not in severe pain.
Here follows the names of some of the poses I used so you can look them up.
One should not do these exercises if one is pregnant or had recent hip surgery.
1. Ardha Matsyendrasana 1 = Spinal Twist
2. Parivrtta Trikonasana = Twisted Triangle
3. Parivrtta Ardha Chandrasana = Twisted Half Moon
4. Virasana = Sitting Hero
5. Eka Pada Rajakapotasana 1 = King of Pigeons
6. Jathara Parivartanasana = Rolling Belly
7. Halasana = the Plow
8. Paschimottasana = Back Stretch
