She’d been having left hip pain for seven years now, ever since a fall on her left side while snowboarding. “I landed so hard, it made my teeth rattle!” she said, “And I was just getting good at it!” she added remorsefully. And even though she’d tried various treatments over the years, the problem remained.
Then she started practicing yoga. She was sure she was much stronger after practicing for the last year, but she was concerned that, without exception, after a vigorous yoga class she always felt worse for a day or two. That’s why she came to see me.
In my examination of her, I looked for all the usual suspects, but things just weren’t adding up. Almost all the joint assessment tests reproduced her symptoms, making it very difficult to discern the possible source of symptoms. Her expression was pained. My thoughts were interrupted by her next statement: “When I fell, it felt like I jammed my leg bone right up into my stomach.” Sometimes patient’s say just the right thing, I thought. So, being the reasonable fellow that I am, I applied the opposite force, I pulled her leg. There it was. I could see by the look on her face that her pain was relieved.
Since decompressing the hip and back eased her pain so rapidly, I figured that yoga postures that increased hip and spinal compression might increase her pain. “We better look at your standing poses,” I suggested. Tree pose, and other standing balance postures were fine. Then she showed me her Warrior 3 pose. On the right side, it was beautiful. On the left side, her right hip remained elevated. It looked like she wouldn’t allow her lateral hip musculature to lengthen.
“Try to level your hips.” I said.
“Aren’t I?” She answered.
So, with a light assist, I helped her move her hips to a more level position. She suddenly felt a strain and weakness in the left hip region that she hadn’t felt in a long time. She’s been inadvertently avoiding working this area. “Oh my goodness, I can tell that I need to do A LOT of this! I can’t believe how hard it is!”
Well, we were off to a good start. We had found ways to both ease her pain (manual traction of the left hip and back) and strengthening of the tight and weakened areas of the left hip. Not only that, with the help of a family member, she now had ways to work on her problem at home.
Rehabilitation is a process though, and the story’s not done. Next month find out the answer to, “Why is warrior 3 so dang hard?”
