For the past three months I’ve been dealing with an injury to my hip flexer (or so I thought). In fact, it has been causing me such grief it is the reason why I felt I could be falling out of remission for the RA and what prompted me to ask the doctor to do the blood work. However, when my RA doctor ruled out all joint issues and any sign of RA (praise be to God) I was stuck with the same excruciating pain. I stopped going to spin class which has really thrown me off kilter with my type A schedule.
After sitting on my bed last week and then falling to the ground because the pain was so intense I couldn’t straighten out my leg, I decided to give this massage guru a try that I’d heard about from some of the instructors at the club. She doesn’t do your typical kind of massage (get your head right) she focus’ on trigger points, plus you wear loose gym clothes which makes it a bit less awkward. As she began to work on me she said she felt ‘called’ to go away from my hip area to my shoulders. She explained that the body is a complex machine and all the parts intermingle. Sure enough when she began to mess with the trigger points around my right shoulder I felt what I would explain as white pain…it is pain but it is good. She knew every specific muscle, what it connected to, if she pressed on one trigger point it might cause another to tense, etc.
What I found interesting is the area that had the most pain was (according to her) not the area that needed the most work. It felt more pain because it over compensated for the areas that were tense. Same went for my hip flexer. When she went to work on the right hip I barely felt pain, which was odd because that is where I feel it most when I have my issues. But when she went to work on my left side, there it was, that pain (and I’d never felt the pain there before!).
As she worked on me we talked about what I do for a living, what I’ve survived, etc. She explained that as much as I help myself and others with healing spiritually that are bodies need to heal physically and that all of this pain and tension she felt in these trigger points was old…she explained how the muscle is to feel. She said she believed it was physical pain that I never fully dealt with from over 20 years ago. She said that one side of my body had dealt with it for so long the other began to over compensate. It made so much sense and I’m sure I’m not doing it justice but as she spoke about this I suddenly felt this need to cry as she pressed out the physical pain. I didn’t ball there on the table (oh ugly pride) but a tear or two was shed.
I think what upset me even more was to hear the true cause of my hip issue was my weak CORE. 🙁 It happens to be the one body part/area I am most self-conscious about and to hear that it is also the cause of the muscles in that area becoming inflamed and tight made me sad. She said I need to learn to ‘like’ that part of me and in a weird way my body will feel good about itself and with the right exercises (concentrating on the Core, NOT crunches but that particular muscle) I would see a change.
Hmmmmm well, we’ll see. 🙂
Who knew a simple massage would bring about so much healing? 😉
Blessings
Shannon