Dear Reader,
This week has been a little tough… Around three months ago, I subluxated a couple of ribs and this sent my whole body into a chain reaction of things going a little bit awry, culminating in spraining my sacroiliac ligaments when my psoas went into spasm. Ligaments, don’t have much of a blood supply so they can take around 12 weeks to heal. It’s been nearly 12 weeks! Impatient, moi?
Being hypermobile, I’m relatively used to my muscles having a hissy fit and upsetting my joints. Over decades of dealing with the consequences of hypermobility, I’ve noticed that the muscle that tends to cause me the most amount of stress is my left psoas muscle. The psoas can be the most tetchy, oversensitive and shouty muscles of them all. It is implicated in most back pain conditions. We have two psoas muscles (which attach to each side of the lumbar spinal vertebrae and the top of each inner thigh) and they connect with two iliacus muscles (which coat the inside of our hip crests). The psoas muscles are hip flexors they swing the leg forward in walking using momentum. There is much more to say about the psoas, but I’m going to reserve that for another article.
I’ve done all the right things to do when one has back pain.
✅ The first thing is not to panic. Unless there is ongoing pain with no change, numbness in or loss of function of legs, incontinence, a sudden change in the ability to balance, then usually back pain is not a very serious matter.
✅ The second thing to do is rest, with legs up on the sofa at least once or twice a day.
✅ The third is to keep moving and there are certain moves that help us to strengthen and release areas of the body that contribute to stress on the back. These are subtly and not so subtly different for each of us as no one back pain case is the same (even if it gets the same diagnosis).
So tick, tick and tick… and I’m still feeling achy.
Perhaps I have been looking at my own back pain from a purely anatomical point of view when really it is trying to communicate something. Pain is a great teacher, and its lessons are not always about the physical body. Our back can be asking us to consider mental stresses and emotional concerns as well. My yoga therapist encouraged me to listen to my back, rather than telling it what to do. It’s always humbling to receive one’s own advice!
Lately, life has been a bit of a challenge, to say the least! I feel that this back pain is part of my body’s attempt to process all that has happened and that is happening in response to and under the cover of the pandemic. I am finding the increasing gap between the rich and poor of the world, and in this country to be highly alarming. I’m concerned for the future of the planet, the future of younger generations, and the future of people living in already drought-prone parts of the world. I worry that the vaccines might have been an incredibly expensive mistake, causing more harm than good. And I am (if I’m honest) absolutely livid about how our government has lined their own pockets and altered the law to further conveniently fleece us whilst mismanaging every aspect of life the health service, education, the economy and more. Perhaps my psoas is raging because I am not raging enough.
Most mornings I wake up stiff and creaky and have to lie on the floor to allow things to unwind from a stressed-out tightness. If I sit for too long I end up in the same stiff and achy situation.
However, if I cycle, dance, do yoga, swim or walk, well I’m absolutely fine… My body seems to be on an uncomfortable protest about being sedentary. It wants me to be moving, to be in action. However, I want to be sure that my action is not fuelled by these weird feelings of anxiety, fear, mistrust and anger.
So today, I’m on my way to the Ashram to sit with all this stress and pain in my back. I’m on silent retreat so I’ll have plenty of opportunities to go within (pratyahara) and listen (svadhaya) to what my body is trying to tell me. Sometimes it takes a deeper level of time out to really get underneath our everyday mindset and see what unconscious processes are driving us. Summer, specifically August is really that time. Everyone is expected to be on a bit of a go slow, a bit of a personal strike if you like. For if we can’t rest, relax and process the simmering cauldron of inner turmoil now, then when can we?
I’m back teaching on the 11th of August… I can’t promise that I’ll be all fixed and fantastic by then, but whatever happens, I trust the process of life. I have faith that the creative process of being will be supporting me in weird and wonderous ways to find more balance and acceptance as I journey through life’s rich tapestry.
As there are no classes this week, here is a prerecorded video for you to enjoy! This one is only 40 minutes long… so I’ve attached a relaxation track below it for you to enjoy! Let me know what you think in the comments!
Follow this link to a lovely Back Care Relaxation Track to listen to after this class or at any other time!!
With love and good wishes,
Julia xxx
Learning from Adversity