Major Improvement

A few months back I went hysterical with Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction. I was in horrible pain with major anxiety and was referred to a very specific physical therapist. I would speed into the parking lot and race through the mid-day heat baking the desert to the ground floor of the Mayo Clinic. I would briskly fly down the corridors and impatiently zoom around walkers and wheel-chairs as I hurriedly and repetitively pushed the elevator buttons, knowing that if I was more than 10 minutes late my appointment was, poof, gone. I would barely catch my breath in the waiting room and he would usher me in to the treatment room and place hot-wet-packs on my back. And that is when the sweat would really get pouring! Ribbons and rivulets down my face and neck and back. After a while he would come back in and in his Arizona-tempered-Dutch-accent chat politics and ethics while he pushed on my lower back. The conversation was quite pleasant, but the first time hurt like hell! The second was not much better, but what he really taught me to do was stretch my low back, and stretch I do!

I encorporated his style and key stretches into a very modified deep-tissue-intensive-yoga-stretch routine that would bend and flex and twist and turn my aching back in every direction. It became very easy at night to just start stretching as we were watching TV. I grab my cell phone and access my stopwatch function, and hold this series of about 10 poses for 3 minutes each. And it truly resets my back. If I don't do it for a few days I hurt oh so much more, and if I do it daily feel major improvement.

But what is so strange is that it seems to have done more than just help my back feel better. It has opened a floodgate of healing in so many areas of my life that I sit here feeling truly bewildered as they flow past my head on each side, not knowing where to look or what to start with. So much progress in so little time. Hallelujah! Now I just need to figure out what to do with it...

Thanks for joining,
Leah