Hip in Socket

Not to be confused with Brass in Pocket, one of my favorite Chrissie Hynde tunes back when she was with The Pretenders. 

What I'm talking about is this peculiar issue I'm having with my right hip ball and socket joint. It began in March 2008 around the third week of a yoga retreat I was staying at on work exchange. Reaching into Parsvottanasana my right hip seemingly popped right out of its socket.  It felt like it was wobbling around at the top of my femur.

I dismissed it at the time thinking since it didn't impede movement or prevent walking that it would heal on its own, and I was back in the yoga studio four hours a day.  There was gardening to be done, collecting eggs, biking, snorkeling, ecstatic dance at the Kalani Dance Center, a few hours of sunshine at Black Beach.  Facilities had to be cleaned, and laundry.  Then there was more practicing to Dharma Mittra DVDs before dinner, jump rope and doing intense core workouts to P90-X with the other women in the evenings.  I didn’t have time to worry about it.

Three years later I am in trouble with this hip.  Two years spent as an assistant driving around Los Angeles five days a week in an Isuzu Trooper with a collapsed driver seat and manual transmission has taken its toll.  Throughout my 200H teacher training this past fall I had so much difficulty maintaining the required 10 hours of Power Yoga and Vinyasa Flow classes that I thought my instructor was going to fire me for being weak and not keeping pace with my classmates.  

After hurting myself, yet again, and falling sick after a particularly intense Flow class the Tuesday before Thanksgiving I decided that pushing myself was doing no one any good and basically dropped all Vinyasa practice.  I rested and picked back up where I left off as the New Year began grudgingly making up all the classes I had missed and completing my certification within one month of the courses completion.

I had yet to consider that my hip was an actual injury and blamed my difficulty in Vira I, II and III, Half Moon, Utthita Parsvakonasana and Trikonasa on what I claimed to be my sudden aversion to Flow Vinyasa style practice.  Considering that any weight bearing pose requiring my right hip to hold my balance and support me was near impossible to achieve my Flow aversion was my body's way of gently, or not so gently, letting me know that I am indeed sustaining and aggravating an injury and that perhaps I don't have to be a rock star Flow teacher like everyone around me.

That was a baffling concept to accept.  I had no idea what I was going to do and had not yet been exposed to all the varied styles yoga has to offer.  SoI forged ahead, and after speaking with a newly graduated Yogaworks Professional Program teacher I took that suggestion and enrolled in the 50H Bridge Program and The Professional 300H Continued Education.  

It was a risk, and having no clue what I was getting in to I jumped at the opportunity.  I am happy to inform that it is the best decision I could possibly have made.  The Bridge Program introduced me to a distinct physical definition of balance in posture alignment that I haven't experienced in all my years as a Power Yoga and Vinyasa Flow practitioner.  And to my utter amazement, through the process of choosing a Mentor to apprentice with in the 300, I discovered Yoga Therapy.  


To be continued....