Creating New Patterns

Last spring, after an end of winter attempt to start running again, I had tightness and discomfort - even pain - in my right hip.  I stopped running, but the discomfort persisted, affecting my walks to work, yoga practice, and most movement, though cycling seemed not to aggravate it.

As the months went by, the problem didn't go away.  In fact, it seemed to be getting even worse, and I found the sensation moving around.  Sometimes the front of the hip would feel tight, sometimes the side, back, or down by the sitting bones.  I thought of seeing a physical therapist, or having an MRI done.  

A couple of weeks ago, in mid-October, I'd been emphasizing relaxing and releasing tension in my classes, and I was reading Vanda Scaravelli's wonderful little book on yoga, "Awakening the Spine."  In it, she emphasizes the release of tension, and of grounding the lower body in order to allow lightness in the upper body.

One morning, I'd reviewed the anatomy of the hip, getting a visual image of the bones and muscles and how they related.  The thought occurred to me that perhaps a lot of what I was experiencing (discomfort and tightness that moved around in the hip) was muscles gripping - contracting in spasms, and holding tension.  That morning as I walked to work, a little more slowly then usual, I focused with each step on relaxing into the step, feeling myself very heavy, and consciously relaxing around my hip.  I also thought about space in the hip - the pelvis to the inside of the femur.  I've had a longstanding issue with my right hip feeling that it was 'hiked up,' or a little bit jammed.  

The walk felt fine, though I didn't know how to interpret what I was feeling.  I taught my lunchtime yoga class, continuing the theme of strong grounding and releasing tension. Sometime in the afternoon, standing at my workstation, I realized the hip felt different - more balanced with the left - and not stuck or hiked up.  I walked home slowly, relaxing the hip all the time, thinking of what the left hip felt like when it moved, and trying to match that in the right. 

Almost all of the hip unhappiness I'd been dealing with for seven months was gone by the end of the day. That was very welcome, but also quite amazing to me.  To think that all I needed to do was to pay very close attention to my movement patterns and consciously redirect them.  Since then I've continued to work on it - watching for any tension creeping back - and my hip feels great.  

This experience taught me a lot about the importance of directed attention and consciously letting go.  I'd done a lot of general relaxing, guided meditations to put the body in a deeply relaxed state, but that clearly wasn't focused enough to break the pattern.  The key was being very deliberate about releasing tension as the hip was in motion.