Funny that I find this quote here this morning, after my workshop with Judith this past week. Yes, she said those same exact words just yesterday afternoon to us all. And believe me, I'm the poster child for having rubbery ligaments at that exact joint area, as well as my shoulders, hips, wrists and ankles, for pretty much the last 15 years or so -- the same amount of time it's been since first starting to have my children.

I was about to ask Judith right then, if you've already done the damage, what can you do to reverse it, but unfortunately I already knew the answer: nothing. Continue to prevent it from worsening and take care at those loose joints, but to tighten things up, there isn't anything. She was advising the overly limber teachers there that were in their 20s to start taking care now, which is the proper thing. Primarily, limit that huge range of motion. Practice poses halfway. She even had one girl (20-something yoga teacher) come up in urdhva dhanurasana with a 10-lb sandbag on her belly, so that the muscles would engage more. The girl said that for once she was sweating in the pose, which normally is effortless for her. Judith said that was a good thing.

I guess from my point of view, finally knowing the "why" to my current issues is better than never knowing at all.

OK, I didn't mean to wander away from this thread too much, since I do have a related question: every so often, I get tremendous achiness (as opposed to pain) in my hip joints, like I'd want a really tight belt cinching me in at the hips to keep things from "falling apart", ya know? I'm not sure, but at least for this month, the pain does coincide with my approaching cycle, but it doesn't happen all the time, maybe once every few months. All I wanted to do was lay down and elevate my legs, the pain was so intense in my hips. It was a toothache quality pain, if that helps, like it deep in the bones. Is this related to the SI pain discussed in this thread? Could it be a perimenopausal thing, since it's only been happening the past couple of years or so? I officially crossed the line to approaching 50 as opposed to just being in my early 40s the week before last. Just wondering.

OK, just added the Linda Sparrowe book to my list of books I need to own. Tourist, do you have Judith Lasater's Relax & Renew? I would assume that you do. That's the workshop that I attended this week, her initial training in restorative.

Yes, viparita karani was what I was craving last night when I could barely walk up the stairs to my bedroom to lay down, hips feeling as if they were falling off of me. I ended up just laying my shins on an overstuffed bolster I have up there, 10" round. Sometimes you're just too tired and worn out to do all the proper propping (now that's a phrase!). I know, you shouldn't let yourself get that worn out in the first place, but life does get in the way of living one's intention, so often.

Hi Nick,

Thanks for the info. Is there a specific website I should look at for her? I googled and only found information on her personal training and massage rates, no real anatomy or yoga information.

The pain I'm feeling (yes it's come back again this morning) arises not out of yoga practice, as I might have mentioned I practiced virtually no active asana all week, only restorative and did some walking. Yesterday in the workshop we did a supported twist and against my better judgment, I attempted it, knowing full well my SI wouldn't like it. I was right, but didn't want to be left out of the group for not trying (isn't the ego such an awful thing for your body sometimes?).

Then we were taught a supported uphavista konasana, which just made things worse for me. I actually tried to tie a yoga strap tightly across my hips (as this trochanteric belt that you suggest), but it didn't hold me in quite right. With my hands at my hips right now, fingers front and thumbs back, I'd want more pressure across the back part of my body, to bring the thumbs closer together. The strap only provided a uniform tightening in, as opposed to a squeezing together more in the direction of my sacrum (hope that made sense).

EDIT: Never mind, it was the wrong Diane Lee! Found the compressor belt you're talking about, will look into it, thanks.

I'm sorry, but this just made me laugh so much! You want me to not only do poses that hurt me, but also to photograph myself in the process? How much of a sadist are you? too funny

Just so that both you and tourist know, I've haven't been practicing improperly for years and only now noticed pain in my SI joint, as it seems you both seem to be inferring. My practice is relatively young, and for the most part with proper instruction, just that my body has been moving in regular life in this loose and uncontrolled way (boy does that sound bad!), and now that i've begun to practice yoga, I notice I have difficultly with certain movements and positions. So please don't blame improper yoga instruction, since there has been none (yoga, that is).

I think the first order of action would be to follow up with a complete CT scan of my SI, as per the recommendation of my physical therapist, upon having viewed my X-rays last week. Haven't booked that appointment yet since life's been quite busy lately (funny how life does that to you when you have the least time for it to get busy like that).

Nick, I do agree with you that I need to find a cure for this condition of mine rather than bandaids to deal with the symptoms, for sure. Though I've found that it's not so much my core that needs work but my legs, believe it or not. If anything, I tend to over use my core and underuse my legs. because they're naturally so big and strong on their own, so I've tended to neglect their part in stabilizing my entire pelvic area. I know it's not your normal approach to deal with situations that are similar to mine, but for some reason, I believe it's the legs that are my weak link, not my core. For one thing, I know that when I engage my core, no matter how hard, the creaking in my sacrum and low back happens, no matter what. You know that exercise in the captain's chair, where your arms are on the armrests and you lift your legs with knees bent? I've never been able to do that without my low back creaking, even years before starting yoga. And the second thing is that after a full practice of standing poses, where the legs really have been fully engaged, I can transition into trikonasana or parsvakonasana (two of my worst offenders) without dumping into my hip joints, because my legs are fully alive for a change.

So I guess the question is why don't I practice like that all the time. I don't know. Probably because my asana practice is still so young that I can't reliably find how to use my legs as much as I do in those certain times. My hamstrings and glutes are so strong that I never need to use my quads and inner thighs, which I do believe are my weak link. As Judith Lasater confirmed for me by stating this week, injuries happen not because we aren't strong enough in certain areas, but because we're too strong in other areas. It's the imbalance of strength (as well as flexibility) that creates the arena for injury.

I think we may have found the missing piece. For over 2 years, before even starting to practice yoga, I was teaching a fitness class several times a week that employed the use of core stability as its focus, based on a workshop I had attended at a fitness conference several years prior. It was mostly a standing strength class using the BodyBar (9-lb uniformly weighted exercise bar, in case you're not familiar with it). There would be single limb movements in all planes that were designed to challenge core strength and symmetry. I'm thinking perhaps I challenged myself a bit too much. Nowhere in the instructions of the workshop (nor in the DVD that I had purchased of the routine) was there emphasis to engage the legs while doing the exercises, only the torso and the immediate joints (shoulders and pelvis). Having always had the tendency to be strong without having to work so hard at it, as well as the awareness to isolate individual muscles, definitely created the arena for me to overstrengthen my torso and underemphasize my limbs.

I was also running pretty regularly during that time, which I now see is what prevented me from really getting unbalanced, though I do remember things starting to get uncomfortable then. Then the class got cancelled and I discovered yoga, so I had a blissful summer rebalancing my body strengthwise, though unaware of it. The following winter another teaching job fell into my lap, so I started up my bar class again. Though only once a week, I was finding the twisting movements starting to really give me pain. My running began to taper off as I started taking more yoga classes, and never aware that I would need to work more intensely in the standing poses than the "average" new student. Along with my natural hypermobility, I had no clue that I had developed an SI condition. I started seeing the chiropractor, who told me I needed to work my core more (?!) and maybe even incorporate some lunge work in my exercise routine. Hello? I can lunge all day long and not feel a thing in my legs. Only running would ever make that happen, and I was barely doing that anymore. Downward spiral, for sure.

This leads to the present time. My fitness class format had been changed a year later, no more bar class, but by that point it was too late to ignore that I had pain. I've never linked together how the principles of engaging the core just in space have led to a de-emphasis of my legs in the exercises. Now that I know about yoga, it's become clear to me. "Hugging the muscle to the bone" has always been a concept that if I were told to do so, I could do it, but intuitively I didn't know about it, and no one else had ever instructed it (remember, this is from my pre-yoga, fitness-only days) so I never knew it was necessary. Probably if I were weaker in my core, I wouldn't have gotten injured as much, isn't that just so stupid? My six-pack abs messed up my SI, how crazy is that?

I'll work on getting you those x-rays, Nick. Best way is to photograph them with a regular digital camera, then send the pics, right? Hopefully this week, but no promises.

I don't think I intentionally set out to only teach a strong core with no regard for the legs. But what I found as I was teaching my classes was that the general population never found their torso muscles with these exercises, and only complained that their legs were sore from the movements. In fitness, I believe it's very easy to cheat and use the muscles you're more acquainted with using, and to the beginner the outside shape tends to look the same. Things such as shifting your center of balance as you stand in a lunge, for example (this sort of lunge, as opposed to a straight back leg yoga lunge; and obviously without the rotation aspect and being on the BOSU, though this picture accurately shows the types of movements I'd teach).

So I must've developed the habit of overcompensating with my core as a demonstration of taking the legs out of the picture, so to speak. My legs must've gotten lazy at some point in the process, since they were strong enough not to need to use them (that doesn't make sense when I write it, but hopefully you understand what I mean).

Moral of the story is obviously balance. Also, the knowledge I've gained from learning asana now makes me totally understand how to teach things in a more balanced manner. There's no way you can practice Warrior I without using the core and the legs being in proper proportion. You can't cheat there.

So what does this mean? That you need to study yoga in order to be fully fluent in teaching core strengthening and functional training? Interesting that I'm coming to that conclusion. Again, too bad no one else told me that sooner.