Hip Issues

Over the past year or two, I've had a hip problem that simply won't resolve. It's not terrible. Just... there. A persistent, low-grade grumble I didn't ask for.

I've seen an osteopath. Had massages. Done yoga, stopped yoga, reconsidered the ways I was practicing yoga. Visited doctors for fresh eyes on my history. Wondered about HRT. Ended up at a physio. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I had a thought: am I becoming a cliché? A yoga teacher who pushed too hard, and is now walking slowly towards an early hip replacement?

I’ve seen a fair amount of hip pain in General Practice. We approach it methodically: could it be… musculoskeletal, gynaecological, referred pain, menopause, osteoarthritis, stress? We work through the possibilities, ruling things in and out. It's a good framework. Useful. And yet, bodies are rarely as linear as the frameworks we use to understand them.

Mine is no exception.

What the Physio Told Me

Part of me, if I'm honest, wanted the physio to confirm my inner fears. That my hip pain was early arthritis. That I'd pushed too far, too long and that the precipitated ‘wear and tear’ was of my own doing.  That I'd done too much yoga or "done yoga wrong." There's something almost satisfying about a diagnosis that fits your worst narrative about yourself.

Instead, he surprised me.

My range of movement, he said, was very good, and I should keep it so.  This, I already knew. The areas I'd convinced myself were failing - the strength of my right hip flexor, my adductors and abductors - were, objectively, sound. "For your age," he said approvingly, "these are very strong."

Reader, I felt like floating out of the room, taking the validation with me.

Of course, though, there were things to work on. My glutes and hip extensors, especially on the right, are weaker than they could be, feeding a potential imbalance.  Some areas need more support and strength, especially as I get older. Which is -I say this with full awareness of the irony - exactly what I tell my students all the time.

The physio didn't tell me anything revolutionary. It was so familiar I almost wanted to roll my eyes.

For years I've been the one saying: More work on those sloppy extensors!!! 

But more recently too:  Listen to your body. Move with awareness. Stop pushing through pain. More is not always better. 

Turns out those instructions apply to me too. 

Camino Medicine

Then came last week’s walking on the Camino, which is really what prompted this reflection.

I was nervous about all the walking. I’m a cyclist, not a walker.  Would days of unfamiliar movement make things worse? The first two days, my hip was furious. It woke me up at night. Shouting at me at 3 am: what do you think you're doing?

Then, around day four, something really weird happened.  My gnawing hip pain fell eerily, suddenly silent.  I all but forgot I had a hip problem. 

And the recipe for this miraculous cure? Was it that I’d replaced all my daily laptop hours for hours of sustained daily movement? Possibly.  Did the soulful conversations, gorgeous landscape, and energetic circle of a thoughtful group do wonders for my nervous system?  Probably.   Add to this a week of not feeling responsible for everything? Cathartic tears of vulnerability in group session the day before? Surely good for any body and mind. 

I started to wonder whether this hip issue had much to do with arthritis at all. 

In yoga spaces, you sometimes hear the phrase, “we store emotions in the hips." I've always been cautious about explanations that tidy. Maybe you’ve experienced a great release when in a Supta Baddha Konasana, I certainly never have.  

Pain is rarely so neat. Never fully physical, nor always completely psychological. But usually a combination of anything and everything.  The body is far more complex than we like to think. 

Whatever, I was walking a pretty good recipe - movement, rest, nourishment, nature, belonging. 

What medicine it was. 

The Perfect Yoga Teacher

There's a particular pressure that comes with being a yoga teacher that I don't talk about very often. An unspoken expectation - from others, but honestly more from myself - to be the model of wellbeing. To embody health, ease, and knowledge in my own well-looked-after body. To not visibly struggle. To have already solved the problems I'm helping others work through with so-called expertise.

Owning a persistent, unresolved hip problem doesn't sit comfortably with that image.

 And yet, maybe that's exactly why it's worth saying out loud. I am not a fixed, finished, all-knowing version of health and never will be. I am someone in ongoing relationship with my body, with all its changes, uncertainties, scars and eccentricities. 

What the Hip Is Teaching Me

What the physio told me wasn’t breaking news, but maybe I just needed to hear this from someone else:

Keep moving. Trust what you’ve built. Your body is not failing simply because it is changing.

These are things I advocate for in others. Why is living them in my own body so difficult?  I spend a lot of time helping people move from over-functioning to something more compassionate and forgiving. Turns out I need the same lesson. 

As ever - the embodied, not intellectual - lesson is the one that is landing full force. 

What the hip has required of me isn't a race to fix it for good. It's responded to movement and rest. Patience and time. Acknowledgement and acceptance. Work and Restraint. Listening instead of overriding. None of which I can get from a doctor or a pill.  Only from myself. 

If it's not the hip, it'll be something else. And so it goes, this body keeps teaching us.

The question is whether we're willing to keep learning from it.

Let’s practice.