Walking the dog around the block. Sounds like an easy thing, right? Well, unfortunately for me, over the last (I 
can’t even remember how many) years, I have had a hip pain that comes and goes. Do any of you have pains in your body that you have gotten used to having and learned to deal with?

   I have had it checked over the years and I have gone to physical therapy for it twice also. Once was 3-4 years ago. I got to the point of learning and practicing the exercises and then was released from therapy. And at $40.00 each time for my copay, I wanted to be
released. I was going 2-3 times a week, which adds up to a lot of money. I’m sure a lot of you could relate to this.

   The pain abated but never really went away. If I was doing a lot of running around and not getting the chance to rest it, it would get aggravated and “flare” up.

   One person said it may be the hip flexor and another said it could be the abductor. Another one said the only way
to tell was to have a painful procedure to see if it was a tear. If it was a tear, then I would need surgery. None of those options appealed to me. I am trying to get as old as I can before having any kind of surgery. 

    So, I dealt with it, year after year. When it really bothered me, I would take ibuprofen or naproxen for a few days and that would help with the inflammation and it would feel better…but never normal.

   I still worried if it would “catch” when I was walking or not. And many times it did “catch” and I would adjust my walking stride to be able to walk better.

   Once again, I went to physical therapy. I was tired of walking sideways to accommodate it…never knowing when I
would be walking and feel that “catch” that shot pain through my hip and down my leg…feeling like I was crippled by this and never feeling able to do the simplest thing I’ve been able to do since I was one years old.

   This time the physical therapy seemed to help. It seemed brutal. He dug into my hip, down to my iliopsoas muscle, which apparently was the culprit. The fact that my physical therapist could feel how tight it was at first and after a few weeks, could feel that it
was looser, fascinated me. I looked the muscle up on google, which I do a lot these days. It’s the researcher and teacher in me, I have to know everything about a subject. And even though you cannot believe everything you read on the internet,
when you find a lot of different people telling the same results, I tend to listen to it. Plus, if it is a medical website that I have heard of and used before, like WebMD, then it makes for more reliable information.

   The iliopsoas muscle is deep in the hip and pelvis. At physical therapy, my therapist would have me walk up and
back. Then, he would find something that was off and then work on that. He said it was about the balance. It’s all about the balance and one thing can throw something off, which leads to something else thrown off, and so forth.

   Balance! What a concept. 

   In our lives. Everything is connected. 

   I will be looking for balance in my life. 

   Mind-body-spirit! 

   Renew one, renew them all!

So…how is your balance? Is one thing throwing you off balance? 

Are you ready to figure out what it is and correct it? I’m going to try.