Live Well & Rock On

There have been a couple things preventing me from "living well" lately. And by "living well" I mean, being able to really push it-push it real good- in yoga. and in spin class. and while running.

Let's start at the very beginning- a very good place to start... It all began when one day during yoga, I realized that my right knee really did not enjoy tree pose. See picture below.

The thing about Tree pose is that it is supposed to be a hip opener- not a knee hurter. As you can see in the picture above, the intent of the pose is to gradually push your knee back so that both knees are in one line from the side. You use your hip muscles to do this- the more your knee moves back, the more open your hip is. In general I had made some good progress in this posture, but this knee issue took be back to square one. The REALLY bad thing about my knee isssue though, was that it did not get better. I can't tell you the number of weird knee tweaks I have healed with the yoga, but this one just wouldn't go away. The really STRANGE part of this knee issue, was that I only felt pain if my knee twisted inward- like above. I could bend and stretch and whatever without any problems at all. Running didn't hurt either.

Problem number 2. When I was moving from CT to TN, I did something to my neck one night. Like my knee issue, I thought it would go away with some good old fashioned yoga shit, and, though the yoga made it better, my neck (all the way to my shoulder blade) was always tight ad painful. Add these two problems together, and most exercise generated some kind of pain.

Enter stage left: The Rock Doc.

My handsome man has been going to see the Rock Doc for a while now. He is a fully certified and licensed chiropractor who got tired of the humdrum life in an official office setting. So he decided to work from home, particularly for "athletes, musicians, and friends." My handsome man counts in the "musician" category, and I count in the "friends" category (girlfriend? friends with benefits? no idea). My neck issue finally irritated me enough (and I knew it wasn't a "go to the doctor and get surgery" kind of injury) to go with my boo to see the Rock Doc.

1. I was SO EXCITED
2. I was SO NERVOUS
3. It was SO WORTH IT
4. I love the song "What Makes you Beautiful" by One Direction. I was BORN to love boy bands. FOR REAL. This song just gets me GOING. I wanna dance and jump and sing and get funky! YOU DON'T KNOW YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL!

At first, I was just on the fancy table face down. He gently pushed on my back to get a read on what was going on. I was half expecting him to be like "You do yoga! your back is perfect!"- But I already knee something was wrong, otherwise I wouldn't have gone. So sure enough, he quickly found one vertebra that was out of whack. CRACK. He pushed it back into place pretty quickly. Then he felt around a little while longer and found one more than needed some fairly technical adjusting. It was a two-parter. I don't really understand more than that, except this one was in line with my diaphragm, so when he did part one, it totally knocked the breath out of me.

Round two of adjustments was with me on my side. On the right side, you cross your left knee over your body and stick your right leg off the table. Then dude kinda sits on you. Rude, I know. But so worth it. At this point, he had told me that there was something crazy town going on with the left size of my pelvis/lower back- right where they connect. Apaprently, the muscle that connects them was just straight up contracted- all the way up my back. So, he needed to adjust my pelvis and lower back a little bit. Well, the side crack TOTALLy got my lower back, but Doc soon discovered that my pelvis just WOULD NOT move.

He said at some point I must have fallen pretty hard on that side (I'm thinking it was when I slipped on ice in CT) and then scar tissue had just turned the joint into solid rock. He said it would take a few more sessions to work that out because he was gonna have to slowly push through that scar tissue. But for real y'all, he tried a couple times and just could not get my pelvis to adjust. You know me- ultra all the way.

Next was the neck. Which was terrifying. There is a part of me that really doesn't ever want to get my neck done (it's the most important thing!!!!) but that is where I have been hurting, so I knew it was necessary. For about 10 seconds he was just kinda massaging my neck, then CRACK. It didn't hurt, but it scared me. I almost got off the table. But he promised to be gentler on the other side. And he was.  

The next part- I sat up on the table and he kind of lowered me back onto the table before smushing me- I think this gets my mid back. This was doing part two of the two-parter I mentioned earlier.

Last- he checked on my limbs. He could tell right away that my left knee was rotating in on itself. To fix this, I have to do some stretches. But I am pretty sure it is also related to this pelvis stuff. He cracked my right elbow. And oogled at my toe-thumb. It seemed like he wanted the challenge of trying to make it grow and look normal. I don't think he has a shot in hell of making that sucker grow. We shall see.

I will write another blog about my first yoga class post Rock Doc, but I will leave you with my new "rules."

1. No running until we fix this pelvis thing. It has made my left leg 6mm shorter than my right leg. NO GOOD, KIDS.
2. No more sleeping on my stomach. Bad for my neck.
3. I have to do knee and neck stretches each day.

Sorry for the long post. SO MUCH TO TELL YOU.

Ultra love,

Elise