Triangle Pose hip pain

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goforit
Participant

April 21, 2013 at 4:43 am

Post count: 2

#2515

Hi: Just started doing Bikram 3 weeks ago…and have only missed two days in that time, so my progress has been quite rapid, and I’m learning the poses quickly. Am aiming for 60 days or near that mark before I relax into a maintenance routine.

Only now this week, something I’m doing is tweaking my right hip. Twice this week after class (Wednesday and today), my right hip was so sore I could barely walk, and had difficulty climbing steps. I’ve been able to massage the hip back to normalcy after class with shiatsu and soaking, both times, and feel a little stiff but overall fine once I massage the hip back into place. (Read: no sharp pains but dull ache that after massage goes away by end of day, and only nominally stiff but pain free next AM upon waking.)

Today I isolated which pose was causing it: triangle. Was fine before the pose (and my arms stayed up all the way through half moon!), but during/after standing separate leg head to knee, I had to go straight to savasana and lay there through tree pose and into the ground series.

Any suggestions on tweaks I could make to the pose while I’m still strengthening so that I protect the hip while getting the opening benefits of the stretch?
I am quite out of shape but am pretty flexible (which can be a problem, I’m reading…), and have been using your core exercise to strengthen my abs, and have been using the constructive rest method to relax my psoas, and stretching them carefully both at home and in the ‘torture chamber’…so I feel like I must be holding my core wrong somehow. I’m not quite sure what’s causing this.

Side note: the front/top of my right ankle feels stiff as well (never painful), so am wondering if this is a matter of foot placement, although it looks like I have my foot going the same way as everybody else’s, and the kind teachers at my studio haven’t corrected the foot placement?

Left side is peachy 🙂

Any help you could give would be most welcome. Namaste.

PS Thank you for this forum, I don’t know where I’d be in this journey this month without it. The core exercise is a god send.

Gabrielle (The Hot Yoga Doctor)
Forum Owner

April 22, 2013 at 5:42 am

Post count: 3048

#10472

Hello goforit

Thank you for your post, your lovely comments, your great details.

May I please ask where on the hip does it feel painful/sore? I would like some sense of location. Is it that kind of pinch in the front, or is it more related posteriorly? Who knew after all that lovely detail I would have to ask! 😆

Have ideas don’t worry! Just need a little more info.

Oh, one more thing. Do you happen to have a copy of, or have access to a copy of my book “Hot Yoga MasterClass”? May want to refer to a photo in it depending on your response.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

goforit
Participant

April 23, 2013 at 5:22 am

Post count: 2

#10478

Hi Gabrielle, thanks so much, bought the book today and should have in a few days.

When the hip went out on Wednesday:

If I lifted my leg up or rotated the hip, I got the deep, sharp twinge in the back center of my hip, and a milder twinge (pinch, as you say) in front…felt like it was simply the whole hip, if that makes sense.
When I would try to climb a step and press down on the hip: would sometimes feel like the leg/hip could NOT support me at all, and I’d almost fall.
Same as when I’d try to move from a sitting position (with knees at 90º) to a standing one: the hip would just give way, and I’d have to pull/push myself up with my arms..

When it went out in class on Saturday: Same pain as before, but much, much more intense.
After class, while I was still warm and sweaty: I drove immediately to a Shiatsu masseuse, who put the muscle back into place.
It was so ‘out’ I cried real tears when she put it back, ow.

I went to class today, and my instructor and I very carefully walked through the poses before class to see what I had done wrong:
but he said I was holding the pose correctly. We also went through Standing Sep Leg Head to Knee: he thinks maybe it was that pose, a combo of the two, but hard to say for sure what went wrong on Saturday… any ideas?

With many thanks, namaste

Holiday AKA goforit

PS regarding class today: very happy to say no pain: in class or after. I focused on slow, steady, breathing, and was so focused and calm during those two poses: I think it reflected on my other poses, was one of my best classes yet.

Gabrielle (The Hot Yoga Doctor)
Forum Owner

May 4, 2013 at 7:02 am

Post count: 3048

#10486

Hi Holiday

Thanks so much! I hope you received your book by now.

A few things to do:

Go to the free technique videos and watch: Opening Up Your Hamstrings With Hot Yoga. Yes it’s about the back of your legs but then your hips are at the top of the legs! 😉 The mechanism in the Standing Sep Leg Intense Stretch pose is one that informs the rest of your practice.

For Standing Sep Leg Head to Knee, Please for the moment do NOT try to line up your heels in ‘one line’ right behind each other. Step out to the side, then after you turn to the side, first side, move your right foot to the right for a distance of about 4-6 inches between the heels (laterally). Move the left to the left when you do the other side. This should ease up the feeling in your hips and be less risky for you. Little by little over time (as no pain is evident and flexibility and agility return and reestablish) you can move your feet back into alignment little by little. At the moment your feet may be in ‘good position’. But what good would that be if your hips cannot be? I can guarantee that they are not and they are making things worse for you.

For triangle. Go to page 151 and see photo right in the bottom right corner and associated text. And also see the next page (152) and use the technique in the second column with the photo of the foot against the wall along with the ‘Common Mistake’ “Fear and/or pain holding you back”.

Don’t go for depth when alignment is lacking. That is a very broad brush approach and non specific. Mostly I don’t have enough information to drill down into each pose. Say for example, in Standing Bow, stay as upright as possible and keep the lifted hip down. If you are feeling unstable in a pose, just come here and I can offer a suggestion rather than going through each pose.

That will be good for starters

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂
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