PREMIUM COURSE
This video presentation is an effort to help eradicate Iliopsoas Syndrome , the all-too-common but not well understood muscular dysfunction of the iliopsoas, our primary hip flexor muscle.
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PREMIUM COURSE Healing the Hidden Root of Pain: Introduction and PHASE 1
PREMIUM COURSE Healing the Hidden Root of Pain: PHASE 2, PHASE 3, & PHASE 4
Neuromuscular Therapist and founder of Relieving That Pain Online Courses, Stephen has been helping individuals achieve relief for chronic and recurrent musculoskeletal pain for 30 years.
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Accidentally kept going and did phase 2 and most of 3 on the second day. Really flared myself up. Should I just continue or start over?
Flare-ups are a strong signal that we need to reduce intensity, volume and frequency. Please take a break for at least 24 hours; longer if things haven’t calmed down. When you resume, please be very gentle in your approach and follow the one phase per day protocol to start out with. You can eventually combine phases in a single day but only once your body signals that it feels benefit and no flare-ups.
I didn’t realize how inflexible and weak my core was until I started this program. I’m through two cycles and I certainly feel better after each session – we’ll see what the long term impact is. I’m fairly confident my issues stem from a chronically tight iliopsoas (iliacus mostly, on one side), but I’m still not completely sure. I’d be curious what your assessment of my symptoms is. Since my discomfort is moderate (but very persistent) and asymmetrical, I feel like I’ll need to increase the length and/or intensity at some point and focus on one side. Looking forward to see what the postural blueprint course will cover.
Great to hear you’re making some headway and feeling improvements. I’d like to encourage you to read the update I’ve just done for my article, The Many Faces of Iliacus Dysfunction. Since you will be familiar with the first part of the article you could skip down to the section called, Postural Distortion and Iliacus Dysfunction. And then read all the way through to the end. In this article I explain the relationship between Healing the Hidden Root of Pain and the Stretching Blueprint. Up to now I have not explained this well enough. The Stretching Blueprint picks up where Healing the Hidden Root of Pain left off and begins the crucial process of identifying and correcting the issues causing postural distortion. While the next Blueprint course (Postural Blueprint) will address in detail the COMMON features of the two primary postural distortion patterns, the Flexibility Diagnostic at the heart of the Stretching Blueprint addresses INDIVIDUAL patterns. The Flexibility Diagnostic creates a detailed template (Your Stretching Blueprint) of ALL the tight muscles in the body, allowing one to prioritize in a very precise way the exact routine (number of reps, frequency, etc) one needs to follow to resolve one’s individual issues, including postural distortion patterns. For many, this will be sufficient to correct postural distortion patterns. After reading the article, please let me know if you have questions.
I’m so glad I found you! I’m a distance runner in my late fifties and have been dealing with the various pains you describe for 25 years. Physical therapists have offered one aspect or another of your training but never such a comprehensive plan. I’m on day 3/phase 3 and noticed that my right (problematic) side psoas and illiacus muscles don’t seem to want to engage during the stretches. I can actually feel my left muscles responding to tightening, focused stretches but not my right. Is this a sign of how shut down (ischemic) they are? And will it improve as I continue? Thanks, Anne
When you say the right (problematic) side won’t engage during stretching, do you mean that 1) it feels tight but 2) stretching does not help and/or 3) stretching can even aggravate the issue on the right side?
Hi, In addition to Iliacus and Psoas issues, I also have problems with my SI joint. Extension seems to aggravate it and I get shooting pain down my left leg. Are any of these exercises potentially problematic for SI joint issues? I had a steroid injection ten days ago in that joint. I have done Phase 1 and Phase 2 but feel flared up even though I have been going very slowly as you suggest.
These exercises are not inherently problematic for SI joint issues but it sounds like you may need to reduce the range of motion. That means making the exercises very small, very gentle, in addition to doing them slowly. For example, when performing the pelvic tilt, to not push the lumbar spine deeply into extension. Also, it’s possible that pelvic torsion is present as this can cause SI joint problems. Hopefully making the movements very small will reduce the likelihood of flaring up.
Thank you so much, I had instant relief on day one! It was kind of miraculous… I have been through a full cycle, and my body is actually in pretty good shape and I feel like could go through all four cycles at once tomorrow – should I hold off on that?
Wonderful to hear you’ve felt some benefit! While the program is set up to be fairly conservative to account for individuals overdoing it, you certainly can experiment with combining some of the phases on a given day. Allow for plenty of rest and recovery and know that, while you can do more, MORE isn’t always better. Please just really listen to your body.