fem-shadows-2-lights-sandbThe doctor pushed the hypodermic needle deeper into the epidural space along my spinal chord. It was my fourth epidural — a steroid injection to relieve (supposedly) lower back pain — but getting the gigantic needle IN was the problem and this one was the worst of the bunch. I was pulverizing the nurse’s hand gripping mine against the pain when I felt myself passing out…Nope, not a fun morning.

This first started about seven years ago when lower back pain came calling. Cause?  Two bulging spinal disks, but they were not bulging enough to make me a candidate for surgery. And so began two years of endless appointments with pain specialists, anesthesiologists (my epidural buddies), physical therapists and test machines of every stripe. They added up to a stack of medical bills stretching to the stratosphere. Most were paid by my insurance, thank you, though I had to cough up plenty too.

As if this weren’t enough drama, I suddenly started having hip pain on top of the back pain. Terrific. For this new annoyance, all tests came back negative. Sleeping suddenly became an iffy proposition. There was no position in bed that didn’t hurt, so I coped by constantly rolling from one position to another, a whirling dervish in the night.

It was at this point, Rina, a physical therapist trained in the Feldenkrais method was dropped from the heavens into my life. Before she came along, no white coats had been the slightest bit interested in the how or why of my ailments. Their only concern was treating the symptoms. Rina on the other hand, asked detailed questions about my daily routine, about everything in my life. She studied my body’s alignment and the way all its’ separate parts moved.  At that point, my body had been protecting itself from pain for so long, it was a super- tight, wound up mess. So she spent a lot of time during our first session smooth talking my rigid muscles into relaxing and letting go, something they hadn’t done for a long long time. And when I walked away from that first session, I floated up the street  butterfly light: an utterly relaxed, dreamy, blissed out blob.

Next Rina taught me to watch and become aware of every movement my body made 24/7. I did this, turning my body into a high, red alert observation post. Then one morning while I was bending down, scrunching underneath my desk to turn off my computer’s power strip, an inner voice yelled: “That’s it, Dummy! That’s your hip pain!’ My god, How could I not have seen it sooner? I had been scrunching underneath that table turning my power strip on and off, putting a hefty strain on my hips at least EIGHT times DAILY for months.

And that wasn’t the only dumb thing I had been doing.  In my second Eureka moment, I suddenly saw that Instead of sitting up straight at my computer as ergonomic experts always recommended, I had been lounging back in my seat, with my feet plopped on a stool a good foot off the floor  — the better to pull those two discs out of place, my dear.

So after a two-year siege, I finally waved goodbye to pain and bills supporting half the medical profession on the East Side. I’ve thanked you in person, Rina. Now here it is in writing. Gracias, Grazie, and merci — big time!

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