05/29/2025
āWaking Up The Bodyā
Life Wisdom Iāve learned from dealing with and treating psoas pain:
Iāve dealt with on and off psoas pain for many years. It took me several years to learn that it was my psoas and not disc issues I had from old car accidents. Most disc herniations eventually tuck themselves back in or develop scar tissue, and over time may not cause any pain at all. However, once a person has a back injury, either slipped discs or herniation or degenerative disc issues, their posture changes. They become very guarded with their back and doing certain activities and movements. They tend to slouch more, or walk more flexed forward. They may go years avoiding certain exercises for fear of injury. Then, when they do start working out again and trying new exercises they may get back pain, and feel like their back is locked up on them, so they back off of exercise for fear of injuring themselves and the discs. They go back to their comfort zone activities, postures and ways of doing things. Here is the thing about the comfort zone: if your comfort zone is unhealthy then itās unsustainable. Existing too long in a comfort zone thatās unhealthy will eventually push you into a state of discomfort. If you learn and see the Revelations the discomfort brings, then you can pivot and make changes that bring you to a place of healthy balance that allows you to exist in a healthy comfort zone. But itās the process of finding that balance that can feel like hell and suffering, and sadly many people donāt ever learn and make changes. They just get more and more toxic and reliant on big pharma, doctors and surgeries. Their pain identity becomes their identity. This is another area I cover extensively in my 3rd upcoming book, pain identity.
The psoas muscle attaches to the spine and iliac crest and greater trochanter. Itās the part that attaches to the spine that is where the pain usually originates. This muscle stabilizes the spine, helps you raise your knee to your chest, and abducts the thigh and hip, and adducts to a lesser degree. This is why when it flares up it feels like itās your spine and discs that are acting up. Whatās really going on is that the psoas muscle shortens and tightens when itās always in a state of flexion. That becomes its comfort zone. When you do an activity that forces it to elongate and stretch out fully for long periods of time, like laying flat on the stomach or certain exercises, itās forced out of its comfort zone, and it doesnāt like that.
Years ago I went to physical therapy for sciatic pain. It did very little to help. It was ten sessions of acupuncture that got rid of it. Iāve been told over the years by various PTās and doctors that one of the reasons I have so many back flare ups and pain is that one side of my pelvis is more rotated and tilted than the other. I had a revelation yesterday that itās not just the previous disc issues and poor posture that caused me to be guarded with my back, leading to a tight psoas. Itās also the way I sleep. I sleep on my side, predominantly my left side, and Iāve spent more than half my life sleeping this way in a fetal position without anything between my knees. It wasnāt until my thirties that I started sleeping with a body pillow. This keeps the shoulders aligned as well as the hips and back. I wasnāt born with one side of my pelvis tilted and higher than the other. It was developed from decades of sleeping that way, with the psoas in a state of flexion and overly adducted with that top leg over the bottom leg. Not one single doctor or PT ever explained to me that this could be the reason for this imbalance in the pelvis. This is something that just came to me when I was really thinking about all the actions of the psoas and how I sleep. Then I remembered what they always said about the imbalance in the pelvis. Most medical professionals that told me this acted as if this was something I was born with instead of something that was developed.
Also, as a child I developed this weird way of standing at times that I think also threw things out of alignment. Kinda like the eye thing Iāve always done where I was always winking in most pictures and still have a habit of closing that one eye a lot when I read. This caused one brow to be slightly higher than the other. This brings me back to the work that Ida Rolf did with Rolfing and her book on fascia and how it gets stuck in holding patterns from mannerisms and movements we developed in childhood. These are all things most people go their whole lives and never really give much thought to.
Then I feel like I was led to another personās work, Dr Thomas Hanna, who passed away years ago, but he seemed like a fascinating person. I would love to have picked his brain on many topics. He taught somatic exercises to retrain the body and its movements to unlock the body from all those stuck patterns. In one interview he mentioned something about the āuniverse inside a personā. As Iāve mentioned many times in my writing, Iām grateful for the healing path God put me on because being a bodyworker for twenty four years has allowed me to see how all the layers of the body, mind, soul, spirit, and energy all connect and correlate to life, energy, consciousness, the planet, the universe, and divine wisdom.
Some mornings are decent, but the last month or so most have been really challenging. Iāve learned that itās all about how and where I fall asleep, and if I have something between my knees if Iām on my side or under my knees if Iām on my back. My back would be so stiff in the morning that at first I couldnāt even put socks on. I just had to slip on my shoes without any. Then I learned a trick, and the only way I could put my socks on is if I sat on my bed and put one foot up next to me and slipped the sock on that way. Even putting on underwear and pants was challenging. If something falls on the floor in the morning, itās probably staying there till later when I loosen up. Sneezing, coughing, bending are all painful. But after a few hours of movement and going back into my comfort zone of flexion, I start to loosen up. Itās only when I hyper straighten up that Iāll get a jolt. About a week ago I thought I was āfixedā. I sat on the edge of my massage table and leaned back a certain way. My back seized up, and I was afraid to move, but something in me just said āF**k it! Lean into the pain!ā So, I did, and that was the first time I felt my psoas actually pop in a release. I had a whole day where I felt such relief, but by the next day the pain was back again. Because I got relief but went back into the same repetitive movements and posture that locked it up in the first place.
Monday I woke up all gung ho to do all these workout vids I had, but my back was so stiff I decided instead to do more meditative stuff and stretching. I looked up some new Psoas release techniques, and I found a really good one. I spent a lot of time working with the psoas Monday. It felt great while it was being stretched, but after a while I noticed the difference, and not good at first. In fact, it got much worse. Normally when my back is stiff in the morning and I sit down I get relief. The psoas easily goes back to its happy place. But not that day. When I sat in my office chair the pain was so intense I couldnāt get comfortable. The psoas went into a state of spasm. It was like it was screaming at me āBitch! What are we doing? Are we going back to our happy little comfort zone, or are we straightening up and getting healthy?ā That song āIām In Betweenā by In this Moment has been playing in my head for days.
The wisdom I got from this is that itās always initially easier to stay in our comfort zones in life, but if that comfort zone isnāt balanced and healthy then it wonāt be sustainable. Eventually you will be forced out of the comfort zone and will be thrown even further off of balance. If you decide to do something different, change your life and get healthier you will get worse before you get better. The body has to acclimate to new ways of living and moving just as the mind and emotions need to adjust to new ways of thinking as you move past programmed belief systems. Most people give up from the pain of change and go back to the comfort zone. To understand this might offer some insight as to why people with addictions of all kinds get stuck in their comfort zone, and how when they try to get clean and healthy, initially they get worse before they get better.
I always go back to that old episode of āMarried With Childrenā where Peggy decides to hire a trainer and get healthy. This guy has been super healthy for years. Instead of him helping Peggy get healthy, he starts eating Bon Bons and getting lazy with her. He gets out of shape and ends up dropping dead. And of course Peggy is thinking thatās just all the more reason to not get healthy and stay toxic. The point is that that even those that get addicted to over exercising and having the perfect body and perfect health are also in a state of imbalance that isnāt sustainable, and can easily be thrown off. Itās also a symbolic episode that shows how those with the white savior complex quite often get into situations with toxic people thinking they will save those people and bring them up, but in reality the demons of the toxic people sometimes end up dragging them down into the toxicity. Women and men have a habit of doing this in relationships. They date people that they feel they gotta fix because it validates their savior complex, and initially they think if they just love that person enough it will be enough for that person to heal from trauma or addiction. Instead they quite often get dragged down, and take on trauma of their own from that relationship, and maybe even pick up the other personās addictions. Think Whitney Houston who didnāt have a drug problem until she dated a man that had one.
Those that date people with a lot of demons should always make sure they are strong enough not to be influenced by them. This is why doing your own inner healing and being your own person is so important before getting into relationships. There are a lot of narcissistic abusers who hide behind an image of perfection and they quite often have the savior complex while simultaneously being weak feminine and needy. This applies to both men and women. Hence the relationship between two weak feminine vulnerable narcissists that spend the whole relationship low key gaslighting each other, feeling like the superior one in the relationship thatās needed and whom the other should feel lucky to have. They quite often drag other people into the relationship through triangulation games. This could be with friends or lovers. They use other people to make their partner insecure or feel like they gotta work harder to keep them interested and always meeting their needs. They play on each otherās fears of abandonment. And thatās just one type of toxic relationship. As someone thatās always studied people and human behavior, relationships, and the way energy moves, Iāve pretty much seen every type.
A lot of relationships are between two toxic people full of unhealed traumas and addictions, who are either looking to someone else to save to distract them from saving themselves and healing first, or one or both people live in victim mindset and play the role of someone that needs to be saved. Those that have the savior complex(givers/providers) often attract those that live in victim mindset and their weak feminine energy(takers/needy users.) The relationship usually ends with the one with the savior complex(typically the masculine energy not necessarily the man) feeling that they were used and distracted from their own health and prosperity while catering to the other. The other walks away feeling abandoned, like the other person just didnāt do enough to keep them satisfied, or to help them, or didnāt love them enough to stick around and keep giving giving giving. They push the other away and may even cheat, and then play the victim role of someone that was abandoned. The epitome of the saying that givers need to set limits because takers never do.
This is why itās good to evaluate your giving in relationships to know if youāre giving when you really want to and from the heart because you love that person and want to take care of their needs vs when youāre giving in order to get a pat on the head or to make them love you more. Iāve learned to do the same with what I share online in my writing. I write and share what I do and never get paid for it. Iāve learned to move past the feelings of āThis is time consuming. Iām not getting paid for this. Why should I even bother sharing my writing if there isnāt even enough people willing to read lengthy blogs and engage?ā And Iāve moved into the mindset of āIāll share whatās relevant, and only when it works with my schedule on my timeline. No rush.ā If you love something enough youāre going to do it whether youāre getting paid to do it or not. Iām just learning to hold back a lot and wait to share the bulk of my work in books rather than social media land.
Anywhoo, back to the psoas, I read a story from a ballerina that lived with tight psoas, and she was extremely overly active. So, this is another example of how active and thin doesnāt always equate to balanced and healthy either. Too much one way or the other can lead to imbalance. The sweet spot is in the middle, the In Between. If you can find it. My focus now is on adding somatic exercises to my daily schedule and unlocking my body, one muscle group at a time. It isnāt just about stretching out the psoas. You have to strengthen all the muscles and fascia around it as well. And then there is working with the fascia to put things back where they should be. So, Iām essentially going to be incorporating every bit of knowledge and wisdom Iāve learned through my years in the massage therapy field and life itself to āwake up the body.ā š
Jennifer E. Walls
5/29/2025
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Photo credit: Unknown
