Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Psoas Bites and Calf Palpation

I had physio today. Despite my email to M complaining about migraine and TMJ-related symptoms, I then told him my calves were completely 'wired' so he decided to address this. He begun by asking me to do a calf stretch. Actually this was a more soleous and achilles stretch and showed these areas are very stiff in me and so this is a new stretch for me to do. This didn't 'upset' my calf.

M then assessed my hip joints and  hamstrings and psoas function. My psoas is very weak and therefore highly reactive - it 'grabs' when threatened. I now need to strengthen it so it doesn't go into this reflexive response. I have a new exercise to do lying on an overall (under my lumbar spine) and then bring my legs into flexion, one at a time. Predictively, the left side was weaker than the right.

M then did a lot of work on trying to calm down my spine and the sensidised senation in my calves. He also did a lot of work in my T-Spine and Rhomoids and lev scap, all of which was painful and very tight.

The session ended with M palpating my left calve in great detail, including posteriorly. He was able to confirm how nice, relaxed and free the muscles are - even though I have horrible sensations in them. I need to keep reminding myself about this, although academically I have always known that there is no injury in them, but all the pain/sensations are chronic pain problems and faulty neural pain pathways.

I am seeing M in 3 weeks, just before my bladder op. We are presently still up against things in terms of lack of sleep and general autonomic dysfunction. Jogging etc all going quite well!

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