In my last blog post I wrote about using Yoga Tune Up® Therapy Balls for self-massage and stress relief. For a long time, I was living in fear of any movement because I didn’t want to trigger my most intense moments of dizziness. The Roll Model Method techniques helped me regain mobility and calm me down from the stress I was experiencing. After over a year of undiagnosed dizziness, one neurologist came to the conclusion that I have MAV (Migraine Associated Vertigo). He prescribed me a particular migraine medication and combined it with a magnesium supplement. After two months of using the medication and magnesium, I feel significantly better. I’m not symptom free, but I am able to find the confidence to live my life again.
One of the things that I am finally excited to get back to is exercise. I used the Yoga Tune Up® sequences to build strength and safely regain movement to every joint in my body. Because of the limitations I put on myself from not feeling well, months of inactivity reignited hip pain that had subsided a year prior. I spent a lot of time sitting on the couch in a cross-legged position researching my condition online. This habit of sitting with an externally rotated femur weakened my hip adductors and vastus medialus of the quadriceps. My slumped posture irritated the quadratus lomborum, overworked the piriformis and overstretched my already weak gluteal muscles. (I’m sure there’s more going on too!) This is when I started rolling with self massage therapy techniques and didn’t stop until I got myself into movement once again.
If you’re in a physical slump and need safe, effective, techniques to perform in the comfort of your home, try The Roll Model Method and Yoga Tune Up® exercises and movement techniques.
I do Prasarita Lunges in order to warm up my hips, tone the adductors, quadriceps, and gluteal muscles. Check out the link below.
Want to tone internal and external rotators of the hip for a symmetrical lower half? Check out this asymmetrical hip hike. This was helpful in keeping my body balanced.
I think that’s one of the things I love about the YogaTune Up approach: it can be intense, but also can ease people back into movements that haven’t been happening for awhile. Slow and steady to build new patterns.
Lauren, thanks for sharing your experience with MAV and what you have endured through in terms of your physical activity. I am a pilates instructor and found your story to help me see some things that I was definitely missing in some of my clients that experience vertigo. Some clients have no formal diagnosis and doctors can’t figure out the cause. I appreciated you sharing how challenging it was to move because of the dizziness and not being able to control it until finally finding the right medication that could ease symptoms enough to begin a movement practice. I love that you offer techniques from the Roll Model Method® and how it aided you in building strength and safety to regain movement. I’m going to definitely encourage some of my clients to explore rolling and more standing exercises in the way they can, especially outside of the studio. Easing out of illness is a great mantra and one that I will be sharing with clients…
Enjoyed learning asymmetrical hip slides. Really think I will benefit from adding them to my bag of tricks.
Hi Lauren!
Thank you for posting! Your article and videos are very helpful as I have this weird dizziness that gets triggered when I lay down without any support on my neck or lay down with head in a lower position (ie. dentist’s chair) and I take it super easy when I do movements that require my head to turn everywhere (ie. dancing.) Those videos are helpful to strengthen my weaker muscle groups too 🙂
Lauren, Glad you found a treatment plan that is helping you. You are so right it is hard to stay fit when you don’t feel well. Love these hip stretches. The are strengthening and stretches. What a great combination.
Sometimes when we are sick we have believed that the best would be to stay still until we recover, but unfortunately this is very far from the truth. With the Yoga tune up therapy balls we have no excuse to avoid movement, glide and slide in our tissues, and to recover mobility and lubrication in areas stiff and dry. Slowly the stiffness can subside and we can gain freedom of movement. Even for people in a bed there is hope with the therapy balls!
Thank you for sharing your story. I fell a year ago and ended up with a concussion and a fractured scaphoid on one hand. I couldn’t do anything for months. Although hard, easing into better health was the best thing. I’m excited to try the hip flexibility stretch! Thanks!
Thank you so much for sharing your story, Lauren. I can’t imagine having to deal with Migraine Associated Virtigo, but I am so happy to hear you are taking positive action to improve and feel better. It’s amazing how we don’t realize what we are doing out of habit (the way you described sitting on the couch in the same position), but it’s important that you are working on correcting it. Thank you for also sharing the videos! Take care.
I’m going to share this post with people I know who are afraid of movement due to similar illnesses
It’s inspiring to me to read about people who came back from extended periods of inactivity and who recuperated from illness and are stronger for it. Thank you for your story, your breakdown of your difficulties, and your method of recovery! YTU has opened my eyes to how yoga poses I took for granted can be broken down into finely tuned healing postures.
Pain and illness have the potential to be transformative teachers.
Thank you for sharing your process and enriching all who read it.
Such great recommendations. I’m inspired to get down and do some of the asymmetrical hip flexibility tune up movements right now. Thank you!
I have been dealing with SI issues for years and at first, I was stretching my lower back and hips intensely to find temporary relief but only to discover that the pain was returning and was becoming more severe. Once I realized that my joints were hypermobile, I became afraid to move. While my SI pain diminished, other parts of my body started to have sensations of pain, strain, aches. It wasn’t until I started to understand the cause of the pain and began to focus on both strength and flexibility practices that my body started to come into balance. Then I discovered YTU balls and that skyrocketed my recovery. It’s so important to remember that movement really is medicine when the right movements are used at the right time of our recovery process. Thanks for this reminder and sharing the hip hike video. I love it!
I also have Migraine Associated Vertigo! I learned that I can do some exercises even in the middle of an episode of vertigo, and feel better afterwards. Your observation about weak adductors really hits home – I spent years partially sedentary from illness and my legs are still “loose.” The YTU work is helping me rebuild strength and stability.
Thank you for the great videos, I love the knee on the Yoga block to tone and strengthen the internal and external rotators.
I definitely know the feeling of not wanting to trigger pain, as I suffered from intense low back pain for a long time. So instead of trying to figure it out (at the time), I became nervous to do anything…until I found the YTU therapy balls! (sign). That moved me into a curious place and from there I decided that I needed more information in my path of self discovery. Thank you for reminding me that this can happen to any of us, and we’re the lucky ones who have ‘woken up’ and found healing and strengthening techniques through investigation and knowledge. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for the very informative article. I have known about the Prasarita lunges to warm up your hips but I love the Hip flexibility stretch as well. I will definitely teach my friend who was just complaining about this issue, this pose.
Linda
so inspiring a story. congratulations for persevering and finding your way back to wholeness.