From Knee to Hip

A Transformative Pain Odyssey Unveiled in My Client's Remarkable Journey!

I'm so excited to share a story with you from my newest client.  I've actually known this lady for years and she reached out to me in desperation to try and find some relief from her chronic pain.  So, let's take a look at her journey so far.

Fascia First

My friend has a very arthritic hip and is in need of a hip replacement.  It's taking her several months to jump through the hoops of the healthcare system to see the surgeon and get her surgery scheduled.  She is looking for any kind of relief in the interim to get her through to her much-needed surgery. So, the challenge here is to find some natural solutions to help maintain her functionality, reduce her pain as much as possible, and get her geared up for a speedy recovery.  I've always LOVED a challenge!

My friend is a retired professional dancer and choreographer.  I'm sure you can imagine the wear and tear a dancer puts on their body.  In fact, she went through a knee replacement surgery in October of 2023 that she is still recovering from.  After meeting with her, we came up with a plan.  She didn't understand very much about the fascia, and when I explained it to her in detail, she had a major AHA moment!  Things started to make sense to her and she understood why physical therapy for the last 1.5 years wasn't working for her.  Fascia first my friends.  

We started to do an assessment and look at the alignment in her body.  Part of what I teach is how to find the adhesions in your body and see them.  This helps us create a plan for healing.  I noticed a large imbalance in her shoulders.  After asking her about that, she informed me that she was in a near death car crash at the age of 16.  She broke her left collar bone and had damage to her left lung resulting in a hospital stay of a month.  This created a massive amount of adhesions (scar tissue) in this area of her shoulder.  Since the fascia is a completely enclosed and connected system inside your body, these adhesions pulled and created tension in other areas including her abdominal area, pelvis, hips, knees, ankles, and feet.  You could see a zig zag pattern from her shoulders all the way down to her feet.  This imbalance creates misalignments in your joints causing inflammation, degeneration, arthritis, and pain.

She had all the MELT Method tools but wasn't really clear on how to use them. Given the amount of pain she was in, I decided to start slow and gentle with her.  Working the areas above and below her hip.  We started with the foot treatment.  Standing for long periods of time is a challenge for her right now, so I had her sit in a chair to do the exercises.  We did the right foot first, as I wanted her to have a good comparison to the pain in her left hip. Her foot felt more grounded, flat and connected to the floor.  Her calf and hamstring felt looser too with more range of motion and stretch.  Then, we moved to the left foot.  We noticed her left foot had more supination (rolling to the outside) to it in comparison to the right foot.  The calf and hamstring had more tightness and less range of motion to begin with as well.  After completing the left foot release, her mind was blown.  She had significant improvement.  It's amazing how much effect you get from the simple foot release. 

After completing the foot treatment, we got on the soft foam roller to do a simple breathing treatment.  We focused how to breathe and fill up our entire torso with air.  This simple act helps to release any fascia tension and adhesions around our organs that are protected by the ribcage. I wish you could have seen her expression on her face afterwards.  She said her ribs haven't moved that much since her accident.

Later that evening she texted me to say "HOLY S**T!  I went down the stairs this afternoon with almost no pain in my new knee!  WOW!

She'll need several more sessions to finish learning the MELT Method technique and to start feeling better again.  When the fascia fills up with adhesions and scar tissue it inhibits our body's natural ability to move.  Her physical therapy wasn't working because the focus is typically on finding the areas of weakness and to make it stronger with exercises.  Exercise that you are having to do through pain.  If you focus on breaking apart the adhesions first, freeing up your body to move, the exercises won't hurt, and you'll finally progress.

I'm so excited for my friend's journey out of pain and to be the one to help her.  As a ballet teacher, my biggest pleasure was seeing the look on my student's faces when they got it.  When it clicked and they understood what I was trying to teach them.  

Now that my friend is starting to understand the importance of healing the fascia, we'll get her on a path of healing, improved movement, range of motion, and flexibility.  We'll develop a plan in preparation for her surgery to be able to recover faster and get back to her goal of retiring so she can travel and ride her bike again.

Do you know anyone who needs help like this? I encourage you to share this blog with them and reach out to me for questions.

Cheers!

Nicole

P.S. My bestselling program is the Mini Fascia Release.  It is so incredibly simple, effective, gentle, and easy to do.  To learn more click here.