Willow B.

I just wanted to send a note thanking you guys for this course. I struggled with daily hip pain for the past 4 years. I am a wildlife habitat biologist and spend a lot of time in the field and in my personal life am also very active and do a lot of outdoor activities. I kept doing them anyways, but it hurt to hike…. which is essential for my job and many of my hobbies like hunting. After navigating the medical system and spending a lot of time and money, I was told I had FAI and my options were to continue doing what I was doing (yoga, massage, chiro) or surgery. My chiropractor discouraged me from surgery because she said it wasn’t very successful. Also it didn’t make sense to me that I had lived life for a long time with the same bones but previously had no pain. I did more yoga, but my husband told me he thought it made things worse. Yoga teaches you that negative emotions are stored in your hips – the cure – more hip openers. I then started having knee issues and I kept pulling my groin. One day my son said “mom, I can’t tell if you’re angry or not”. It broke my heart. I wasn’t angry, I was hurting. I didn’t want my husband to touch me sometimes because it put resistance on my body which pinched my hips.

I then got pregnant with my second son and started searching again for something to help my manage the hip pain. I found the FAI fix. I figured that it took me years to get where I was and that it would probably take me a few years to get back out. I was having slow success with the FAI fix. What I found reassuring about it was that I received immediate relief from pain after doing the exercises. I found consistent weakness and tightness differences in the two sides of my body. I discovered why I started having knee and groin pain. I then had a relapse because I had to take a break after having a c-section for my baby. At first I didn’t have pain during my walks but soon, the pain was worse than ever. I kept walking anyways because I felt it was important to recover from the c-section. Eventually I began the FAI fix again but soon started to plateau. I was hopeful…. but I was getting bored. I think the boredom resulted in me rushing through the exercises which compromised the results.

Along came Live and I signed up immediately. Within the first 4 classes I learned more about proper functional body movement than in all of the yoga, crossfit, etc. classes I had taken. I started having whole days where I didn’t have pain. I felt engaged in the classes and really interested. Again, I always felt immediate relief after doing the exercises. I began to understand how I could incorporate the lessons I’ve learned into my yoga practice so that I could still practice yoga.

I just went on a mama – baby yoga retreat. I was nervous as I had booked it prior to really understanding why yoga had caused me issues. Amazingly, the teachers taught many of the same cues and principles as Upright Health does. I was gone for almost 2 weeks with my 2 children without my husband. I ran with my older son, packed my baby and luggage around, walked countless steps in airports, swam in the ocean, and did a week of yoga…. with no pain.

While I know that it is the resources that you all provided that made this possible, the most empowering thing of all is that every time I walk and feel how functional and strong my hips, core, and pelvis are, I think – I fixed myself. That’s truly a gift. And life without pain has truly increased my capacity as a human being in so many ways. When I started FAI Fix, I read to “set a really high goal”. I wanted to be able to run again without pain. I chased after my older son the other day with no pain. It was absolutely glorious and that boy was purely gleaming.

Keep doing what you’re doing. It is much appreciated.