In the past, I’ve been reticent to use a chiropractor to treat injuries or other problems because I’ve heard stories about how the profession was allied with ambulance-chasing lawyers ready to sue people involved in accidents and their insurance companies, as well as the charges that chiropractic is not based the scientific method, especially when compared to the conventional Western medicine.

Over the past few months, I’ve been forced to change my mind. I noticed that several friends visited chiropractors regularly. I’ve also confirmed that Western medicine does not adequately address all health concerns. Finally, my iliopsoas spasms made me re-examine whether it was worthwhile to call in different opinions.

A new healthcare provider

During the 40-day yoga challenge at Thrive Yoga, Susan and David Bowen brought in Dr. Donald McGriff to give a talk to the group about chiropractic and general well-being. I missed the talk because I wanted to take a yoga class at the same time. But Susan and David said that they used his services so that was high praise.

On April 15, I got an appointment at McGriff Chirpractic to see if Dr. McGriff could do anything for my iliopsoas spasms. He looks more like a professional wrestler than a doctor, a burly build topped off with a shaved head. After an initial examination and a check of my medical history, he sent me off to get an MRI of my lower back. That took a little longer than expected because of scheduling conflicts, but I was back in his office on April 27 with the CD in hand. After taking a look at the MRI, Dr. McGriff came back with the news that I might have a spinal disk herniation (4-5 L vertebrae), but the MRI was not really that clear. I also seemed to have a displaced sacroiliac (SI) joint on the right side. Since I did not take notes, I can’t be sure three weeks later whether I’ve misunderstood anything. In any case, he prescribed 2-3 visits a week to his office to work his magic.

The nice thing about Dr. McGriff’s practice is that he opens at 6:00 am on three mornings a week so I schedule my visits so that I hop out of bed, get into fitness clothing and drive over for a 6:30 appointment, usually on Monday and Friday. I am out of his office in time to go back home, shower, dress, grab breakfast, and head to the Metro by my usual time. There are also office hours on Saturday.The location of his office, which is only 10 minutes from my home in Rockville, sealed the deal.

Treatment starts with 15 minutes of electro-stimulation with hot pads on my lower back. There are four electrodes sprayed with some kind of liquid to increase conductivity (The spray must come right out of the refrigerator because it is cold). Hot pads are placed over the lower back (to compensate for the cold electrodes, I guess). The electrical current goes through varying patterns of pulsing, but can be adjusted to the point where it does not cause discomfort or pain.

After chilling for 15 minutes, Dr. McGriff leads me to his examination room where he checks my alignment and then usually has me lie down on my left side and gives me a firm twist of my torso to the right. My SI joint usually pops with the adjustment. That’s usually followed by adjustments to my hips, rib cage and upper spine, and upper neck.  He has a firm touch in his adjustments that gives confidence in his skills.

Once he’s done with me, I may get an additional ride on fancy equipment: a table that stretches my spine, a vibrating platform that loosens my hamstrings.

Dr. McGriff applies more than an exclusively chiropractic focus, emphasizing the value of   holistic approach that includes nutrition, corrective exercises, physical therapy, fitness and life style coaching. His web site has lots of information to understand his approach, the general practice of chiropractic, and other services.

Passing the grade

Has the treatment improved my injury? That’s hard to say. My iliopsoas have not been a source of pain or discomfort recently. With a more than a month of rest and avoidance of aggravation (no yoga classes), my hips and lower back may have healed itself. I simply have not been testing their limits. On the other hand, I do feel the effects of the treatment: after a session, I feel general muscular fatigue by the end of the day, which is usually a sign that my muscles are adjusting to a realignment of my frame. I have noticed that my thighs seem to set further apart. I can sit in easy pose more comfortably and my knees fall  closer to the ground naturally.

My daughter warned me that I should avoid active yoga classes or gym work on that days that I have chiropractic treatment. Dr. McGriff told Howard Rontal, my bodyworker, that it’s best if the bodywork happen the day before a chiropractic session to be the best results out of his sessions. Finally, Howard told me that I should not have acupuncture and bodywork done on the same day (within 24 hours of each) since the Oriental meridians run through the myo-fascial tissues. So there are now a whole new slew of scheduling factors that I have to take into account when planning my healthcare.

With less than a month of treatment, it’s far to soon to say that my chiropractic has worked miracles or otherwise. In the real world, it’s almost impossible to isolate the factors  (chiropractic, acupuncture, rest, restorative yoga, relaxation exercises, body work, positive thing, placebo effect) so I have to go with just my gut feeling. It has not hurt me.

This week, I am going to have my first session with Howard Rontal, my body worker, in more than a month.

Illiacus and psoas muscles

I stopped massage therapy when it became clear to me that I needed to take a step back in dealing with my iliopsoas meltdown because the “injury” was not going away and, in deed, seemed to be worsening. I needed to take a different perspective, and also back off my own efforts to get a handle on my body. I also stopped going to yoga classes because I felt that my approach to yoga (taking it deeper, finding my edge) might be complicating the condition even though I was trying to be mindful when doing my vinyasa practice. My neuro-myofascial system operates at a subconscious level: I don’t explicitly decide to use specific sets of muscles to twist or turn; it’s handled by another part of the neural system.

In any case, I felt that I needed to reduce my treatments in order to see if and how I was improving and what was having an impact. I only had so much time and money to throw at the problem.

How bodywork changed me

The break from Howard‘s hands allowed me to reflect on how six months of treatment (since September last year) has affected me.

Working with a massage therapist requires a suspension of personal boundaries: each session, I strip down to my boxers, lay down on the sheet-covered table, and allow Howard to rub and probe with his hands, forearms, elbows and assorted instruments over the surface of my body and dig in deep to reach other layers of fascia and muscle. I submit myself to his experience, skills and aptitude to somehow transform my flesh into something that’s more sustainable, healthy, functional. My originally intention — that this treatment will relieve me of the bizarre combination of numbness and pain (peripheral neuropathy) — may not be completely attainable, but it will alleviate the stiffness and lack of range in my neuro-myofascial matrix. I know that the experience was transforming my yoga practice: every time I get on the mat, there are sparks of discovery, as I am able to access muscles more deeply, overcome resistance caused by the years of stress that I’ve stored in my sinews.

Because Howard comes from the Hellerwork tradition, there is a strong psychological component in his technique so we can talk about a lot of emotional issues that are being expressed in my muscles and tissues. So as I am taking off my clothes, I am telling him about the aches, pains and numbness of my body, the stressors of my job and my intentions for the session. I am exposing myself to him, but also becoming more self-aware of my own mind-body connection.

As the focus of the treatment moved away from the neuropathy issue to the muscle spasms, Howard and I engaged in a kind of detective work to find out which were the protesting muscles, and which muscles were merely squealing in sympathy. We narrowed it down to the illiacus and psoas on the left side, and maybe the ligaments connecting my hips to my sacrum or the SI joint. But these muscles may have been over-compensating for the right side being over rigid. But these tissues are so deep in the body that it’s really hard to access them, but it was amazing to experience how Howard could influence that inner core.

What I learned about body care

There are things that I can do for my body that Howard can’t: in a yoga vinyasa I can employ the whole span of my body and balance it in gravity. Howard has to be more focused on single muscles, fascia, torso or limbs. In crescent lunge, I can engage the full anatomical chain from my fingers down to my toes as I swing through full extension. I can also treat myself to self-message, either by using a roller or Yoga Tune-Up balls (or other balls of varied form and density), with the advantage that I can focus on tight areas, deepen or soften the touch at the point of contact, or explore at will. Each evening, as a minimum, I roll my rhomboid muscles and it is one of the most delicious sensation — tension spills out of the tissues. I had not realized that stress had been building up there, a kind of secret repository. I’ve also start massaging my feet, especially my arches, during the day to prevent tension from building up in my legs. In other words, I’ve been learning to self-heal and self-soothe.

I now realize that I have to take charge of my own process of healing and well-being, but also recruit the intervention of other specialists to help me take the best path forward, which means that I will have to explain what I have learned from undergoing treatment with a chiropractor and an acupuncturist.

I’ve been so absorbed in my day-time-turned-evening job over the past few weeks that I did not have a chance to point to an article that appeared May 8:

The struggles of D.C. area yoga studios – The Washington Post
Yogis don’t like to talk about competition, and most owners will deny there’s any tension among local studios. But Schumacher acknowledges that the businesses are vying for students’ attention.

A few weeks ago, I noted the closing of Ashtanga Yoga Center at the end of this month. Yoga has to be commercially viable in order to have an impact on mainstream culture in the United States. The market is the medium for sustainability. The Post scratches the surface about the costs of operating a yoga studio, and “amenities” like cookies are the least of owners’ concerns. To survive, owners need to have a creative, flexible business mind without losing touch with the spirit of yoga. That’s a difficult balancing act. That can include finindg new ways of offering yoga, like combining spinning and yoga, although technically it’s a fitness center offering the class. 

Closer to home, my home studio, Thrive Yoga, offers classes for climbers at Earth Treks. But the new twist at Thrive has been the incorporation of Aerial Yoga with Silk Hammocks - practitioners are suspended from cords hanging from the ceiling and play a different kind of leverage game with gravity. The classes seem to be booked up well in advance. I have not had a chance to try it because I’ve been away from the studio for the last two months.   

Oh yeah, May 13-20 is DC Yoga Week, as the Post announces, but you can actually read the full details on the DC Yoga Community site, and the traditional highlight of the celebration, Yoga on the Mall, will take place on Saturday, May 19, weather permitting.

I have not taken a class since April 7. That day, I was in Susan Bowen’s 2/3 hot vinyasa class. She led an upbeat session that had us moving through sun salutations and modifications. I noticed something was wrong: I began feeling pain and discomfort in practically every pose and transition of the vinyasa, deep in my core and focused on my left psoas and radiating down by leg, up towards my hip and kidneys and across my hips. In the earlier stages of the injury, it was happened only in certain poses, and I would avoid them or get into them very mindfully. Now there was no avoiding the pain and muscle spasms.

In the middle of the class, I shut myself down. I did poses to soothe my core muscles, hip abductors/flexors and lower spin, laying or seated on the mat. I rested on my back with my knees propped on blankets. All the while my friends were sweating away in an active class.

For two month, since the first instance of the injury, I had rested the injury, making regular visits to my body worker, Howard Rontal, and then started taking yoga class after two weeks being very mindful in my poses and flows. During my daily routine, I was not conscious of any difficulties. At the gym, I did not feel any problem doing aerobic exercises.

Obviously, that approach did not work, because the injury (?) has flared up in a more generalized pattern. I decided to stop yoga classes again, see a chiropractor and check in with my acupuncturist, Kelly Welch, who had helped me in the past. More in future entries.

My friend and dedicated Ashtangi Donavan Wilson sent me a message today:

David Ingalls is shutting down AYC (Ashtanga Yoga Center, for those not in the know). The doors close on May 31. The studio space near American University is too expensive. Keith Moore (long-time AYC teacher) found another location. The new location is unofficially in the MacArthur Boulevard area (DC). The tentative new name is the Ashtanga Yoga Studio. Moore has not signed a lease. However, the odds pretty good to solidify this new location. All of this (new space and location) is up in the air. AYC closing is not.

What a bummer! And to think, I have not had a chance to take a class there — though I do have until the end of May. What did in AYC was what made it a convenient place to practice yoga — it was right next to the American University/Tenlyetown Metro station, right across from WholeFood. You could fit in a Mysore class before picking up a bagel and heading to work. But economically, the rent got too high at that prime location. Let’s hope that all the instructors and students find an appropriate space for their practice.

I should also underscore that the AYC website distinguished itself for exquisite photography of yogis and yoginis absorbed in their practice. As someone who has dabbled in that dark art, I know how difficult it is to capture the instance, but when you do, it’s magic.

Postscript: I should also note that DC is not the only place where yoga studios can become unviable commercially: In New York City, Om Yoga will shut down at the end of June because the lease was not renewed. Om Yoga was founded and run by Cyndi Lee, a high-profile yoga instructor and pioneer in fusing yoga with Buddhism. The owner of the building did not want a ygoa studio on the premises.