As many of you know, I experienced what I call a Sciatic Nerve Event about seven years ago. I was pretty desperate at the time to eliminate the pain, which seemed to come out of nowhere, and it took about 16 weeks to calm to a tolerable level. One of the things I learned from this experience is that once a nerve gets irritated, it takes weeks, not days, for it to settle down. There is nothing you can do. Pain meds don’t work, acupuncture does little, and a chiropractor visit can make things more complicated.
I was genuinely desperate when I went to a chiropractor. Any chiropractor would know how to shift something to move the pressure off this nerve to relieve me. I was sure of it. This was not the case. This was faulty thinking on my part, and I have no bad feelings for this chiropractor. He was doing his job, and in his defense, I felt slightly better when I left his office.
However, later that evening, a spot at the bottom of my left foot, between my big toe joint and my little toe joint, became utterly numb. The problem had worsened as a result of this visit to the chiropractor. A physical therapist confirmed the issue had worsened when she told me that what I wanted to see was the pain moving back to the source of the problem, the degenerative changes in my lower spine and not down toward my feet. That made a lot of sense.
This happened in 2016, one year before I found Francisco and Kaiut Yoga. Over 13 months, the irritated nerve settled down. I drove again after about eight weeks. And I was able to sit on a plane to Costa Rica for 3 hours within six months without me doing much; the pain was gone, I was left with a limp, and I no longer had the same power when I tried to run or lift weights. The most frustrating part of all of this was I couldn’t run after my 8-year-old son anymore, and this limp was not who I was. I was 48 years old at the time, peri-menopausal, and not ready to give in and become old.
After trying everything else
Somehow, the universe came together to allow me to find Kaiut Yoga. Since I had tried every other fix-it technique, from physical therapy to acupuncture to chiropractic care to specialized massage like John Barnes MFR and Upledger Cranial Sacral techniques, it was perfect timing to try this. Kaiut Yoga is a technique that is not a quick fix. It’s a longevity practice. It would take me seven years to fully understand what this sciatic event was and what was truly happening.
The beginning of this sciatic event was the end of a process that had been going on for decades. I have always loved all forms of movement, from gymnastics to diving to running, aerobics, martial arts and weight lifting. There were many times when I needed to find ways to exercise that didn’t cost anything. I wanted to be fit and feel fit. Running became my go-to exercise for about three decades. Ten years before the sciatic event, while training for a half-marathon, I thought I had torn my left hamstring. Now, 25 years later, I’m 99 percent sure it was deep nerve pain. So, the beginning of this nerve event had been kicked off about ten years earlier.
Kaiut Yoga works from the perspective of the joint. It’s an inside-out job. The invitation is to get to know the body from joints, and it takes a long time for the brain to learn to feel everything going on from the inside.
Within the first nine months of daily practice, I worked from a curious mind. I didn’t have words to understand what was happening to me, but now I understand that I still had leftover pain from the sciatic nerve event. At the time, when I couldn’t drive, the pain was hovering around my lower spine. It was weird and hard to describe pain that felt similar to an explosion of electricity that radiated from the back part of my pelvis and out. As I said before, nothing worked to relieve it.
If it happens again, would I ask for a cortisone shot or surgery? No. Absolutely not. I know now the irritated nerve needs a long time to settle down. Maybe, if the nerve didn’t settle down after a year with a daily Kaiut Yoga practice, maybe. But I am not about to shut down communication from my brain to my spine. In my opinion, that’s the fastest way for me to grow older much faster.
The nerve pain had moved within the first nine months of practicing Kaiut Yoga. It was no longer in the back part of my pelvis and had moved to the sciatica line across the outside of my left hip. I felt it every time I practiced the pose sukhasana. A very specific shape that exposes restrictions in the external rotation of the hip joint. It’s a sitting position with the legs crossed and the spine dropping forward. In the early days of practicing this pose, it took my system to release my elbows to the floor in about 6 minutes.
My head was nowhere near the floor. It took the full 6 minutes because I would find this line of nerve pain across the outside of my left hip. I would move back and forth, finding my optimum over 6 minutes until my elbows reached the floor. It wasn’t until the 9-month mark, when I participated in my last 11-day intensive teacher training, that my head got to the floor, and the sciatic nerve pain was not only gone but also forgotten. I don’t worry about this pain anymore; I don’t limp, and I have regained more power than I ever thought possible.
Once I broke the rigidity pattern that kept the nerves bound by connective tissue, fascia, etc. I realized my lack of power in and around my hip and thigh muscles, quadriceps, calf, and the sole of my left foot. It took two years to regain power in these areas, and much of this process involved cramping.
Leaning into the discomfort
The Kaiut Yoga Method not only addresses breaking through rigidity patterns but also rebuilding strength in the joints where that strength has been lost. Sure, I experienced nerve damage from the sciatica event and maybe even the chiropractor visit. That makes sense. But nothing in our quick-fix world right now will deliver the foundational joint strength this method delivers. Why? We do it for ourselves because we work to reconnect the areas neurologically. The yoga piece dials down the inner talk, and it’s not someone else’s or an external delivery of results. It comes from our brain.
From this method’s perspective, cramping is not a deficiency in minerals or salts. We find cramping when we still have mobility left in the joint. The muscle is still alive, the brain has access to it, and it has potential. Once the cramp is exposed, the loss is evident, and it needs to be regained.
For me, the cramping started in the left upper thigh or quadriceps. At first, the muscle cramps come out of nowhere; it is pretty shocking and scary, and you want to run screaming from the room. That is normal. It’s normal, and it’s not something to be avoided. The more you avoid it, the more likely it is to happen, especially in the middle of the night.
Since I was putting this method to the test, when the muscle cramping started to happen for me, I listened to Francisco, who told me that the more I stayed with the cramping sensation, the faster the cramping process would complete. I put this cramping idea to the test and stayed with it. I worked. (As a side note, my practice has been very regular, and the cramping process takes time to complete. It doesn’t work as well with an irregular practice. The practice must be consistent if you’re serious about rebuilding this foundational strength.)
For a while, the cramping was mostly in my upper left thigh and would show up when we were lying on our backs, knees bent, and feet on the floor. We would lift one leg at a time, extend the knee, keep the leg below a 90-degree angle, and either point or flex our foot. The thigh was the first to cramp. came out of nowhere. Then, over time, the cramping becomes an ache that feels quite good and productive, and then it begins to feel like you’re simply using the muscles properly. The cramping process is done.
What I love about cramping is its efficiency. I let my calf cramp like HELL; the next day, I felt like I had been to the gym and performed about 500 calf lifts. Over the next month, the calf felt strong. The strength I had lost in the calf was BACK! I am rebuilding the losses from the mistake of visiting a chiropractor.
It took about two years to regain the quad strength the left hip joint needed to hold my leg up for extended periods. It’s not clear at first, but when you have the joint strength to hold your leg up in the air when you’re lying on your back, it has a positive impact on the way you walk in your daily life and can help balance and compensatory patterns that have been established from the opposite leg.
A friend suggested I try squats in the gym instead. I responded, “Squats in the gym won’t find the specific angle I need to regain strength in the left hip.” Squats would allow me to continue my compensatory patterns of letting my right hip do most of the work, always favoring my dominant right side. My brain would get the job done, and my compensatory patterns would stick around. It wouldn’t find the need or specific joint area to balance the foundational strength in the right and left hip joints.
I love the gym, but for me, it’s about aesthetics, training for a particular sport, or bonding with friends. It’s definitely not my longevity practice. While it has tremendous value, I like Kaiut Yoga better when it comes to aging, regaining joint strength, and healing the potential of sciatica, frozen shoulder, and various other issues that leave the joints with losses like limping.
Now, seven years after a sciatic nerve event. I haven’t had a nerve crisis at all. That alone keeps me practicing daily. I don’t have a chiropractor, I don’t need a physical therapist, and I don’t even need massages as I feel like my Kaiut practice massages me from the inside out. I don’t need those services anymore.
I don’t limp. I move easily and feel great. My hips and lower spine feel great, and I finally have some new access to feeling my lower spine in a really good way. My brain is connected to this area and sometimes it spontaneously adjusts with some popping that feels really good — like excellent progress. The lower spine is where I have the degenerative changes, and it’s where the pain was when I couldn’t drive in 2016. I’m still working through some cramping that shows up in my left calf and left foot. Mostly, it’s in the calf now, but it’s in the achy stage of the cramping process, so I am confident the area that took the impact of the original chiropractic visit is re-establishing itself.