SI Joint

I struggled with sacroiliac joint (SI joint) dysfunction for five years, from 2011 to 2016, before finding the answers I really needed in order to heal.

I ended up creating a separate blog, My Sacroiliac Joint Saga, as a space to I share all that I’ve learned.  It began as sort of an “open workbook,” but as I found my own answers over time, my emphasis shifted more into creating a site that could help others. Now I write about my experiences, the anatomy of the SI joint, and link to resources that I believe are valuable.

If you’re curious about my personal history with SI joint dysfunction, below you will find all of my original posts on the topic from this blog.  Putting these posts out there helped me to realize I wasn’t alone, and that other people could actually benefit from what I had to say.  Thank you all so much for your words of encouragement, and for the inspiration to keep searching!

Original SI joint posts from this blog (in chronological order):

What’s going on with me right now (April 2014):   This post was originally meant as a follow-up to a series of posts about my journey with chronic pain, and touches on how my problem with the SI joint originally developed.

My saga with the sacroiliac joint (May 2014)

An update on my sacroiliac joint saga (Sept. 2015)

An update on my sacroiliac joint saga, Part Two (Dec. 2015)

Reader request: pool exercises for the SI joint and low back

Lessons from an Amazing Weekend (Feb. 2016): Realizing that I was beginning to turn a corner with my SI joint, and beginning to regain some of the functionality that I had lost.  Yet at the same time, I began to recognize how much my struggles with the SI joint had actually taught me about learning to cultivate a sense of mindfulness when life is forcing you to hold still.

Inner Limits (May 2016): Realizing how my past history with an eating disorder had made me afraid to trust myself, and limit the amount of time I spent trying to fix my SIJ problem, lest I become too “intense” about something again.  One of my favorite posts of all time.

Could my frequent chiropractor visits be making my SI joint problem worse? (June 2016).  Following a somewhat impromptu stay in San Francisco, when I was unable to see my chiropractor for 3 weeks, I realized I was actually doing better.  I resolved to cut way back on chiropractor visits as an experiment…

The end of my SI joint issues is officially in sight (Sept. 2016).  Following my two-month long experiment, I ultimately realized that yes, the chiropractic adjustments had been a destabilizing force.

Although they were very helpful and possibly even necessary in the beginning (back in 2011), I have since determined that ultimately they were too stressful for my body, and made it harder for my body to maintain a “baseline” of normal alignment, because it was constantly being subjected to forces moving it out of that baseline.  In this post I discuss some of the ins and outs of this idea– including the ways in which my chiropractor actually did help me.  A very complex issue, but one I am happy to be making sense out of now.