CHARLOTTE – Oh my! I felt something the other day I’ve never felt before. Lying in bed the other night I felt the worst pain. It wouldn’t let me get comfortable and the worst part is, that no amount of stretching allowed me any sort of relief. The feeling was of a semi-dull pain hitting my lower back and glutes, going down to one of my ankles. And the pain boundary was clear. It wasn’t on either side of my spine in my lower back, it was definitely the sacrum (the small sort of rectangle bone at the bottom of the spine). The pain included my glutes.

I could feel that my quads were tight and that my hamstrings were tight as I had gone for a hike the other day at Steven’s Mill Nature Preserve – about four miles of hiking. But I had done this trail before with no soreness at all. I hadn’t fallen, tripped, or done anything out of the ordinary that might point to what has caused this particular issue.

With the help of the chiropractor I’ve started seeing and Brian, my massage therapist, I was able to get the pain remarkably minimized. Brian’s method was to use a massage therapy that resets the sacral and hip area. SMRT therapy calls for the muscles to be held in place for a period of 20 – 30 seconds so the muscles will relax and allow the brain to send the correct information to the nerves about where they should be firing.