Hips like a snake

I’ve mentioned my ongoing struggle with sciatica/back pain (once or twice...) but things are looking up because I’ve been going to a (very cute) physio and the exercises he has been giving me are really helping. I went to see him last Tuesday and he asked me how often I had done my daily exercises in the past week. So I told him that I had more or less done them 5 out of 7 days. He was like ‘so, you didn’t do your daily exercises daily’. Which embarrassed me so much I vowed (internally) that I would do whatever he told me to do this week. It was the type of embarrassment that brings me back to an entire childhood of mortifying missed practice for music lessons. (I think now is an appropriate time to mention that when I was in primary school I was so afraid of my piano teacher, but so reluctant to practice, that Fran and I would go to the local church for a quick rosary before my lesson on a weekly basis!)

So, the physio talked me through a few more stretches and re-emphasised to me just how important it is that I do the exercises as often as he tells me. He gives me a lovely yoga pose, the cobra, then he drops the bombshell; for this particular exercise I have to do ten repetitions TEN TIMES daily. Now I had struggled with three times, so I was like ‘here, honestly I think that’s going to be very difficult and fairly unrealistic’. And then he threw in the cruncher; ‘do you actually want to get better’.

So I have spent the last few days in a cloud of the cobra pose. For those of you that are not familiar with it, it’s done on the ground, not exactly office conducive. But since I have to do the stretches throughout the day rather than all at once I’ve had to start doing them at the office. I don’t want to be banging on about an injury around the office, so I’ve never explained my hourly, lengthy trips to the toilet. I’m not seeing him again until next Thursday, and I honestly can’t take his disapproving tone again, so it looks like I’m going to have at least 30 more inexplicably long absences next week!