What would Sir Mix-a-Lot do?

I have a bum lower back, and I’ve tried everything. I’ve been body slammed by a chiropractor. I’ve had 4-inch acupuncture needles inserted into my sacrum and hooked up to electric current. I’ve been injected with cortisone by a smoking hot physiatrist, which made it well worth the trouble (but the cortisone didn’t really work.) I’ve drunk liquid magnesium, popped Glucosomine and Celebrex. Yoga of course helps, but I haven’t experienced any miracles like I’ve read about on some yoga teacher’s bios: “My back pain was so bad that I had resorted to walking on all fours until I discovered yoga!”

I am now trying Structural Integration--sometimes known as "rolfing"-- and am 3 sessions into a series of 10. What is SI? Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was discovered at Guantanomo. First I stand in my underwear in front of the therapist so that he can eyeball the nuances of my posture and structure to see what’s going on. The guy picks up on the smallest asymmetries….you know as I’m standing there rotating in front of him in my underwear. Did I mention the underwear bit? Then he puts me on the rack –OK its really more like a massage table, but when starts jamming his elbow backed by all of his body weight into my muscles, it feels more like a rack. I know it’s good for me. I rarely break a sweat in a yoga class, and SI makes me sweat and breathe heavily and transfer my angst onto whatever song happens to be playing in the room.

Now that I’ve sold you on structural integration and everyone is chomping at the bit to sign up, I will say that this is the first time that a healer, be it a physical therapist, surgeon, acupuncturist, chiropractor, or massage therapist, could look at my body and tell me exactly what I do repeatedly to compound the problem in my lower back. In my case, I overtuck my tail. After all the alignment workshops and constant demands from yoga teachers in class to “tuck you tail like a naughty puppy,” I discover that I’ve been doing too much of a good thing.

So I will no longer be tucking, but rather I’ll be letting my booty fly. Let that be a warning to anyone who might happen to be practicing on the mat behind me. If you get wacked in the head during utkatasana, don’t say that I didn’t warn you.