| Hip surgery is a daunting prospect for anyone. The first suggestion of the surgical option usually comes well in advance of the need for the actual operation. But it’s a red flag that starts to shape one’s thinking towards the inevitable, especially when levels of pain and physical limitations are increasing.
If you are someone interested in more natural ways, of dealing with health issues, then surgical intervention can seem scary in the extreme. Now that I am on the other side of double hip surgery, I can say that because of a wonderful surgeon and brilliant technology, I have my life back. For yoga practitioners who are hip sufferers, there are some sacrifices to be made before your life will become all sunshine and roses again.In the last period before your surgery, you may be in quite a lot of discomfort, have developed a limp, and needed to change your lifestyle accordingly. Poses that you performed with ease, may not be accessible and if your practice was strong, you may have to adopt gentler and more reflective yoga practices. This takes a good deal of humility and a dedication to loving self-care. If you are an independent person, you will need to become more reliant on others, both before and for a good while after the surgery. That’s just a given. This was so hard for me, and one of the most transformative “gifts” from the experience. When researching the type of surgery I would have and the kind of prostheses I would receive, I realised I had no idea what was best. The amount of information on the Internet can feel overwhelming. I trusted the surgeon I chose (after seeing three different ones) and decided I would take my surgeon’s advice. Really, they are the ones with all the experience. I had posterior incisions with ceramic and titanium devices. I was told that they would give me strength and durability. I am limited in some of the range of movement I used to have, but for a hyper-mobile body type, this probably makes my hips stronger and more stable. Most yoga students need to be working on strength and stability instead of ultra-flexability, so my hip surgery experience has helped me help them more. I got back to teaching yoga four months post-surgery, taking it slowly to recover and rehabilitate. I feel I am still going from strength to strength. The expense of the operation and rehab is considerable and it is necessary to take considerable time off physical work for full recovery, but all of it is an investment in your future. Not something that can be stinted on in any way. Here’s an image a year after my replacement surgery, pain-free, having re-gained much movement and suppleness.
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