“I think the pain is right in here,” Ms. B. said, pointing to her anterior thigh, just in front of the trochanteric head.
Shifting her body in the chair, Ms. B. continued to press into her anterior thigh, as if somehow she could not find what she was looking for. Without speaking, she continued to explore her thigh muscles.
Lifting up her buttock, she began pressing deeply to explore the posterior aspect of her left hip.
“Actually, maybe the pain is really coming from here,” she said. More shifting and probing, then a very awkward silence followed this statement as she realized she had no idea where to direct my attention.
Standing up, Ms. B. elaborated on her experience. “When I move, the left hip just does not feel like the right. I can turn easily and move from my right hip with total freedom. When I do the same on the left, it is less clear and the movement is more restricted.”
Watching Ms. B. move, I was in awe. Ms. B. is a dancer and choreographer, and moves with a sense of grace that one seldom sees in the general population. Her internal sense of restriction is so refined and sensitive that I could barely tell a difference visually. More important than my visual assessment is what Ms. B. experienced. Her expert sense of her own body, refined through thousands of hours of training, told her that something about her left side was a little off.
My job was to help her rediscover her left hip.
After asking Ms. B. to lie supine on the table, I took her hip through a range of motion in flexion and internal and external rotation. Not surprisingly, the range was stellar. Doing the same on the right, I could find no perceptible difference between the two sides. Her experience, however, was that the left side moved less freely than the right. Feeling no perceptible difference in range, it was clear to me about what approach to pursue.
Reaching for the spine and pelvis model, I had Ms. B. sit up while we reviewed the anatomy of the hip. I showed her the movements of flexion, extension, and internal and external rotation, and we reviewed the actions of the joint and the muscular implications during each motion. I could see her visualizing each motion in her own body as we were doing them on the anatomical model.
Moving back to the table, I had Ms. B. lie prone. I bent her knee at 90 degrees and used her lower leg to rotate her femoral head internally and externally. I left the hip model next to the table so Ms. B. could periodically glance at it to remind herself of the exact mechanisms of movement.
“That is so cool,” Ms. B. exclaimed. “I can visualize and feel the movement now—something I was having trouble doing. In other parts of my body, I have an internal picture of how the joint moves. For whatever reason, I could not do that with my left hip. How strange.”
Moving to her right hip, I did exactly the same internal and external rotational movements. Ms. B. confirmed that she could easily connect with the movements on that hip, having a very clear internal representation of the movements I was doing.
“I, too, find this process fascinating,” I shared with her. “It is a very important principle that is often overlooked. Each of us has a map of our body in the brain, and that map can dictate our experience and perceptions. There are many examples of severe disturbances of the map, but someone like you, with a finely tuned movement system, will notice things that the general population will not. My precise palpations and your observation of the movement in the skeleton rewrite and clarify the map. That clarification should then also translate to a change in the experience of movement, as well. Let’s continue.”
This time, instead of moving her leg into internal and external rotation, I stabilized her femur and moved her hips and low back in a rocking motion. Before I could say anything, Ms. B. broke out in laughter.
“OK, now you are moving the hip in reverse, a sort of hip motion through no motion. The socket moves around the ball, instead of the ball moving around in the socket. Tricky!”
“Busted,” I admitted while we both shared a good laugh.
After getting up slowly from the table, Ms. B. began to dance around the room.
“I am fully present in my hip again,” she said. “I can feel it, I can see it, and my hip is part of me again. I am going from here into the studio to work on this new piece I’m creating.”
It is gratifying to know that Ms. B. will turn this shared experience into a dance that will thrill and inspire audiences worldwide.

Douglas Nelson is the founder and principal instructor for Precision Neuromuscular Therapy Seminars and president of the 16-therapist clinic BodyWork Associates in Champaign, Illinois. His clinic, seminars, and research endeavors explore the science behind this work. Visit www.nmtmidwest.com, or email him at doug@nmtmidwest.com.