Pigeon is a great hip stretch. Actually here is a set of good hip stretches from yoga journal:

[link]

I know a good IT band stretch but am having trouble figuring out how to describe it. Will think on it!

The stretch Burrell mentioned is awesome.

Oh yeah, that Happy Baby pose is a good one for relaxing the hips and back too. Bound Angle looks good too, I know I do that one a lot when my body is feeling fidgety. Thanks for the link, lisah.

Ginger, I hope you find something that works for you. Stopped up ears are so miserable.

smonster, I've been meaning to ask you -- are you getting any relief from your hip pain? (Or is it your IT band? Or are they connected?)

No, not really. I just kind of ignore it until it keeps me from sleeping, and then lie on a series of balls. It's my glutes, and IT band, and psoas, and hamstrings, and goodness knows what else. The pigeon pose kind of helps. What I probably need to do is to relax all the fascia, and then try to get my SI back into joint, and then put my hip belt thingy on to keep it in place. But I haven't been able to manage that.

I hope the stretches help some, Steph.

So for once my poor memory for dates worked for me - the slides are due tomorrow, which means I can do them tomorrow evening while doing laundry, and then practice pitching on Tuesday. I may work on them a bit tonight, so I can bounce them back to my partner.

I ended up meeting up with StW to watch the 2nd half of the game (GEAUX SAINTS!) and then we had an early dinner and watched an episode of Justified. He's back out at a coffee shop working again. Craziness.

I just kind of ignore it until it keeps me from sleeping

Oh my sweet Christ. I can usually get it to calm down throughout the day (walking around and whatnot is fine -- causes no pain), and I'll lie on tennis balls before bed -- and now I'm going to add some stretches -- and as long as I fall asleep on my opposite side, I'm fine. Until about 2 hours before the alarm goes off, at which point I wake up, aware that my hip hurts like a mule kicked me and a circus strongman is punching me as a follow-up.

So my immediate goal is to just get it to calm the fuck down enough for me to sleep all the way through. And what's weird is that ibuprofen does not help at all.

Nope, ibuprofen doesn't do a damn thing for me either. I sleep face down with two pillows long ways under my torso and a third horizontal under my head, offset so my neck isn't at a total 90 degree. Steph, have you tried sleeping with a pillow between your thighs? Long ways, from crotch to knee. That helps keep my hips in alignment when I'm sleeping on my side.

Steph, have you tried sleeping with a pillow between your thighs? Long ways, from crotch to knee. That helps keep my hips in alignment when I'm sleeping on my side.

I do this, plus, I have a stuffed Sextopus (Get yer head outta the gutter...it's just an octopus made with 6 legs) that I hold between my forearms when I sleep on my side. It keeps my shoulders from hunching and I wake with no muscle pain at all.

I would talk about hip pain but right now I have managed to vanquish my headache...but still feel so awful that my dinner is saltines, Gatorade, and pepto. Ow.

Thanks for the suggestions. I have some generic Afrin that I've been using sparingly, but I'm going to go ahead and use it for the next few days. I've been knocking back ibuprofen, but I have some heavier duty NSAIDS. I'm just weary of it all. I feel like all I've accomplished this month is creating massive piles of wet Kleenex.

Steph, have you tried sleeping with a pillow between your thighs? Long ways, from crotch to knee.

When I had bad back pain (that was localized to what I traditionally thought of as the lower back -- which, for me, didn't include the outer hip), I would put a pillow between my thighs/knees. But it didn't occur to me to do it with my hip dealie. However, this morning when I was tossing and turning like a jitterbug trying to get comfortable, Tim suggested a pillow between my legs. Smarty-pants. And then he also massaged my hip for a while, in between falling back asleep.

I'll do the pillow thing again tonight and see if it helps (although I fully expect that I'll kick the pillow out of bed at some point in the night, because I do that).

Thanks!

I have some generic Afrin that I've been using sparingly, but I'm going to go ahead and use it for the next few days.

My doctor swears by 5-7 days of continuous use, if 3 days doesn't do it. (Only with ear involvement, though. When it's "just" a cold confined to the nose/sinuses, he's kind of a hardass about the 3-day Afrin rule.)

My mom sees the same doctor I do, and she's had great luck with using Afrin to get her ears to un-stuff.