There is a trigger point (spasm) that is located in the middle of the calf that refers sharp pain to the sacroilliac joint (SI joint). I’ve been able to figure out every trigger point and why it refers to the various places in the body, but this one is a mystery. However, I know for sure that it works, so that’s the important point.
The first time I discovered this trigger point was around 2002, when I had an office in New York and I was working with a lot of runners. One client had a consistent sharp pain in her left SI joint. I worked on all of the normal muscles that cause pain in the low back. In fact, I’ve written several books, or parts of books, about each of the muscles, and they work MOST of the time. But for this woman, nothing was working, and it was a real frustration to me.
As I worked on her, I was looking at the wall of trigger point charts I had in my office, and noticed the following chart:
In this graphic the trigger point is clearly in red, and marked “Soleus,” and you can see the red shading on the left low back area, which is actually the location of the SI joint. On the chart I had in my office, the point and the shading was the same brown color as the point on the right side that is labeled “Gluteus Minimus,” so it wasn’t clear that they were two separate trigger points.
Sure enough, after WEEKS of trying to figure this one out, when I saw this point, and then I pressed down deeply into the spot of the trigger point, my client yelped, but then she said “….it’s going away…it’s really going away!” I continued to hold the pressure on the point, and after a few minutes the pain disappeared. We were both thrilled!
Over the years I’ve found several people who were having this same problem. It’s definitely not the most common source of SI joint pain, but if you are one of the small number of people who are experiencing this problem, you’ll be really happy to have found this mystery point. It is because of this one point that the Julstro Protocol for Low Back Pain has treatments for the lower legs. The other muscles of the lower legs can certainly cause low back pain because they cause the body to be misaligned, but if you are having pain across the area to the side of your sacrum, I suggest you try treating the center of your calf. The treatment is taught in my book, Treat Yourself to Pain-Free Living and in the Lower Body DVD that is on my website.
Wishing you well,
Julie