In this video Akima, owner of Soul Core Fitness, delivers a comprehensive yet accessible overview of the sacroiliac (SI) joint, emphasizing why it is frequently misunderstood and why that matters for overall body health. She explains the joint’s anatomy – the ilium, sacrum, and the boomerang‑shaped articulation with distinct lesser and greater arms, apex, base, and isthmus – and describes its normal oblique axis movement versus the 20+ pathological axes that can develop when the joint is compromised. Akima outlines how SI joint dysfunction can be asymptomatic yet manifest as pelvic imbalance, false leg length, hip/knee/shoulder pain, or even visceral issues, illustrating the concept that the pelvis is the body’s “floor” and any misalignment affects the entire kinetic chain. She critiques conventional practitioners who dismiss the joint’s complexity, then details her holistic assessment protocol that pinpoints which sub‑region of the SI joint is affected before selecting targeted interventions. Treatment focuses on ligament‑centric fascial work (double TLS, fascia normalization) followed by integrated myofascial chain exercises targeting piriformis, gluteal muscles, obturator internus, and iliopsoas. Akima invites viewers to join her private Facebook community, download a free ebook outlining four steps to strength and mobility, and schedule personal consultations, positioning her approach as a comprehensive, body‑wide solution rather than isolated exercises.
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The SI joint is not completely understood by a lot of people. It makes it problematic because when you want to go to work with it, you can't work with it properly. If you can't work with it properly, that leaves the door open to a lot of unbalancement, dysfunction, pain, immobility, all these fun things that people know that nobody wants. So I want you to stay tuned because in this week's video, I'm going to do a deep dive into the SI joint. But it's going to be understandable, not too scientific. Greetings. I'm Akima. So I own Soul Core Fitness. It's a therapy and fitness company where we work in house here in Santa Fe, but also through our online program. I've been in this field for 30 years and I started as a regular trainer. But about halfway through I realized that I need to find a different way because when I got hurt, the traditional way of doing things, PT Cairo corrective exercises didn't produce the results that I knew I could get. So luckily I found osteopathy and it's holistic view of the body. It made total sense to me and so I dived in. I got a lot of results. So that's what I talk about here on this channel is a holistic view on the body. Not. I'll give you three exercises to correct this issue, which doesn't really work. So if you like this, please subscribe. If you like the video, please it a thumbs up and share with your friends. Each week I'll put a video so when you subscribe and hit that bell, you'll be notified to get the new, the new release. So when people come into my studio, right, or interact with them on online, one of the first things I talk about or check is the SI joint. That's because the SI joint is part of the pelvis. The pelvis, you can say, is the floor of the body where connects the upper half and lower half of your body. So that SI joint is a combination of your ilium, your hip bone and your sacrum and the space in between. That's your SI joint. You have two SI joints because you have two hip bones. So if the SI joint is off, the pelvis is off, which means your whole body is off. That's why when they come into the studio, it's a joke with the people who do what I do. We say take off your pants. Now you don't totally take off your pants. I don't want to get in trouble here. We're taking, we're, we're putting our fingers on the skin in this area right here at the SI joint in different parts. And we have to do a bunch of stepping tests, right? We want to see how that moves. This is going to allow us to understand more about what's going on with them. Because that SI joint is usually asymptomatic. They don't know that they have an SI joint problem. They're coming in for a shoulder issue or knee issue or something of the sort may go. Well, let me check this first, because if I go directly to the shoulder of the knee in this example, and I don't check the floor of the body, I can correct those all I want. The floor is off, the body's off. The SI joint is a total joint. By total joint, I mean that it has a capsule around it. It has synovial liquid. Synovial liquid helps bring nutrition into that area and do a bunch of good things. It has little prop receptors, little computers within it to communicate to the rest of the body about what's going on within that joint. There's ligaments in front and behind that, your sacroiliac ligaments in front and behind that also have computers in them that also help to communicate to the rest of your body to help manage that joint. There's muscles involved that joint. They help stabilize and move that joint either directly or indirectly, namely the piriformis, the glute max deep, the glute med, the glute max superficial, and then the obstruent internus and iliopsoas for the fascia connections. The SI joint has a lot of different areas within it that are important to know, because if you want to be specific with how you want to work with it, you need to know these areas. So in this SI joint, you have different lesser arm and greater arm and apex and base. The SI joint looks like a boomerang. Okay? So in that boomerang, there's the top part of my body. This is the bottom part of my body. The top part is your lesser arm. The bottom part is your greater arm. So you have two of these. And then within these arms, you have an apex, a base, a base and an apex. And then right in the middle, you have an isthmus, means middle. So you have that on both sides. You also have a bunch of different movements the SI joint can make. The only physiological movement it can make is called an oblique axis. Oblique axis means here's my hip bone, here's my sacrum. If the sacrum moves forward, the hip goes forward And a little back it goes back, it does the opposite. So it does that on both sides. That's what happens when you walk around and move. Okay, so it happens that. That happens normally if you don't have any issues. If you have issues, you have 20 more pathological axes that can happen. And then you have a bunch of combination of these pathological axes and more stuff to equal a lot of stuff that can go wrong with your SI joint. So again, it's important to know all that because you're not testing all of them at once. But you understand that there could be many different reasons why you have an SI joint problem, not one or two. So you can't tell me it's not a complete joint. I say that because there's a lot of practitioners out there who think that it's not a total joint, that it's fused, or that the actions it has are more basic and not as intricate as I'm going to go into here in a little bit. This is problematic because if you go to one of these people and they don't know all this information, then they're either going to give you something simplistic, expecting a result for a complex situation, or just ignore it altogether because they say it's not there and your body doesn't use it at all. As I said before, the SI joint, and that's a joint issue, can be asymptomatic, right? But it could still be a symptom of what's going on. I'll use me, for example, and I've said this before, but I'll repeat it here. So I got L405 compression, disc bulge and sciatic pain. I had no idea I had an SI joint issue, which was, in combination with other things, the cause of that problem. But because my SI was off my spine couldn't sit in a good place and couldn't operate from a good place, which then caused me to have, again with other things, to cause to have that issue. But I didn't know what an SI joint was back then, right? I didn't really know what it was and how it moved. And then all the practitioners I work with afterwards, chiros, doctors, acupuncturists, PTs, they had little or no knowledge of the SI joint, which means they couldn't really help me to get. To get better. An SI joint issue could lead to a short, a false, excuse me, a false short or long leg. It could lead to pelvic imbalancements. It could lead to tight muscles in the front or back of your Hip and leg. It could lead to pelvic visceral problems. Your issues don't have to be orthopedic. It could be visceral. It can lead to hip pain on the inside or outside. It can also lead to pain away from the pelvic area. It could be knee pain, it could be upper thoracic or shoulder pain. Again, if the floor of your body is off, just think about the floor right in your house, wherever. If that floor is off and dysfunctional, then everything associated with that floor, in this case above and below, is also out of balance and dysfunctional. Are you working through SI joint issues or after hearing me now, do you think you also need to incorporate some SI joint work into what you're doing? Well, let me know what you're doing. Put it in the description below and then stay tuned. We're going to talk about how I would work through the SI joint issues. So the first step in figuring out your SI joint issues is to have an assessment. I know this sounds basic, but you need to assess where in the SI your you have issues. You can't just say SI joint issues and then do some basic protocol. So people think, oh, I've got si joint issues. They type it into YouTube and also they get a bunch of videos saying, hey, do these three moves or this one move to get rid of your SI joint issues. One, at best is not specific enough. It won't give you lasting results. At worst, it can make matters worse. So within the SI joint, like I talked about, there's different areas. Again, you have a lesser arm and greater arm. Is your issue coming from the apex of the lesser arm, the base of the lesser arm, the isthmus, the base of the greater arm, the apex of the greater arm, or more than likely, is there a combination of these and the other pathologies, the 21 to 20 pathologies that I talked about. First find that out or start where you think mainly it's coming from, because you'll never be 100% correct in the beginning, but you'll get an idea of which way to go down. And then you train and treat that area specifically. So whenever you have a dysfunction in your body, something goes out of place. Then the area around it, namely your soft tissue, becomes dysfunctional. So I have an issue with my SI joint. Then the ligaments around the area become confused. They start to have different information or bad information or no information, because they get shut off, they become dry or too tight or too loose, and then the muscles associated with that area also become too short. Or too weak or too less mobile, because the muscles are told to do by the fascia, because the ligaments are also the part of fascia, so they go where the fascia tells them. So you have to start working with those different areas. For me, I would start working with the ligaments first because the ligaments are the intelligent part of the body. They tell the body what's going on. So I work with techniques that I would use like double tls, which means I'm going to turn a ligament on, I'm going to wake it back up, I'm going to use pumping to increase that flow of fascial liquid through those collagen tubes. Again, because when I hurt myself, I stopped the flow of liquid, which means I stopped the flow of inflammation healing and waste removal. They're going to work with the different fascial connections with fascial normalization because again, it's not just the area working, it's the fascial chain that's also being compromised. So I do fascia normalization. Now I take that exact same composite concept into the exercises I use. So again with those exercises I said before piriformis, the glute max, deep and superficial, the obturator interners, the iliopsoas. Am I forgetting? Did I say piriformis? I forgot what I said. But all those muscles, I said I'm gonna work not with just the muscle, but the myofascial chain that's involved because the body's built holistically. Everything has a place, everything has a job. They all work together. So it's not just about the issue. I have my inside joint or the surrounding areas. It's about the chain that's involved. So when I work within that chain, therapy wise, but then also exercise wide, exercise wise, while I strengthen and while I stretch, all together, everything combined, holistic. If you want to find out more how to work with your body holistically, because you now understand that that's the most advantageous to work with it because that's how it's built and I'd love to help you. You can join my private Facebook group. So in the description below, there's a link for it. It's an interactive way to find out more. So you just click on that link, you answer a few questions, you agree to terms, voila, you're in. And you can interact with me. You can take part in challenges where we take a topic, say si joint, and I talk about it, but also show you exercises you can do for it. You can participate in master classes where I'll talk more in depth about whatever topic comes up. Or I just do little mini trainings like a little 12 minute, 3 little minute videos to let you know more about different topics that have come up in the group. Or you can get my free ebook if you want to be interactive. So in the description below, again just click on it, put information, get instant access. It's how to get strong and mobile and live the best, your best life. There's four steps in there. I'll talk more about what those what those four steps are and how to start to work with it. If and if you want to start now, then interact with me, schedule consultation with me. Use the link in the description below to set up a time to talk with me personally where I can talk you through what you've been doing. Your sticking point where I see you should go, and only if I see you're a good fit, will I offer my services to you, either here in house or with my online program. But I hope this allowed you to see a little bigger view of how you should be working the body. Please stay tuned for next week where I'll talk more about some holistic fashion and have a great day. SI joint is not completely understood by a lot of people and it makes it problematic because when you want to go to work with it, you can't work with it properly. And you can't work with it properly. That leaves the door open to a lot of unbalancement, dysfunction, pain, immobility, all these fun things that people know that nobody wants. So I want you to stay tuned because in this week's video I'm going to do a deep dive into the SI joint. But it's going to be understandable, not too scientific. So you can't tell me it's not a complete joint. I say that because there's a lot of practitioners out there who think that it's not a total joint that is fused. This is problematic because if you go to one of these people and they don't know all this information, then they're either going to give you something simplistic, expecting a result for a complex situation, or just ignore it altogether because they say it's not there and you might as well use it at all.
