Some readers who know me in real life, but probably not that many, will know that I have recently begun a course of physiotherapy for something with the rather grand title of "greater trochanteric pain syndrome" - which roughly translates as "extremely painful hips, located mostly in the trochanteric bursae but not necessarily true bursitis"... so now you're as wise as I!

Anyway, after two months of exercises to address the resultant back pain and begin to strengthen my glutes, yesterday it was time to step up the resistance, and I was handed two strips of 'resistance band', one yellow (the least resistance) and one red (the next step up) before being told "and there's green, blue and black still to go"!

Obediently, then, this morning I completed both sets of exercises using the yellow band... and now have one decidedly sore hip (the other less so) - I obviously overdid it trying to go straight for the full set of 10 reps of one and 50 reps of the other exercise!

Which seemed to me to be a not bad analogy for some of the thinking I've been doing about prayer... there can be a temptation to plunge into a new approach and then find ourselves overwhelmed by its demands, possibly risking doing oursleves more harm than good, or at least thinking, as I did this morning, oops that was too much, too soon.

Fortunately this pain in the hips is nothing serious, even if it is annoying, and I know that if I persevere, little by little I'll move from yellow to red to green to blue to black... probably more exercises 'for life' here: should I ever end up in a care home I'll be the little old lady with a gym in her bedroom!!

As for the prayers - next stop is PAYG, sitting in a chair with good back support!!