I have found this "tool" to be very effective.

these really work!

Thanks Tom, as always. You know I would be there if I could. I was interested to hear what someone was saying about possibly being out of balance when doing her exercises. Not in a bad way she said but (in my words) possibly she was doing the exercises with the same imbalance that was causing her pain regularly. She felt in a certain way "better" when she rested. I thought she is really onto something. She mentioned daily habits or patterns (again my words, sorry if I am misrepresenting). Something that is a principle of body building, strengthening, stretching, and life as we all know is that our bodies respond to the stress we put on them. I had an anatomy teacher who said, "if you sit in a slumped position, you will get better at slumping". You did ask, if there is something she is doing in her "regular" life that she was not doing on her trip. I think this is a great message for us to be mindful of what we are doing with our bodies all the time. 

Linda Bonney Bostrom this is part three of my long post if you are not completely bored now. 

I love what you say about MRIs. I think they can give information that is not helpful and can only add stress to a situation. If there is an acute trauma or injury, the information can be necessary. But otherwise, studies (as you point out) do not show better outcome when a person sees a mechanical problem or possibly no explanation and if choosing surgery, in the long term there is usually no better outcome. Changing strength, stability, and range of motion throughout seems most effective. 

I will emphasize what you have said (I am not a doctor or certified as anything other than yoga instructor) about studies that show a person can have mechanical "defects" with absolutely no pain and pain with nothing to see. 

As I have said your work has been the best addition to what I practice and I can't say enough good about your book and knowledge.  If I have misrepresented any of your work or thoughts I apologize.

To get to the relevance of what I am saying above, is that all of your knowledge and wisdom and expertise is amazing and helpful and solves pain and builds us back together. I use all of your info and use and promote and gift your book. And then further, 

Yoga is not for everyone and it is a long process. It takes patience and practice and is not a quick fix. A person has to on some level enjoy it or see a fairly quick reward in some area to keep going. But, when we get to where we are saying to use the knee rehab, but you might need to add the shoulder rehab, and for the shoulders add the upper back and then you will be able to make progress on the neck, then I do believe as you said it might be time to go to a body worker for hands on and direct physical communication. Maybe add something addressing our entire body in strength and range of motion integrated as a whole body because as you have said the "problem"  might not be where we are feeling it and might not be mechanical. 

I have so much to say about this one.  Everything I say is anecdotal experience from having hundreds of people come through my classes. I am 65 and have 45 years of practice and study and teaching yoga.

Some students come in with specific complaints looking for physical relief. I do not give diagnosis and am very clear I am not a Dr.               Some of this group want to "figure everything out" academically.          I build classes with an array of poses to bring awareness to regions and connections to various areas. Maybe a class on shoulders, a class on knees etc. We work within poses for strength and range of motion. 

Luckily, what yoga provides is a large array of poses which touch on every piece of us.  People can have a well rounded practice and shine a light on everything. Sometimes issues "magically" resolve either coincidentally because things come and go or because our bodies figure things out. Either way, for some people, yoga works. More to say if you're not bored.

And I think the version you are doing here is helpful to begin to build.

I like how far away your feet are from your butt. There is a yoga pose that is called bridge that would be feet close to butt, arms underneath and up on the top of your shoulders. People do it for gluteal and hamstring strengthener and I find that people who have knee weakness aggravate their knees. People with weak glutes just use their lower backs. Even with good verbal cues when there is a weakness it is so hard to get awareness where the work should be. It is much better to start yoga with some stiffness and some muscle than with flexibility!