Pain Free Performance — Posture Alignment Therapy

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HELPING LOCAL FOSTER TEENS FOR THE HOLIDAYS!

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HELPING LOCAL FOSTER TEENS AT THE HOLIDAYS!

 As a business, we were looking for a way to make our holiday more meaningful by being involved in charitable giving right here in our own community. We wanted to find a group in true need that may not be under the umbrella of another holiday drive, and one of our favorite clients suggested we call her friend at Albemarle County Social Services. 

The answer we got from them was that teenage foster children from Albemarle County are often overlooked because of their age when it comes to holiday giving.  The social workers know these teens, their circumstances and these guys need our help!  We have a list of kids (initials, gender, and age) including their holiday wish lists.  We are not talking big ticket items…these are simple things that will help make a wonderful holiday for them.

Our goal is to mark all of these things off every list for every child.  This is how we plan to do it and we’d love, love, love for you to join in on this wonderful holiday experience!

1.        HELP US UN-DECORATE OUR TREE!!

RIGHT NOW, if you stop by the office, you will see our version of an angel tree – a teenangel tree to be exact!  It is beautiful, if we do say so ourselves – a small scraggly tree with sparkly ornaments – each one holding a short Christmas list of a foster teen.

 Please come by when you are in the neighborhood or if you’re in for your appointment, take an ornament or two and cross off the items on the list by doing a little shopping for a teen!  Drop off the gifts here and Social Services will pick them up from us on Friday, December 14th to make sure the children in need receive them by Christmas!    

 2.        DAY OF GIVING

WHAT:     Day of Giving Gift Exchange for Foster Teens!! 

WHEN:     SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8TH

WHERE:   Pain Free Performance ,  3054 Berkmar Drive, Charlottesville, VA  22901

TIME:       10:00 am to 4:00 pm

HOW IT WORKS:

WE GIVE YOU:  We have ten practitioners who represent many kinds of body work who are giving their time on this day to provide abbreviated treatments at no charge to participants (you!).  Treatments are:  chiropractic, pilates, massage therapy, structural integration, Byron Katie work, Egoscue, personal training, acupuncture, network spinal analysis and more!

 YOU GIVE THE TEENS:  You may choose as many therapies as you’d like to experience  in exchange for bringing one $50.00 gift card for a foster teen!  One $50.00 gift card gets you all the treatments you want!  You will sign up for treatments when you come in that day.

Please call or email Pain Free to let us know you can attend!  But if you forget, come on over anyway!

We feel so fortunate for this connection with the amazing people who work with these great kids through Albemarle County Social Services!  It’s so special to have a charitable focus for holiday giving in our own community. Please help us and the other generous therapists make holiday wishes come true for these teens. 

 Peace,

Cindy, Lisa, Mackie and Kat 

WHAT A PAIN IN THE NECK!!

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Maybe it was the fear generated around the recent storm or the stress of the upcoming holidays and shopping, but we have had an increase in the number of folks coming in with neck pain.  They are always surprised when we don’t do anything to their neck or give them anything to do to their neck.  It’s simple:  the neck is not the problem.  Your neck is the symptom but the problem is more likely a rounded upper back, or the shoulders hinged forward and one shoulder is higher than the other.  Either of those scenarios means that your pelvis is out of balance and out of position.

If you stand sideways in the mirror, there should be a straight vertical line from your ankles to knees to pelvis to shoulder to head.  When you don’t “load vertically” then you are unconsciously asking different muscles to do a job they weren’t designed to do. In the case of your neck, if your head is forward of that vertical line then you have been asking those neck muscles to hold up around 15 pounds!  You don’t ask your arm or shoulder to hold up a  bowling ball for more than a few seconds but that’s what your head sitting on your neck is like and you hold your head like that for hours!  Any wonder your neck hurts??

So, if your neck is hurting, it’s not your neck – it’s your posture.  Call us at Pain Performance and let us help you get your posture back in alignment.  You’ll be surprised at how many other aches and pains will disappear as well!

Dr. Greg Gelburd Discovers Egoscue at Pain Free Performance!

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DR. GELBURD DISCOVERS PAIN FREE PERFORMANCE!

It’s an early morning in Haiti and I’m doing an airbench before clinic. My eyes are closed and I’m concentrating on Cindy Meyers’ words: “push down on your heels and push your lower back into the wall and hold for two minutes”.  I look like a man sitting in a chair without the chair under me. This is a small pause before my very busy medical clinic begins.

How did I come to airbenches in Haiti, doing these and other  postures described in “Pain Free” by Pete Egoscue to help resolve issues in my foot, my lower back and my shoulder? I’ve written this little story to describe to you how postural therapy has rescued me and why I believe many others in Charlottesville would benefit from some time spent with the people at Pain Free Performance where they treat pain with postural alignment.

Seven months ago, I was faced with several muscular skeletal problems that were not going away, the result of one bike collision with a car, 45 years of running with the wrong stride and a slowly aging 60 year old body. My pain was so severe a year ago I hiked down a Glacier National Park mountain backwards for two miles because I couldn’t come down on my right heel, it felt like a knife jabbing my foot! The bears thought I was just wacky but at least they stayed away.  I sought out help from Cindy Meyers, Mackie Boblette, and Kat Draego at Pain Free Performance. In February I saw Cindy for an evaluation and she photographed my body from several angles against a grid background. She showed me where my shoulders and hip bones were off balance, and then how my head was too far forward on my neck and how my gut was not so much full of extra hamburgers as I thought, but it protruded a little because of the lack of curvature in my middle back. She watched me walk and perform some stretches and positions so she could evaluate the way my body moves and from that she gave me a specific regimen to begin to re-balance my body.

Cindy, Mackie and Kat are Postural Alignment Specialists certified by Egoscue University.  Developed over forty years ago by anatomical functionalist Pete Egoscue,  this postural alignment therapy focuses on realigning the entire body. So even though my heels were giving me fits, the fact that my head, shoulders and hips were off kilter is what was causing the overall dysfunction and pain in my feet.

Every two weeks I have spent an hour with Cindy and Mackie for re-evaluation and a new program prescription as my body changes. I spend about 15-20 minutes each day performing these simple but deeply effective isometric postures, strengthening and balancing my skeleton and muscles. The results are amazing! Who knew? Even a vegan diet couldn’t get rid of my gut, but not only is that disappearing but my heel pain is pretty much gone! I’m back to running after a two year hiatus and my foot strike is now mid foot not heel. I’ve even gained an extra half inch back in my height with my spine better supported!

Now my family, office staff and Haitian friends are accustomed to my  airbenches, cat-dog postures and standing shoulder shrugs. I am continuing to make these postures a part of my routine before my work day, before running and other workouts. This is an incredible team of caring and gifted health workers. Their skills and their motivation will keep you going in the right direction until you are as healed as you want to be.

Dr. Greg Gelburd

 

 

 

“PAIN FREE” by Pete Egoscue …changed my life

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Several years ago I was working at a Physical Therapy practice in Charlottesville, Virginia.  The patient I was treating asked me if I had heard of the book “Pain Free” by Pete Egoscue.  I told her that I had not and she offered to lend me her copy to read. When I read the book I had one of those “ah-ha” moments you have when something is so clear that it hits you over the head!  Up until that point I thought of myself as a well rounded therapist.  I did out-of-the-box types of manual therapies such as Strain/Counterstrain,  Crainosacral Therapy,  Myofascial Release and Zero Balancing along with more traditional treatments like ultrasound, electric stimulation and therapeutic exercise.  I helped many people get out of pain yet many times those  people would be back with the same pain or a new pain.  After reading “Pain Free”, I realized that I was treating their symptom and not the cause of the pain.  It just so happened that I was suffering from a meniscus tear in my right knee.  I decided to try some of the suggested e-cises in the book for knee pain.  My knee pain was only slightly better but I noticed other things in my body were feeling really different.  I no longer had the need to crack my neck, I was standing straighter and my morning stiffness was gone.  After studying the Egoscue Method I learned to look at how every part of the body works together. Western medicine trains us to focus on separate parts of the body.  But what I learned from Egoscue is that my knee pain was coming from the position of my pelvis and my upper back.  The knee pain was the symptom of a dysfunctional  pelvis and a mid back that was not moving. It took time to heal my meniscus but I  fully recovered with the added benefit of improved overall function utilizing Egoscue.

Pick up a copy of  “Pain Free”  and start with just  the first three chapters.  If it makes sense to you then give us a call and set up a free screen.  You can meet us, see what we’re all about and we’ll do a mini-evaluation.  We will take photos and be able to show you the imbalances in your body,  how these are contributing to your pain and then get you on the road to recovery too!

HERNIATED DISC

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HERNIATED DISC

 Just the other day, one of my favorite clients called me to cancel her appointment.  She told me she bent over to pick up her purse, got a little twinge of pain in her back and then could not stand back up!  All she could do was lay flat on her back.  Her husband took her to the emergency room where she was diagnosed with a herniated disc.  She was sent home with muscle relaxers and after seeing her physician the next day she was advised to rest with no exercise.  Sounds scary, doesn’t it?

 What is a herniated disk anyway?  Our spine is designed so that each vertebra is stacked one on top of the other.  There is a fibrous disc that acts much like a washer in between each vertebra that helps cushion the space between the bones as we move, bend, twist and stretch.  If the spine is pulled out of alignment, then the pressure will cause the disc to squish out to one side pressing on the nerve – the herniated disc.

 My client is fit, has been exercising all her life with few exceptions and had never had this happen before – what could have caused it?  After we talked awhile, she explained that she had been in the car for two days prior coming home from a fabulous vacation.  She hadn’t been doing her e-cises on vacation and was feeling the effects – a little sore and tight everywhere!  The fact that she had not been keeping her body in alignment with her menu of e-cises and had been stuck in that misalignment for two days in the car, caused her muscles to really tighten up.  When she bent over to pick up her purse, the tight muscles pulled her vertebra to one side, causing the disc to protrude and press on her nerve.  Ouch!

 The doctor’s prescription for a muscle relaxer really helped my client out of her initial spasm.  We certainly understand the “rest and no exercise” advice too, however, Egoscue e-cises are not the same typical back stretches or strengthening done other places.  That’s what is so great about Egoscue!  There are many resting positions in the e-cise repertoire that can help facilitate getting the spine back into optimal alignment without stress or strain involved with normal “exercise”.  These e-cises dovetail well the doctor’s advice and can actually speed up the process of getting back to normal.  My client came on in for her appointment and we gave her some very simple resting positions including the following that I want to share with all of you.

Click below on the Static Back link to watch the video.  It’s  a simple resting position that uses gravity to gently encourage the spine to re-align by easing the muscles out of spasm!

Static Back

 

 

Go Barefoot!!

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The Egoscue Method is based on the idea that health is motion.  The more we move, the healthier we are, the healthier we stay.  In the poorer regions of our world, people move more.  They may walk to get from one place to another, perhaps they grow their own food and actually harvest the fields to put it on the table – they’re moving because they have to.  They often keep moving longer than we do in our wealthier, more sedentary culture.  We could learn a lot from their lifestyle.

In these cultures, often we see folks going barefoot – while they work, run, play and walk!  People ask me at Pain Free all the time about what kind of shoes they should be wearing.  The answer is in another lesson we could learn from these other cultures– no shoes are the best for your feet!  In May of 2010, Harvard Medical School released a study that found that the more support, more cushioning and more expensive the shoe, the more likely for injury.  The reason?  Most shoes do not allow your foot to go through its natural motion.  The support of a shoe can actually weaken the muscles of the foot and the muscles of the leg and hip that work as a team with the foot.  The muscles of the feet are no different than any other muscles of the body – they need movement and lots of it! If you don’t use them, they become weak and atrophy.

 I am not suggesting that you throw away your orthotics and expensive shoes.  If you need them to walk without pain, then use them.  What I am suggesting is that if your body alignment is good and you can go barefoot, by all means do it. Your feet will thank you for it!

Do You Have Knee Pain?

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Do You Have Knee Pain?

Do you have knee pain?  One of them is stiff and aches in the morning. Or you get knee pain going up stairs or walking downhill. You don’t cross your legs anymore because that knee hurts.

So, you ask your doctor about it and she says that extra ten pounds puts that much more pressure on the knee. Or maybe, she says it just goes with getting older. My question is this:  how come that extra weight or age only affects one knee??? The answer is: because your knee pain is not the problem—your knee pain is the symptom but the problem is your alignment!

If you stand in front of a full length mirror, look at how your hips, knees and feet line up. Are your hips level?  Do your knees point straight ahead? How about your feet? Do they splay out or point straight ahead?  Probably one foot points out more than the other. If your feet and knees point in any other direction than straight ahead, then at some point you will get knee pain.

It is really very simple; the knee is a hinge joint so if the feet and or knees point off to the side, you’re putting a torque or twist at that joint. With every step you take, you’re asking that hinge joint to take on a twist under a load that it is not designed to handle. A couple of years of that twisting and you’ve got knee pain.

So, they’ll tell you to lose some weight and next they’ll want to replace the knee. I just saw an ad on TV about a new knee replacement—to sell you on a knee replacement! Of course, sometimes it’s necessary, but for most of us that original is just fine—the design has been around for a few thousand years! Either way, new knee or the ones you were born with – the advice is the same: fix your posture and your alignment and you won’t have knee pain!

Are you ready to have a life free of knee pain?  Do you want to get back to doing the things you love to do without pain?  If you answered “yes” to either of those questions, let’s find out what Egoscue can do to help. You can reach us by phone at 434-296-0600 or via email at painfree@painfreeperformance.org. If you aren’t in the Charlottesville area, no problem!  We work with folks from all over the country via Skype. We can get you the help you need without you ever having to leave your house! To free yourself from knee pain, you have to get your body balanced. When you do, you can get back to doing all the things you love to do, PAIN FREE!
QUESTION: What activity have you stopped doing because of your knee pain?

Stop Holding Your Stomach In!

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Stop Holding Your Stomach In!

I know most of you women (and a lot of you men) will think this is sacrilege when I say this, but for the good of your health and your posture…..

LET YOUR STOMACH RELAX!!!!

So, STOP HOLDING IT IN – LET IT GO – BREATHE!  Feel your belly expand as you take a breath.  Forget all that stuff you’ve been told (over and over and over) about zipping up the abdominals and strengthening your “core”. Your core is a lot more than your stomach! In fact, there are about 70 different muscles that make up your core and if you hold the stomach in, most of those other muscles cannot do their job of stabilizing your spine and pelvis. You are asking the 4 stomach muscles to do the work of 70 muscles and they cannot do it.

Secondly, if you hold any muscle in a constant contraction, it gets shortened and weak.  Muscles need movement – contraction and release – to gain and maintain strength. Think about what happens to your bicep when you keep your arm bent at 90 degrees (as happens with a broken arm). It gets weak and immobile. The stomach muscles will do the same – become weak and unable to move.

It also prevents your pelvis from moving as you walk.  Each half of your pelvis should go through a few degrees of flexion with each step (heel strike to extension as you push off of your toes). Holding your stomach in keeps that from happening, then you compensate in some way, for example twisting or elevating your hips, which leads to even more trouble!

And last, but not least, holding your stomach in effects your breathing!  As you inhale, the diaphragm should drop down to pull air into the lungs.  As it drops down, the stomach and low back need to expand to accommodate that movement.  If you are holding your stomach in, the diaphragm shuts down and you use only the accessory breathing muscles (the small muscles between the ribs and around your shoulder blades). Your breathing becomes very shallow and your oxygen intake is lessened by one-third!  In a normal day, we breathe up to 25,000 times so that’s a lot of oxygen lost.  Furthermore, the small muscles trying to do all the work without the diaphragm tire fairly quickly. They need help from the shoulders and neck to do the work, creating strain, pain, or tightness.  The muscles are exhausted and we are exhausted!!

So please, please let your stomach relax and take a nice deep belly breath!!! You’ll feel less stressed, you’ll feel less pain, you’ll give every cell in your body what it needs!