Pain Free Performance — Posture Alignment Therapy

Posture Alignment Therapists, Graduates of Egoscue University

alignment expert

Aging and Egoscue

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What’s trending at Pain Free Performance? Aging….

When I think of the most common conversation that pops up at our clinic these days…it has to be aging. At Pain Free Performance we are made up of a lot of baby boomers, people who are interested in staying active, working hard, retiring well, while enjoying life to the fullest. What I’m hearing (and feeling) is that we don’t like the wrinkles, the diminishing muscle tone, but especially the insinuation that we’re losing physical momentum and there’s nothing we can do about it.  Society has always been fascinated with youth…but weren’t we young not long ago?

Then, something stops us in our tracks. We’re still skiing, golfing, swimming, running but afterwards we can barely move. We twist or land hard doing things we’ve always done and ouch – back pain, heel pain, foot pain, neck pain – where did that come from?!  I can’t tell you how often I hear “I suddenly feel so old”, “I can’t believe I can’t ____ anymore” (just fill in the blank), or “My doctor says I have arthritis…”.

I encourage you NOT to buy into the theory that because you’re a little older, that activity is a thing of the past. There’s a great quote John Elder, of Egoscue University, used in a recent article “If you didn’t know how old you are, you’d have no idea how old you are…”! Forget the number! The best thing we can do for ourselves is keep moving.  Stay active.  Listen to our bodies.  They are amazing – even as we age! The human body has an innate and amazing ability to heal.

Our bodies, young or old, are designed to run, jump, play, swim, move and rest without pain. The pain is an alarm sounding that something in the musculo-skeletal system is out of whack.  Your head should sit squarely on your neck – your ears over shoulders which should line up over your hips, which line up over your knees and on down to your ankles.  If you look at yourself from the side in the mirror and this isn’t happening, you’ve got some muscles that are not doing their job properly.  This creates uneven wear and tear on the joints and is how all of the tendonitis, stenosis, bulging disks and tennis elbow stuff come into play. It could be a result of an injury (ie; putting more weight on one ankle after breaking the other-for years and years) or habitual poor body mechanics or posture (ie; hunched over your computer, phone, steering wheel or easel).  Muscles pull bones – either into or out of alignment…are you getting the picture?

Most often, the missing link to becoming pain free is getting your body aligned so that you can continue to do all of the things you love to do.  Everything else – the meds, the massage, the adjustment – are great, but temporary relief.  Egoscue – it’s real lasting relief. If you have back pain, plantar fasciitis, rotator cuff syndrome, knee pain, arthritis, or wrist pain – don’t blame age, blame alignment!!

We know how to teach you to retrain your muscles so that they are on track – waking up those muscles that aren’t doing enough and quieting those muscles that have been overworking – perfectly pulling your skeletal system back into the design intended and relieving the pain. Let us show you how.

 

 

BACK PAIN

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If you suffer from back pain – the kind of back pain that can go from 0 to 100 in a flash – you innocently reach for something and your back goes into spasm – or you have chronic never-ending back pain that eats away at your work, your play, your sleep, your relationships and every aspect of your life. At best, your back pain is exhausting and debilitating.

I know, you have a diagnosis, your back pain has a name – you have a bulging disk, a herniated disk, scoliosis, spondylolisthesis, maybe even a spinal fusion. I get it that you feel that you just have to suffer with the back pain that you were dealt.  Maybe you take some meds or get an injection or even contemplate surgery if you really want relief from your back pain.  Not so fast.

What we really need to do is stop the back pain before it begins. How do we do that?  First, we have to ask the question, what is the cause of your bulging disk, herniated disk, scoliosis, or spondylolisthesis?  With rare congenital exception, these are maladies that occur second-hand from misalignment elsewhere in the body.

That’s where we come in. To treat your back pain, we actually need to focus on your muscles, not just the bones in your spine.  The spine consists of 33 individual vertebrae that stack one on top of the other encasing the spinal cord. The muscles surrounding the spine – healthy and functional – are the real work horses helping to maintain the balance and erectness of the body.  It’s amazing.  However, if the muscles become inactive, weak or atrophied, other muscles begin compensating – the integrity of the spine becomes compromised – alignment is lost – your excruciating back pain is just one of the possible results.

As a Postural Alignment Specialist certified by Egoscue University, we can unravel the dysfunctions in your body that are causing your back pain and safely return you to a pain free lifestyle. Check out this video on back pain by Pete Egoscue to show you how we would begin that process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6pTC4JvMjc

The human body is amazing and has a miraculous natural ability to heal. Yes, even your back pain. Let us show you how at Pain Free Performance.

 

 

SCIATICA

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Over the holidays, we’ve had a number of clients come in to the clinic with sciatic pain. This symptom can present in very different ways.  For some, it’s a painful sacro-iliac joint that stays in that one hip area and perhaps into the gluteal muscle.  Others will feel a twinge of pain in the hip and then a pain in the calf of the same leg.  The classic sciatic symptom is pain in the hip and all the way down the back of the leg.  At times, this pain can feel debilitating – if you have had that pain, you know what I mean.   Take a deep breath, there is hope without taking pain relievers or having back surgery.

The sciatic nerve is the main nerve that feeds all the other nerves through your legs. Think of it as the main electrical feed that comes out of your spine at the top of the sacrum goes through the pelvis and down the back of both your legs.  Where that nerve comes out of the spine (on either side) and crosses through the pelvis (either side) there is not a lot of clearance.  This makes it imperative that your pelvis is bilateral and symmetrical and your spine is equally bilateral and centered on top of the pelvis.

Sounds simple, right? Well it is and it isn’t.  The pelvis is 3 bones and they can be off in any of the 3 planes of movement and the spine sitting on top that can be off in those same 3 planes.  What holds all this in the proper position?  Muscles.   Lots of them.  And, they all need to work equally as a team.  In order to work as that team, they need a wide variety of movement.  More and more in our culture and environment, we are getting less movement and less variety of movement.

We think driving to the gym and doing a cross-training work out every day is enough. That is good, but nothing compared to what our bodies really need – we need to run, jump, twist, throw, climb, push and pull.  Ideally, we need to do these things for hours every day.  We are not meant to sit still.

Stand normally in front of a full length mirror and look to see where your feet and knees point. Your feet and knee position will tell you a lot about your hips.  If your knees and feet point straight ahead equally, then your pelvis is in a good position; if one or both of either your feet or knees point in different directions, possibly both halves of your pelvis is out of position.  You can change that with a bit of work and the right exercises to get the muscles working appropriately again.

That is what the Egoscue method is all about. It is what we do at Pain Free Performance.  Call us or come and see us and we can enable you to alleviate your sciatic pain.

Oh, my aching feet!

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Lately, we have had more people come into the office with foot pain.   They say “My feet hurt the minute I get out of bed.”,  “ I’ve got plantar fasciitis.”, or “ I was born with flat feet.”.

You might not know this, but we were all born with flat feet! All babies develop their arches through their infant and toddler years, provided that development is not interrupted.  Today, that development is often interrupted early on. We walk too soon – therefore stop crawling too soon (such an important part of our total body development!) and often times we wear shoes that are too structured – too restricting – too early.  You add all of these possibilities to a more sedentary lifestyle (more technology creating less movement) and our joints deviate which shows up in our feet turning out.  When this happens, the weight during activity is no longer being evenly distributed across the foot and sometimes too much weight is placed on the heel, leading the common complaint of plantar fasciitis.

When standing still, the design of the foot should point straight ahead. With that design, the arches allow the foot to move in every direction and allow us to do whatever we like – walk, run, skip, jump or shuffle sideways.  The design is such that no matter the action, the weight of the body is evenly distributed across the entire foot.  The problem is that our feet no longer point straight ahead naturally.  Most of us think that the natural position of the feet is pointed out by 30-45 degrees.  This is due that interrupted development I mentioned.

The good news is there is a solution. If your joints are misaligned and your feet point out, you can realign them.  Even if your arches have fallen, you can raise them again.  That’s right!  Your flat feet don’t have to be flat.  In infancy and toddlerhood, the actions of crawling and learning to walk compelled our foot muscles to tell our foot bones what they needed to hear in order to develop arches.  Our bones do what our muscles tell them to do (muscles pull bones).  With proper alignment exercises, that process can be duplicated in adulthood.  It requires a realigning of the body over the course of a few months.

That’s where we come in because that’s why we’re here – no matter what the symptom – from your aching feet to your chronic headaches and anything in between. Let’s get started so you can get back to your pain free life!

Egoscue should be your first stop….

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I was working with a client who happens to be a physician and at the end of his session he said something very powerful about his patients – “This should be their first stop, not their last!”.   So often, people come to us in incredible pain after months or years of trying everything else under the sun, finally experiencing relief with Egoscue.  Why?  Instead of focusing on the symptom, we get to the root of the pain.  We diagnose the underlying cause and provide the specific tools to gently move the body back into the intended alignment, alleviating the pain.  This is not a temporary fix, it’s for life.

It’s what we do.  So, don’t make us the last stop in your search for a pain free life, make Pain Free Performance your first stop.

 

Lyme Disease

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I thought I knew about pain…I have had my share of injuries, I’ve given birth three times and, shoot, my business is called Pain Free Performance!  I have spent my entire career helping others get out of pain.  But, after all of these years, I have a new understanding and appreciation of what it is like to really live in pain every minute of every day and not know the way out. 

One morning last August my alarm clock went off as usual. I attempted to look at the time and turn off the alarm but could not turn my head.  I got out of bed that morning thinking I had a stiff neck.  As the day progressed my neck stiffness eased up but my body ached.  Did I have the flu or maybe I “slept funny”? I got to work and did a few of my Egoscue e-cises to help with the pain.

The next day when I tried to lift my right leg, it felt strange and heavy.  The day after that, I could barely lift my right arm.  The pain was different than any pain I ever experienced and it was not from overuse or a pulled muscle.  Concerned, I went to see the doctor.  After my exam, a lot of research, and some process of elimination, the only thing that seemed to make sense was Lyme disease.  Lyme disease is a tick borne illness and is increasingly prevalent in the Northeast United States. What was strange is that I never saw a tick on me nor did I have a bull’s-eye rash which is a sign of a tick bite in need of treatment.  My Lyme test (a blood test taken at the physician’s office and sent to a regional lab) was negative. 

As days passed my pain became worse.  The pain that I felt in my shoulders was excruciating.  It felt to me like my shoulders were no longer connected properly.   I could not dress myself or lift my arms to wash my hair.  Both of my shoulders were frozen. My left ankle was swollen, some of my fingers were numb and just about every joint in my body hurt.  I tried to continue my Egoscue e-cises but soon I knew I needed more help.

Back to the doctor I go.  I was put on the standard antibiotic for Lyme and re-tested.  My second Lyme test was also negative.  Two months on the antibiotics and nothing had changed… in fact I felt worse.  Because my case was not typical for Lyme disease, and the tests were negative, of course my physician (who leaves no stone unturned) wanted to rule out other medical possibilities for the symptoms.  He even consulted with a Lyme expert in Maryland and suggested that we consult a neurologist, a rheumatologist, and also an endocrinologist. I was convinced that I did not have a neurological issue.  I also felt strongly that I wouldn’t have just gotten up one day with rheumatoid arthritis.  I was in so much pain and I was frustrated and confused.  How did this happen to me? I am typically healthy and active.  Now I can barely get out of bed!

I was at my wit’s end and in so much pain I decided to try a massage just to feel better for a little while. The therapist asked me if I had any medical concerns and I told her what had been going on with the possible Lyme disease.  Her eyes got huge and she told me was in the exact same place herself just six years ago.  She had to quit her nursing job because her pain was so bad that she was not able to work.  She learned quickly that there is not good information or protocol to treat chronic Lyme disease in our traditional medical community, so she had to become an expert in order to find a remedy and regain her life.   I learned so much from her.  Only about 50% of people with Lyme disease get the bull’s-eye rash and only half of the people bitten remember seeing the tick.  The mainstream blood tests for Lyme are not accurate. Antibiotics are usually effective when you are treated soon after being bitten by the tick. Long term antibiotics can be very harmful.

My new friend, Jean Weiss, RN and Certified Massage Therapist, has devoted her life to educating people about Lyme disease.  She has just started a Lyme Disease Support Group and is working with physicians in the area to help treat people in the community with Lyme.  She taught me there is hope.  There are additional treatments for Lyme. There is another more accurate blood test for Lyme that is processed at a lab in California.  Finally I tested positive for Lyme and with Jeans help I am almost back to 100%! 

Sometimes our pain is not musculoskeletal, it’s something else.  At Pain Free we’re the experts at treating musculoskeletal pain and we can always help you with that.  We also want to be good at referring you to other talented practitioners we have the good fortune of knowing who have different expertise… especially when we experience it first-hand! 

 If you or someone you know need help with Lyme disease, want the schedule for the Lyme Disease Support Group or just want to know more, below is the contact information for Jean.  

Jean Weiss

Massage and Wellness

434-960-3869

Jeanweiss100@gmail.com

 

In Good Health,

Cindy

Missy’s Story

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CINDY MEYERS WRITES: A few weeks ago my client Missy stopped in with exciting news!  She had not been into Pain Free since February and she wanted to let us know that she was able to run for the first time in five and a half years!  Considering her physical condition at our first session, this was quite amazing news.  Missy had knee re-construction surgery in her twenties that left her with a very unstable knee.  She had back pain that radiated down her left leg and also suffered from right elbow tendonitis.  Analyzing Missy’s posture revealed that her left leg was bowed, her right leg turned in, her head forward with rounded shoulders and her pelvis uneven.  In her sessions, we worked to correct the underlying muscle imbalances that created the misalignment of her bones and her poor posture!  Here is what Missy has to say about getting her body back into balance:

Missy’s Story

Four years ago, at the age of 45 I was not able to tour Montpelier without my back aching during the one hour tour.  I could not stand still without bending and sitting during the lectures.  Two and a half years ago I could not walk my dog for thirty minutes on a trail in the woods without causing a backache that would last for days.  I had knee reconstruction twenty seven years ago and reinjured the knee several times over the years.  This caused knee instability, a bowed left leg, and backaches.  I was advised by an orthopedist to walk only for necessity, no hiking, touring, dog walks. He stated the arthritis in my knee was too far along.   I was also suffering from reoccurring carpal tunnel symptoms three years after having the “release” surgery, and tendonitis in my elbow from knitting.  I was only 45, in very good health otherwise, slim, active, medicine free. 

In preparation for a family trip to Bali, I started physical training with Pain Free.  I was concerned about the twenty four hour plane ride, because four hour car rides to Raleigh, NC caused me back pain.  I also wanted to participate in a seven hour volcano hike while in Bali.  I worked for several sessions with Cindy before my trip to Bali, and completed my menus daily at home.  The trip was a success. I did not need any pain medication to get through the two plane trips or volcano hike!!!  The carpal tunnel was also gone as well as the tendonitis. 

Eighteen months went by without my continuing the exercises.  I woke up one day and my reconstructed knee was completely out of alignment.  I could not walk.  I had to hop.  After a few exercises with Mackie, my knee was realigned and I could walk out of Pain Free.  Another family trip was on the horizon, this time seven days of waking around Rome.  Again I was unable to even walk the dog.  I started with Mackie this time and spent seven sessions working on strengthening my posture so that my knee would not fall out of alignment while asleep in Rome.    Rome was a success-no backaches, no knee pain, no pain meds, and no swollen knee. This time I have continued daily with my various exercise menus and have had no reoccurrence of the problems. 

I ran for the first time in five and a half years this fall.  Before that, I was not able to take a running step without my knee collapsing.  However, without thinking one day, I ran to catch up with a group of friends.  My family and I are amazed!!! It is all the good professional work of the folks at Pain Free.  My family and I are 100% convinced that without Pain Free, these trips would not have been possible for me.  My knee is so misshapen now that, while only 50, I am a candidate for knee replacement surgery.  But, with the daily practice of my Egoscue exercises and professional help of the folks at Pain Free, I have been able to resume an active life with my family without knee surgery. 

Thank you thank you thank you!

Missy D.

HEALTH CARE CAN BE CONFUSING!

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I have spent the last eight years of my life devoted to postural alignment after a career in physical therapy and fitness.  I understand the body, injury, rehab and alignment.  As a Postural Alignment Specialist certified through Egoscue University, I know the amazing benefits of this work and the direct correlation to pain elimination, prevention and optimal health on every level.  I live it every day as a pain management clinic owner helping clients get out of pain.  I know with certainty that medical intervention, including medication and surgery can often be avoided or postponed.  However, this summer I am struggling with how to proceed with my own son’s shoulder injury and rehabilitation. 

My son is in high school.  Last fall while playing football, he was hit and his right shoulder dislocated.  For those of you who may never have witnessed this, it’s not pretty and the pain is excruciating until the shoulder is “popped” back in.  He went to the Emergency Room where they gave him pain medication and put the shoulder back in place then sent him back to school in a sling.  He worked with the Athletic Trainer at school and was back playing football.  Yay, right?  During the first week of summer vacation, he jumped in the pool and dislocated the same shoulder again.  We were back in the Emergency Room, same story.

I believe that the reason his shoulder is prone to dislocation is because of his poor posture.  He has a forward head, shoulders that are rounded forward, an upper back that is also rounded and the only curve in his spine is in his neck because of his forward head.  His pelvis tucks under, which flattens that needed lower back curve and also hinges his shoulders forward.  Any kind of stress on his arm or shoulder causes the shoulder to dislocate because it’s the only place it can go!

Ideally, postural alignment therapy is the answer to my son’s malady.  After his injury, I had him in to see my colleague Mackie.  Mackie, who is also Egoscue University certified and worked alongside Pete Egoscue for a number of years, gave him a sequence of exercises that repositioned his pelvis and changed his shoulder position to make sure that all of the muscles that interconnect the pelvis and shoulder are working.  My son felt much better and looked much better.  It’s not a quick fix because he’s been stooped over a computer doing homework and playing computer games for most of his life, which created the posture.  He needs to commit to the prescribed postural alignment program for the long term.  Sounds like a good plan?

The trick is, I’m dealing with a teenager!  He’s young, strong, he’s a great athlete, he’s busy and he’s not in pain.  He feels “fixed”.  Have you ever tried to get your teenager to stay consistent with a therapeutic exercise program when they have no pain?  It will take time to reposition his skeletal system…probably not enough time before football season begins again.

Research shows that some 85% of people who dislocate their shoulders playing sports at a young age will continue to dislocate them.  Usually the labrum (soft tissue) and the ligaments which keep the shoulder stable get torn or over-stretched causing an unstable shoulder.  All of my best shoulder resources are telling me that he needs to have surgery to avoid further dislocations.  Having the surgery, which will tighten the ligaments and hold the shoulder in place, will certainly fix the problem for now but it will not be without risks.  The surgery may leave him with a shoulder that is “frozen” in place without full range of motion, muscles could start compensating creating back issues and someday he may even need a shoulder replacement.  I have seen this in my practice and it is not something I want for my son.

We still have not decided exactly what course of action to take.  My son is a young athlete who wants desperately to finish his senior year playing with his high school football team.  We could schedule surgery and he might not be able to play at all, we can wait and see and risk another dislocation, we can encourage daily alignment exercises and also risk another dislocation if he is not compliant or does not respond in time.

Ultimately this is a group decision between my husband, my son and I.  No matter what we decide, eventually there may come a time where my son will understand how important it is to keep the body in alignment.  The human body functions as a unit and surgery will stabilize my son’s shoulder but it will not correct the disparity in his pelvis.  Untreated, that disparity will continue to affect every part of his body, even his shoulder.  Eventually, poor posture catches up with all of us.  I only wish I could get him to understand the implications now!

Cindy Meyers, PTA, PAS