Pain Free Performance — Posture Alignment Therapy

Posture Alignment Therapists, Graduates of Egoscue University

headache pain

Misalignment leads to Neck & TMJ Pain

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Our head is the center and peak of our body. When the head and neck are out of alignment, the weight of our head increases the load on our neck by 10 pounds per every inch that our head is forward. As our culture continues to become tech focused, the root of neck pain and jaw pain are due to our misaligned necks and forward heads. 

 

Our neck is made up of the top part of our spine: the cervical spine. The cervical spine is a slightly concave curve that develops during the first three months of life as infants learn to lift and turn their head. The curve of our neck allows for enhanced mobility of our head. This is why we can turn our head to see something without rotating or turning our spine and shoulders. 

 

Throughout the past 20 years our culture’s behavior has changed. We no longer turn our head to look for cars behind us while driving because our rear cameras alert us when someone is there. Work days have shifted to being predominantly at the computer. The average time an adult spends on their phone is more than three hours per day. The decrease in movement of our neck and increased forward head has led to a loss of the concave cervical curve.  Without the cervical curve of our neck to support our head, our skeletal system shifts and leads to increased tension in the muscles that connect our neck to our shoulders and jaw misalignment.  

 

Within the past few years at our practice, we have seen this increase in clients presenting with neck pain and temporomandibular joints (TMJ) pain.  As the head becomes more flexed forward, the joints that connect our jaw to our head begin to shift in response to the misaligned spine of our neck. The misaligned jaw often is identified by “clicking” or pain from overuse of chewing/talking in a misaligned joint positioning. Often clients with forward head positioning and jaw misalignment present with headaches in conjugation to neck pain and TMJ pain. Forward head positioning leads to decreased blood flow to the brain from poor alignment. It might sound unusual that headaches and jaw pain are connected to your alignment, but as the head shifts forward the cervical spine becomes more flexed, decreasing blood flow to the brain, enhancing strain on the muscles around the neck, and often creating shifts within the jaw.

 

At our practice, we treat the misalignment of the head positioning that creates TMJ pain and neck pain by addressing the body as a unit. We focus to align the body vertically and reduce the flexion of the neck. One example of this would be aligning the body against a wall and placing a block between the knees with active pressure. This position allows the feedback of the wall against the head, shoulders, hips, and ankles. When holding this positioning daily, the muscles of the neck and shoulders begin to relax and have reduced tension and muscular compensation. Overtime, we are able to see a reduction in the flexed position of the head, correct curvature within the spine, and the jaw becomes more aligned.

 

Our goal during a postural alignment therapy evaluation is to identify what is driving the forward head position and jaw misalignment. Through a complete health assessment, functional testing, and gait analysis we can begin to understand the muscular imbalances in a client’s body. This will allow us to identify the muscles that need to be strengthened or released to bring the body into alignment. We do this through corrective exercises that will be done daily at home in the order to address the misaligned neck, forward shoulders, and jaw positioning. Once the body is aligned and the forward head position and shoulders are less rounded, the pain will subside and our clients are able to live a functional pain free life.

EGOSCUE AS MEDITATION

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With all of the heartbreaking craziness that is happening in the world recently, it’s no wonder we are all feeling a little unnerved. We watch the accounts on the news in horror, we stop watching but the images remain with us.  We feel worried, immense sadness and compassion for people directly affected and their families, fearful for ourselves and our families. Without being conscious of it, we hold our stress in our bodies and it might come out as the worst headache ever, nagging neck pain, or shoulder pain.  We’re not sleeping well.  We feel awful. It’s painful on every level – physical, mental, spiritual.

This last spring we began a meditation class here in our studio at Pain Free Performance in Charlottesville. We feel it’s an excellent compliment to the Egoscue work we do.  Our clients and friends had been talking more and more about wanting to join a group meditation so we found an inspired teacher and  began weekly meditations –it’s been great!

One of the first things we noticed is that some of the people in our group were claiming their place in the meditation circle with a mat and an Egoscue block. They participated in the guided class in static back!  The rest of us had powered through trying to perfect the more traditional meditation pose of sitting cross-legged with our hands in our laps.  While we were squirming and twisting to keep from cramping up, our friends were deep in pain free meditation.  We switched over pronto!  What we learned is that being in such a restorative physical position (static back) enabled us to be in a more receptive restful mental /spiritual position for meditation.  The results on every level were amazing.

So it got me thinking as I look for some peace and centeredness in these overwhelmingly turbulent times, that not only meditation might be in order but Egoscue as Meditation makes perfect sense.  In the Egoscue world, we teach our clients that their point of pain is not our focus but the alignment of the entire body is our focus.   Every part of the body is connected and interrelated just as is every part of our being – our bodies, our minds, our hearts.  We know how our physical pain can affect our mental status.  We know how our broken spirits can make us stumble physically.

So let me encourage you to use your Egoscue program time to take a few extra breaths;  breathe in strength, health, peace; breathe out fear, pain, worry.  We say it all the time in Egoscue – listen to your body.  Let’s add listen to your heart. Take another moment or two in static back to count your blessings and be grateful.  Not only can we heal our bodies but we can heal our spirits and minds.

In order to be the best advocate for peace for our families, community, country and our world, we have to start with ourselves and decompress, breathe, have faith, be kind, be well. Egoscue as Meditation?  Absolutely.

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.

I’VE GOT A HEADACHE!

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I’ve got a headache! How often do you complain of having one?  Daily? Couple times a week? Once a month?  Some headaches are related to allergies, others are migraines and still others are spouse or child related!

No matter how often they occur or what kind, they can be debilitating.  Some people with migraines have to sequester themselves for days in the dark, taking Advil or Excedrin Migraine.  If it’s a really bad one then we bring out the Imitrex or some version of sumatriptan or other prescription drugs.

What if we did something about the cause of the headache instead of just covering it up with drugs?  We are really just masking the problem and not doing anything about its root cause.  Chances are, the cause of your headache is a misalignment of your head, shoulders and upper back.  If you look at yourself in a side view, most of us are rounded forward in our upper backs and shoulders with the head forward of the middle of your shoulder, or your pelvis is forward of your shoulder which rounds your upper back.  In either case, because you are rounded forward, your lungs are being compressed and your heart is being compressed which means your respiratory system and cardiovascular system are having to work extra hard.  Your body knows it has to get blood and oxygen to your brain to keep you alive but because the position of your head, upper back and shoulders is so compromised, the blood vessels and capillaries cannot work efficiently.  They have to expand to get enough blood to the brain for the oxygen carbon dioxide exchange to take place and those capillaries expanding are what cause the headaches!

If we can get your head, shoulder and upper back in the vertical position by fixing your posture then the lungs, heart, blood vessels and capillaries can all work efficiently and no more headaches! Give us a call and we’ll show you exactly what we’re taking about.  We can get your posture into its most aligned and efficient place – giving you the control to end your headaches once and for all.