Pain Free Performance — Posture Alignment Therapy

Posture Alignment Therapists, Graduates of Egoscue University

hip pain

A Peek inside Postural Alignment Therapy Evaluation

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When clients are new to postural alignment therapy, they become awakened to a new awareness of viewing the body. What do we mean by this?

When someone is in chronic or acute pain, the pain becomes their focus. Pain requires individuals to use great effort in order to function throughout their day. Their attention is centered on how to avoid pain. Our bodies are skilled at compensating. To reduce overall pain, our bodies will change the way in which we move as a form of survival.  

So as Egoscue therapists where do we start?

First: We place the focus on the joint position. We identify the joint position though palpating or touching the joints. But what does the joint position tell us? 

When we look at the body, we are looking for what is different from the natural skeletal position. 

        Do the shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles align? 

        Is a shoulder elevated? 

        Or, do the knees and feet turn out instead of being straight. 

If any of these joints are off, the body is unable to work as a unit and pain results from misalignment. 

Second: We assess the way the body is loading. 

        We do this by having the client do a body analysis. The client closes their eyes and connects to the weight of their body. Oftentimes, clients are heavier on one foot and their 

weight distribution can be uneven in both feet. This allows us to know that their body’s are misaligned and that natural compensation patterns are occurring for the client to move. As therapists we

use this assessment to understand the way the client’s joints load the weight bear of their body. This information helps us establish a baseline of their imbalances. 

Third: Gait analysis

All joints and muscles have a function or movement that they perform. When a person is misaligned and their joints are different than the natural skeletal position, their body will compensate for

this misalignment. We, as therapists, look at the way a client walks and moves. We are looking for what part of the body is not working and what parts of the body are compensating for the work

of the inactive part of the body.  Compensation can be new or have developed over years.

Often times in gait or walking we notice:

       No arm swing or more arm swing on one side

       Rotation and twisting in the upper body

       Elevation of a hip

       Knees and feet being turned outward or inward

       Uneven heel strike and decreased movement in the feet

Any compensation pattern will lead to inflammation, arthritis, pain, and decreased quality of life. 

So what do we do with this information!?!

 

Our goal is to pull the body into alignment. We correct the muscle imbalances and improve the way the body moves. Without proper alignment and motion you will set your body up for pain. Correct the alignment and live pain free.

Painful Hip Flexors

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It’s not uncommon for us to hear our clients mention waking up with tight, sore hip flexors. Hip tightness can occur for many reasons. Excessive sitting can cause the muscles to relax and deactivate becoming progressively weaker and shorter, creating pain.

Poor posture habits can create a structural imbalance which will cause an uneven pulling of muscles.  No matter the reason, tightness in the hip flexors will lead to decreased movement in the hip and change the way we walk, stand and sit. Our pelvic position will be out of line because the hip flexors are pulling the pelvis forward. This changes the load of our body and creates instability in our gait. Over time, the uneven load and misalignment leads to inflammation, arthritis and other degenerative changes causing pain.  What to do?

At Pain Free we will evaluate you individually to see what is going on with your body that’s creating the issue.  Part of the prescribed plan will retrain those hip flexors to let go, get back to their intended length and tension to eventually re-establish the entire body’s alignment restoring proper gait.  All of that equals being pain free!

Try this and see if you are able to notice a release:

Stand with your back against the wall. When your hips are touching the wall, your thighs and kneecaps will begin to release. If your thighs want to engage, stay in this position for 2-5 minutes until your thighs release and the backs of your legs begin to work.

Cartilage Regeneration

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The body has an innate ability to heal. What does that really mean? It means that our body produces over 500 billion new cells a day – without conscious direction from us. Cuts heal, broken bones mend, muscle tissue builds, and brain cells, cardiac muscle and, yes, cartilage regenerate!

The key to a healthy healing body is the environment we provide it. Consider your nutrition, how much you move, if you’re getting enough sleep, how you’re managing stress and how aligned your posture is.

If you consistently work on all of these aspects of good health, your body responds. In order for cell production to be optimum, each of these needs to be happening simultaneously. I want to focus on how all of this enables cartilage regeneration, from an alignment standpoint. Maybe you’ve been told your knee (or hip, ankle, wrist) is “bone on bone” and you think the only answer is a replacement. Not true!

Research shows that under the right conditions cartilage can regenerate like any other tissue in the body. The first question to ask if you are told that you are “bone on bone” is why is that joint wearing away? Where did the cartilage go that is supposed to be there? It’s all about the position of the joint and the uneven force going through it as you move. Once the joint position is corrected, the body will produce more tissue to repair itself. Take a look at these before and after x-rays:
Look at the narrow joint space (bone on bone) on your left
knee pain
One year later after a postural alignment regime. Notice the uniform joint spaces!
repaired knee without surgery
Here at Pain Free Performance we watch the way bodies move and stand. We determine if body weight is equal front to back, side to side. We evaluate the position of all major joints looking for proper loading (head over neck, over shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle.) If there is disparity, the body is not functioning properly. There are muscle imbalances causing an uneven force in the joints which creates friction. The friction wears down the cartilage. The joint becomes a victim of the imbalance and bone surfaces begin to wear away. Bone on bone.

What is the remedy? Posture alignment. And I’m not talking about your mom telling you to “pull those shoulders back”. I’m talking about retraining muscles to do the job they are intended to do. Why?…because muscles pull bones. The bones are out of alignment but they are innocent bystanders because the muscles are either doing too much or too little. At Pain Free we unravel what the muscles are currently doing and give you the tools to get them working together again. When the muscles that propel the joints are working correctly again this provides increased blood flow to the area, and allows more movement. And, yes, this gives the cartilage an opportunity to regenerate. It’s not magic but it’s amazing and possible for you too.

Alignment Matters Because Movement Matters

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We’re in pain, so we move less. We move less, so we’re in pain.
Which comes first…the chicken or the egg?

When we are in pain it can hurt to move, so most of us stop doing the movement that hurts. Although we avoid the painful movement, we still have to go about our daily tasks. The body will create a new movement pattern to get the task at hand done. The new movement patters ask some muscles to perform in ways they were not designed to, while others stop doing their job altogether. Eventually, the body will break down from the new uneven alignment. We’re in pain so we move less.

We live in a world where we move less and less. We have been marketed a host of gadgets to make our life easier. But, these gadgets make us move less. Think about it. We use remotes to turn on/off our TV’s and open our cars and garage doors; we use back-up cameras to pull out of our driveways. We drive instead of walk. We sit at computers instead of shopping at stores…the list goes on. All of the sedentary things that we do shorten and weaken our muscles. This lack of movement changes our muscle/skeletal alignment which leads to pain. We move less so we’re in pain.

If you’re having back pain, neck pain, knee pain, hip pain, elbow pain it’s probably the result of what we were just talking about. You’re out of alignment. Let us show you how to retrain your body by correcting the muscle imbalances to correct your alignment so that we can get you moving again – without pain. Movement is vital to health. Alignment matters because movement matters.

SPRING IS HERE!

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Spring in Charlottesville is here and it’s gorgeous out there!  Our clients are enjoying these beautiful days outside in their gardens, resuming their outdoor walking and running regime, or spending their weekends on long bike rides.  Inevitably, they ask us, “I don’t want to tweak my back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain with my activities so are there e-cises that I should do before I….?

The answer is always: YES!

Your Egoscue menu is designed to make your body more functional, and there are specific exercises that should be done before and after you complete an activity.  These exercises will work on correcting and aligning your joints while preventing pain symptoms often associated with that activity.  This will keep the back pain, knee pain, and shoulder pain at bay so that you can do the sports you love! Movement is essential!  We love that our clients want to be active!  Let’s keep your body healthy while in motion!

If you have questions about e-cises for your activity give us a buzz!  Have fun out there!

THE EGOSCUE HABIT

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We talk a lot about “habits” – good and bad, new and old, conscious and even unconscious. We have a myriad of them that propel us through our days and nights.  Some habits we’d like to break, some we’d like to initiate.  I was recently  gifted the book “The Power of Habit” written by Charles Duhigg.  My mind went immediately to you, my Egoscue clients. How can we utilize this powerful thing (habit) to help us get exactly what we want?  Especially when we want an aligned and pain free body!

Well, if you’re reading this blog, you’re interested in Egoscue. You want to be vital and active and do everything you love to do. Your back pain, leg pain, shoulder pain, sciatica, or neck pain has gotten in the way.  Perhaps you have an Egoscue program.  Is your Egoscue program a habit or are you consciously struggling every day to map out a new plan to accomplish it but not always able to?

The most commonly asked question when clients are in the midst of aligning their body, feeling good and once again able to do their favorite activity is “will I have to do this for the rest of my life”? The answer is always “yes”!  Maintenance, you know.  Like brushing your teeth or bathing.  You get great results from those habits and you understand the consequences if you stop doing them so you do them every day and in the process you have created a habit.

Duhigg says that there is a habit loop – there is something that prompts you to “do” something (time of day, day of week, frame of mind, alarm on our phone for example); then there is the thing you do – the habit – (have a cup of coffee, brush your teeth, take the dog for a walk, shower, do your Egoscue) and then the reward –caffeine stimulant, fresh teeth, happy dog, clean skin, painless body.  See where I’m going with this?

He also says we should pay close attention to our reward because often the habit we attach to it is just a part of it – there might be more to the why of it than we are aware of. For example, back to our list above…

Coffee – gosh, actually I love the sensation of holding the warm cup as I plan my day

Brush my teeth – definitely fear driven – I hate the thought of a painful dental visit

Walk the dog – It is what it is – nothing like the unconditional love of a happy dog!

Shower – my husband thinks I smell amazing and always compliments me

Egoscue – I expect to continue to be active, do everything I want to do (and even some I haven’t done yet) and do it all pain free as I age and I’m getting up there!

Are you following me? What I want to impart to you, is that at Pain Free we are in it for the long haul.  This is life. Literally, all of the above is life – you have your own list.  From here forward let’s get back to experiencing all of it as fluidly and pain free as possible.   My favorite Pete Egoscue quote is: “A pain free, active lifestyle is not only possible, but it is the way you should expect to feel and live, no matter your age, no matter your previous experience”.  I believe this and YOU can believe it.  I will set myself up to live it.  It is my reward. It can be yours too.

Let me help you find the way to make your Egoscue program a habit so that it will work for you! Let’s define your prompts and tune into your rewards of doing your program for your life.  Remember that age is not a factor of function, misalignment is the culprit. The Egoscue Habit makes the lifelong pain free function that  you desire possible!

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.

 

 

GARDENING SEASON AGAIN!

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Ah yes! It’s time for gardening and yard work.  Finally!  But after just a couple of hours of gardening, my back hurts.  We hear this at Pain Free in the spring, especially as people start getting more active.  They get back pain from what seems to be the simplest most innocuous movements.

We forget that the body is a stimulus-response system (everything we do and eve think has a muscular response in the body). If you’ve been sitting around all winter that inactivity created some less mobile areas in the body.  You may have been active all winter, going to the gym, lifting weights, hours of aerobics, skiing – active!  But moving into the garden we still hear “my back hurts!”.  Those winter activities are great and, even better, fun! However, they don’t get our bodies more functional. What I mean by that is joints lined up vertically and horizontally.  Moving that bag of topsoil requires different movement strength than your weight machine, stair machine, or elliptical. You need to be functional before you are active to stay pain free.

Take weeding for example, Most of us will sit on the ground and start pulling weeds. That sitting position already puts your back in a rounded, flexed position and once you start pulling weeds you force the back muscles to work in that disadvantaged position with no help from the hips and legs (because you’re sitting on them;). Ouch!

WHAT TO DO?!!

BEFORE: Think of your gardening and yardwork as a strength work-out and prepare for it like that.  Do a little warm-up before you go out to get your body functional, lined up vertically and equal right to left.  Try these e-cises:

AIRBENCH

CATS AND DOGS

ARM CIRCLES

ELBOW CURLS

DURING: It’s good to change positions.  Instead of sitting the whole time, kneel or work from your hands and knees, get up and walk around.  Try standing and bend from your hips for a bit.  Change positions every 10-20 minutes.  Your body likes a variety of movement and positions!

AFTER: When you’re done and feeling all proud of yourself, instead of plopping down on the couch, take that much deserved break in static back – everyone’s favorite exercise and so restorative.  If your back pain continues give us a call.  At Pain Free Performance, we are Posture Alignment Specialists certified by Egoscue University — we can help you eliminate that back pain and enjoy your garden!