Pain Free Performance — Egoscue Certified

Posture Alignment Therapists, Certified by Egoscue University

neck 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.

A Simple Self Test for Alignment

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How can you tell if your body is out of alignment?

Stand against a wall. With your shoulder blades touching the wall, is your head touching the wall too?

If you have to pull your head back to make contact with the wall then your head is positioned forward. This is important information as a forward head  can create dysfunction and cause neck pain, shoulder pain and back pain.

If you have trouble backing the car out of the driveway or performing activities that are not as easy as they once were, it’s because many physical activities depend on a functional head position for their execution.

Use the wall test to assess if your body is in alignment!

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!

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.

 

 

MY NECK HURTS!

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I bet I hear this from 9 out of 10 of my friends almost every day. When they ask me why, my response is “have you seen your head position?”  Look at your side view in a mirror.  Is your head over your shoulders and shoulders over hips, hips over knees and knees over ankles?  The body is totally inter-connected and needs to be vertically aligned.  If that line of gravity is not vertical, then you are asking a lot of muscles to do jobs they were not designed to do, especially in your neck.  Kind of like a bowling ball on the end of a fishing pole.  Your head weighs roughly 20 pounds and it’s on the small end of your spine.  With your head forward, you are asking all the small muscles of your neck to hold up 20 pounds for hours with very little help from the larger muscles in your mid and lower back and hips.

It is important to know that your neck pain is not the problem but it is a sign that the rest of your body is not working as it should to support your head. So let’s fix the real cause of your neck pain by looking at your overall posture.

Let’s start with simple standing. Looking in a mirror, are your shoulders level?  How about hips, are they level?  Do your feet and knees point out or straight?  Do your knees point in the same direction as your feet whether they are out or straight?  From the side view, do your ankles, knees, hips, shoulder and ear line up along an imaginary plumb line?  Any deviation, vertical or horizontal, will create some form of neck or back pain at some point.

Our body is a stimulus-response system. What kind of stimulus have you been giving your body over your lifetime?  How many hours a day do you sit on average?  Add up the drive to work, sitting at work, drive home, computer time, TV, mealtime.  It’s probably more than you think.  Now, think of your sitting position.  I’ll bet your shoulders and head are not in a vertical line with your greater trochanter (that bone you feel on the outside of your upper thigh).  That means your hips are not involved in your sitting position and they should be the base of support while seated.  Your spine is in a C-curve with your head at the end of it with no base of support.  No surprise that our neck hurts and our mid back is really tight and sore.

Does this sound like you? We can help!  Put your neck pain behind you and let us show you what you can do to keep your head and neck in alignment and pain free.

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.

Text Neck

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“TEXT NECK”

My cousin’s 17 year old has been complaining of neck pain, headaches, dizziness, shoulder pain and even some anxiety.  As she walked across the parking lot, the cause was clear, she was looking down at her cell phone, head forward, shoulders and upper back rounded forward.  If you are reading this, you might be hunched over a desk or slumped back in a chair or even reading this on your smart phone in roughly the same position.

Whether you are 17 or 70, that position is causing you pain.  The average head weighs 10 to 12 pounds when it is in its neutral position with the ears over the shoulders and shoulders over the hips.  For every inch your head is forward, that weight doubles!  So, that young man on the bike in the picture above is effectively holding up more than 30 pounds!!  We often do this for hours without even thinking – then, we wonder why our upper back is killing us or we can’t move our neck or our shoulders are tight and painful.

The other thing that’s happening when our shoulders and back are so rounded forward is that our diaphragm cannot possibly work efficiently.  If the diaphragm isn’t working then you are not able to take a regular breath, you are not getting enough oxygen and you can end up with headaches, dizziness and yes, even anxiety.

Several years ago, a doctor gave this syndrome a name – “Text Neck” – to grab the attention of our young people.  The problem has been around ever since we began spending more and more time sitting at computers.  Now with cell/smart phones we don’t come out of that stooped position even when we are standing and walking around.

In the blueprint of the body, the ankles, knees, hips, shoulders and head line up along the vertical line of gravity as we look at the body from either side.  We call that “vertically loaded” where all of the muscles front to back, right to left, and inner and outer are working equally to maintain balance.  In order for the body to do this, we need movement, lots of it and all kinds – as big a variety as possible.  Unfortunately, in our 21st century environment, we are getting less and less movement and in a smaller and smaller box.

That is where we can help!  While I’m sure you won’t be throwing out the cell phone anytime soon, we’ve got something that can counteract the painful results of this associated posture.  The Posture Alignment Specialists at Pain Free Performance will help get you out of that small box of activity, and get you standing tall and vertical!  We will evaluate and prescribe an individualized sequence of exercises that re-activate all of those muscles that have gone off-line while texting your friends or sitting at the computer. So, if you are ready to get out of that hunched over position and get out of pain, call us!

SUPINE GROIN PROGRESSIVE

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If I told you there was something you could do for one hour that would help your back pain, your shoulder pain, hip pain and leg pain and all you have to do is lie on the floor, would you do it?  Well there is such a position – it’s called Supine Groin Progressive.  It’s sort of an exercise, but not really because you don’t do anything except lower your leg down through different levels every few minutes while lying there relaxing.  The benefits are amazing…let me explain.

This is the tower.  If you’ve been to Pain Free Performance, you’ve probably seen one.  If not, it looks a little weird, but it’s an amazing postural tool.  You see in the photo that one foot is in the upper level of the tower, the other is over a block.  What do you do?  You just lie there for 5 minutes each level and then do the same thing to the other leg.

What is it doing?

Several things are happening in several different muscles.  Because the floor acts as a template, this puts your head, shoulders, back, hips, legs and feet on an even plane. For most of us, this is not the norm when we are standing.   When you first lie down, you most likely will notice that there is space between your low back and the floor.    Your body will eventually conform and sink into the floor. 

Specifically, the ilio-psoas muscle at the base of the spine will relax and let your low back and pelvis settle back to the floor.  The ilio-psoas starts at the low spine, crosses over the pelvis and attaches to the inside of the upper thigh.  Because a lot of us sit so much, this muscle gets tight and since it is right in the middle of the body, it affects the whole body…especially the mid back and hips. 

How does it work? 

The body remembers this release of muscle tightness and the misalignment that comes with it.   Doing this Egoscue exercise has a cumulative effect on the body and is a great antidote for all those hours of sitting.  Over time, this muscle memory becomes the norm for your body’s posture when standing, running, sitting, or playing! 

If you have questions, call us at Pain Free Performance and schedule a posture evaluation.  The tower is just one exercise that would be a part of a postural exercise prescription.  Each person is given an individualized program based on their postural issues.  We can show you how improving your posture gives you pain relief, restores function and makes a world of difference in how your body feels and how you feel about almost everything.  This is why we do what we do!!!