Pain Free Performance — Posture Alignment Therapy

Live Pain Free!

neck pain

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!!!   

               

 

HOW POSTURE CAN EFFECT YOUR ORGANS

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Good posture is one of the healthiest things you can do for your body – inside and out!  Not only will you look better (just like our mother’s told us over and over again….) you will feel better.  Do you know that posture moderates every physiologic function from breathing to hormone production?!

Our high-tech lifestyle does not help matters.  We hunch over our laptops while we work, eat, and sit in the car or in the coffee shop.  We crash on the couch for hours and hours, slouching while we watch entire seasons of Mad Men, House of Cards, Breaking Bad.    It all wreaks havoc on our posture, our body and our overall health.  There’s something called forward head syndrome that comes from the technologically-attached posture I’ve described – shoulders and upper back round forward causing the head to hang over forward.  You get up from your laptop in that position and unfortunately it becomes your posture when you’re up walking around…not good for the body and not the intended design! Look around, you’ll see this posture in a lot of people – young and old.

When we stand, gravity and the weight of our head (about 10 pounds) push down on our bodies all day long.  Our rib cage is designed to protect our organs, be an anchor for muscles and support for the head and neck.  The heads proper position is directly over the rib cage.  When you have forward head posture, there is strain on the rib cage, strain and compression of the organs, strain on the spine. 

While you might be thinking back pain, shoulder pain or maybe neck pain would be the only result, this combination of misalignment of the forward head position can lead to a long list of ailments including: 

  • Headaches develop because the brain is sensitive to oxygen flow – when the head is bent forward, the muscles next to the arteries in the neck and head do not fully assist the uphill travel of blood to the brain, decreasing the flow of oxygen and creating the headache.
  • Shortness of breath can occur when the forward hunched upper body compresses the lungs beneath the rib cage depleting lung capacity by as much as 30%.  It’s difficult to take a full breath and get enough oxygen to all parts of the body.
  • Decreased Spinal Mobility because the weight of the misaligned head is pulling the spine into an unnatural curve, movement is painful and restrictive.
  • Constipation or IBS can occur when the large intestine is compressed and proper digestion is compromised, which can create blockages in lieu of regularity.
  • Plantar Faciitis even!  You won’t believe this but all that misalignment in your upper body can cause foot pain!!  The forward head creates an unstable gait as your body struggles to stay upright and can cause you to constantly put more weight on one of your feet.  The uneven pull of the muscles can cause micro-tears in the connective tissue (fascia) on the bottom of the foot!

So, when you think of posture, you probably don’t think of these maladies but I want to encourage you to see the whole picture of posture and its effect on your health and your quality of life.  That’s the beauty of Egoscue!  At Pain Free Performance we look at the entire body, re-introduce the original design of the musculo-skeletal system (total alignment) to relieve pain, to restore function and give you back your life! 

 

The Best of Both Worlds

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We humans are social creatures, so we love doing things in groups.  We learn better in groups so any kind of class is a wonderful idea to most of us!  That is especially true for exercise classes. Having people around is stimulating, encouraging and helps us go beyond what we think our limitations are.  This is also true for our classes using the Egoscue Method for postural alignment.

Some of you know about Egoscue from coming to Pain Free Performance because you were in pain and could not find a way out.  Back pain, neck pain, ankle pain, shoulder pain, knee pain – we’ve seen it all!  That is the essence of Egoscue – total body alignment that restores function and relieves pain! 

Egoscue class is a great way to connect with other folks who are enjoying the benefits of a pain free aligned body.  Keep in mind class cannot be specific to each participant’s particular issues.  Most classes meet a couple of times a week and your body needs more training to re-adapt to proper muscular balance for posture.  You guys that have your Egoscue exercise menus know that a body needs the daily reminder of what those muscles are designed to do!

For those of you who haven’t visited us, this postural alignment work is individualized and specific to you, your body, your pain and dysfunction.  Exercises are prescribed (called menus) that have a sequence of muscular activation and/or deactivation best suited to your body.  There are no two bodies alike and there are rarely identical menus.  Class should not be viewed as a “one size fits all” approach to body alignment and pain relief – it should be another fun activity that you participate in because you’re feeling great after doing your menu!

Doing your individual menu gives you a wonderful opportunity to tune into your own body and inner self.  Listening to your body while performing your Egoscue menu is a perfect meditation time or just simply quiet alone time.   If you’re going to class but you don’t have a menu…let me encourage you to get one.  It will change your life and it will make all of the other stuff possible.  

Going to class is great!!!!  Keep at it!  Class, hiking, biking, running, swimming, tennis – move and enjoy what you love to do — your body will like the extra movement and extra attention.  And, do your menu also.  You can have the best of both worlds!  

 

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

PAIN FREE — IT’S YOUR BIRTHRIGHT!

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Pain Free Performance – It’s the name of our posture clinic in Charlottesville, Virginia and it is also every person’s birthright.  We should be able to do whatever we want free of any kind of chronic musculo-skeletal pain.  For most of us, that is not the case.  We live with pain every day, but the good news is, we don’t have to!

In its truest form, pain is the body’s alarm system.  It is telling us that something is wrong and urging us to do something about it.  When we listen to that alarm, a whole new world awakens!  First, we need to determine what our body is trying to tell us and then take responsibility and be pro-active to regain our health.  That’s where our expertise at Pain Free Performance comes in!

In listening to your pain, is there a position that helps it feel better or decrease?  Is that position associated with an activity?  What happens when you do that activity with perhaps more mindfulness?  Does the pain/symptom increase, decrease or not change? 

The body thrives on movement and it must move to maintain health.  Load bearing joints need to line up in vertical and horizontal lines to allow the body to move without limitation or pain.  So, if you’re in pain, you need some help with alignment to get your body back to its original perfect design.   After all, for thousands of years we have walked, run, danced, crawled, dug, thrown, climbed, swung, jumped and played.  By doing these things, we thrived! There’s no reason we shouldn’t be doing these things all of our lives.  Our technology-oriented society has taken us away from our life of movement and well-being  (hunched over desks in front of computers rather than moving) but we can reclaim our active lifestyles!

So, I ask you, is your back pain, shoulder pain, hip pain, neck pain or knee pain keeping you from doing something that brings you joy or makes you feel good about life?  Are you willing to take some action to change that?  People may be suggesting medication, injections, even surgery but there is another way.  You have to do it, but we’re here to show you how.  It’s your move and your body!