I’ve had many people ask me “why am I looking at the left arm when it’s my right knee that hurts?”
Well if you think about it, isn’t our whole body connected? Each part of the body is not a separate entity, so when 1 area is having symptoms whether it be limitation or discomfort or the quality of the movement, another area probably is too that is affecting it.
We are 3 dimensional, so our movements work in oppositon to each other, but our muscles and bones are also 3 dimensional.
So if one area is stuck, it puts stress/strain on another because it has to compensate for the stuck one and work harder to produce a movement.
A simple example: lift your right arm forward to shoulder level. The muscles you should feel working to be able to do that movement are in the left side of the back. But if you have a limitation in your trunk rotating to the left, let’s say, somewhere else in your body will take up that motion and most probably a part that does not usually move in that way.
It could be in your body, the knee is asked to stabilize so the arm can lift and as the knee joint is just a hinge joint, it should be moving. Now you may be asking it to do both stabilizing and moving creating an issue.
Back to us being 3 dimensional. We move forward/back, side to side, and rotate. All this occurs from our center of gravity – think belly button area. This is also considered the core: lower abdominals, gluteals, pelvic floor. If we are injured in the left leg, soft tissue tension/fascia gets pulled in the left leg. We don’t want to use that leg, so we use the rest of the body to let it heal.
Now if we exercise the right arm, it will pull the tension from the left leg back into the center of our body. Even if we exercise the right leg, it will pull the tension out of the left to the right. Then we need to bring it back to the center and may use the trunk for that. If you are a visual person, draw a stick figure with a line from head to foot dividing the body right/left and a line through the middle of the trunk, dividing it top/bottom. Or you can just do it on your body to see how the opposite side will pull the injury towards the unaffected side and back into the center to balance out the body.
In essence we are working with the body in the way the body wants to move to be able to release the symptoms elsewhere in the body that are causing the body to be crooked. By making the body more crooked, it sends the message to the brain that this is not how the alignment should be so when you stop the position or motion, now the brain/body releases the area to balance it out.
Have an injury you would like to heal by changing the movement pattern creating it, contact us at 301-493-9257 or click here to schedule a Free 20 minute Discovery call to see how we can help you.
To Your Health,
Cynthia
