Chronic Pain, Headaches, Balance & Gait
There are many reasons someone may have chronic pain, most of the time the way you walk becomes affected. Posture becomes poor while walking, standing, and sitting which leads into a viscous cycle making the pain worse and further increasing asymmetries, gait deviations, balance deficits, and promoting headaches. This is when it especially becomes important to treat the source of the pain rather than just the painful area.
Chronic Pain
Chronic pain or recurring injuries are often caused or aggravated by bad habits in our posture, gait, the way we work or play sports, and everyday routines. Chronic pain shouldn’t be permanent. Protective movement patterns create unwanted tension that causes increased friction in your joints leading to pain with movement. Learn to release tension and lengthen your ‘stuck’ muscles & joints to be able to move the way your body was designed to move again.
These dysfunctional movement patterns also develop from a known injury, then once that injury is healed the movement patterns never go away. If these poor patterns become habitual they last and create a new injury that eventually becomes chronic if the source isn’t treated. This is why we treat the source rather than the symptoms.
Balance and Gait Disorders
Walking with a limp, bent forward, or even just landing a bit harder on one foot can lead to a more limiting injury. Oftentimes these asymmetries are slight enough not to notice but progress over time eventually causing pain that seemingly came from nowhere. In these cases though there is a reason, it just took a while - sometimes years - to develop.
Headaches & Migraines
Common headache types are tension headaches, migraines, and cervicogenic headaches. Many are related to tightness in the neck, affecting the upper vertebrae of the neck. These headaches may occur as a result of poor posture, concussion, arthritis, work-related strains, and of course stress or psychosomatic factors. Posture and behavioral patterns are often triggers for headaches.
Posture
Posture refers to the position or alignment your body is in when you are either still or moving. As your body position changes the muscle groups working to hold you upright - or bent over - change. Spending too much time in a bad posture causes muscles to overwork and contributes to increased tightness, unwanted friction, and injury.
