Are Muscle Imbalances Causing Your (insert body part here) Pain?

by Manny Aragon

 

Many folks who come into my office with back pain (upper, middle or most commonly lower back pain) will tell me a familiar story: They have either suffered trauma (like a car accident, fall, or something similar) or that the pain kind of crept up on them over the years and is now unbearable (or has been for some time). Most folks know what triggers their pain (if intermittent) and some have their own remedies (lying down on their back for a few days generally helps).

By the time most folks make it into my office, they have usually been to the doctor, chiropractor, acupuncturist, physical therapist, and sometimes even have had surgery.

Yet- they sit in front of me asking for help.

What is it that the others have missed that I can usually find quite easily and what are the methods that I employ to help folks get rid of back pain quickly and forever?

First lets understand the problem.

Now, given that we are the ONLY bipedal creatures who walk and stand upright, perpendicular to the earth’s surface and (somewhat) in alignment with the downward pull of gravity,  we’ve got a unique problem to deal with that sometimes gets the best of us.

Our bodies are uniquely and elegantly designed to directly address the challenge of gracefully navigating gravity’s downward pull with only two legs.

Problem is when our bodies get out of design specification (out of whack – in layman’s terms) our bodies start to compensate for the engineering abnormalities.

This compensation usually results (over time) in an over strengthening of parts of the body ( where the pain sometimes occurs) along with a corresponding  area of weakness (usually but not always where the injury and pain occur).

So, in essence, its not that we have a weak back (or other body part that hurts).

Its that we have a strength imbalance caused by either trauma and/or lifelong patterns of use (like sitting) that slowly changed our body from its original balanced design to its present imbalanced state.

NOTE: this pattern of imbalance runs through out the body- not just in the injured or painful area.

This is exactly why the above listed therapies almost cannot be entirely successful at resolving the problem. They address only the painful area and don’t take into account the rest of the body (acupuncture being the exception BUT people don’t usually do it for a long enough period of time for it to make a real difference).  Thus, the imbalance will persist and slowly (or quickly) make its way back into the affected area (if it was ever changed in the first place).

So- to effectively address a whole body imbalance, you need to use whole body methods like whole body movement (or exercises), whole body nutrition (internal medicine for the tissues and the nervous system), and for speed in changing the whole body structural patterns- The Basic Series of Structural Integration.

You see, simple neuromuscular repatterning exercises work immediate wonders as do specifically and asymmetrically targeted resistance training (weight lifting),  and things like running, swimming, and yoga (all done with ones specific imbalance in mind, in very specific ways that reduce the imbalance).

Additionally, one cannot ignore the likely adrenal depletion that runs rampant in modern society- and which impedes tissue healing- leading to the inevitable injury and premature aging process. Diet induced systemic low level inflammation is also a key culprit in the chronic injury and disease process . Low level food sensitivities can trigger a neuromuscular response (low level spasm) that holds a structural imbalance and can premeditate injury and pain as well.

Therefore- a new approach to nutrition is called for- I use this to correct “structural imbalances” as well.

The Basic Series of Structural Integration works through the body systematically to release the chronically overtensioned and thickened and stuck together and dried out tissues of the body. This allows for more fluid movement and tensional balance between the agonist and antagonist muscle groups in addition to improving whole body elasticity important in graceful movement and adaption to transient physical demands placed upon the structure (the reed bends in the wind but does not break).

You see- when you put these three powerful methods together (any one of which can be successful in its own right), its almost impossible to not be successful because they get the body working the way its designed to work and the body is designed to fix itself, given the right tools.

As Dr. Ida Rolf, the founder of The Rolf Method Of Structural Integration was famous for saying, “ Once you get the body working appropriately- then, spontaneously, the body heals itself.”