How To Stop Ankle Pain With Rolfing Structural Integration

(0:00) In today’s video, I’m going to talk about ankle pain –

(0:03) different types of ankle pain, how to tell which type you have,

(0:06) and how structural integration would address ankle pain.

(0:10) Now there are many different kinds of ankle pain, but they’re

(0:13) I’d say, three predominate ones. The first one

(0:17) is pain on the sides of the ankle.

(0:25) in the foot or just below the ankle or

(0:29) in the ankle joint itself –

(0:32) that’s the most common. The second most common

(0:36) would be pain in the front of the ankle

(0:40) perhaps even deep into the joint, and

(0:43) stiffness in the ankle. Both of those will usually have some kind of stiffness

(0:47) in the ankle – lack of range of motion, inflexibility.

(0:50) The third type of ankle related pain

(0:53) would be pain in the Achilles tendon, whether it’s

(0:58) on the bottom of the foot where the tendon attaches or whether it’s

(1:02) in the meat of the tendon or up

(1:05) into the calf muscle where the tendon

(1:09) eventually goes into the muscle.

(1:12) All of those things can be addressed well with structural integration and in my

(1:15) experience,

(1:16) they’re almost all related to some type of muscular imbalance.

(1:20) Now if there is a muscular imbalance,

(1:24) there very likely has been some type of injury as well.

(1:27) So for many people who are chronic ankle sprainers

(1:30) or who have broken bones in their leg or foot

(1:34) from doing sports or

(1:36) some kind of traumatic injury or incident,

(1:40) the tissue is going to be all reinforced.

(1:43) So what structural integration does is it frees up

(1:48) and it starts to balance out the tension between

(1:51) the inner and the outer leg and the front and the back of the leg.

(1:55) The tensional imbalance is usually where the problem lies.

(1:59) If you’ve got pain in an area from chronic injury

(2:02) the reason for the chronic injury is the imbalance. When you remove the imbalance,

(2:07) the injuries stop happening and your body is able to heal

(2:10) what is injured. For example, my wife,

(2:14) who is an avid volleyball players and rower for many years, was a chronic ankle sprainer.

(2:19) In fact, there was one time I remember she was standing in front of me and

(2:23) we were standing on a sidewalk and all of a sudden she fell over. She had

(2:28) sprained her ankle just standing there.

(2:29) That’s how bad it as. Once I learned this technique

(2:33) and I practiced on her regularly,

(2:37) why then she hasn’t sprained an ankle in over ten years.

(2:40) It just goes away because now her legs

(2:43) are balanced. They’re not complete balanced, but they’re balanced

(2:46) enough that it doesn’t happen and that’s all you need –

(2:49) balanced enough. So the first session of structural integration

(2:54) starts to address this, not directly. If you come into my office and your

(2:59) primary complaint is an ankle problem, I will work there the first session.

(3:02) Where this is really rigorously addressed is the second session of

(3:07) structural integration

(3:08) where we focus on your feet and legs almost exclusively –

(3:11) that is, balancing and rebalancing.

(3:15) Say from session one to session five

(3:19) we’re working on legs and feet for most of those sessions,

(3:22) but there are other sessions in the series

(3:26) that we work on them as well or have opportunities to. So

(3:30) that said, without having to commit to the ten session series or even in your

(3:34) mind think about committing to

(3:35) the ten sessions series to resolve an ankle problem, I suggest you come in and try a

(3:40) session. Try one.

(3:41) Try one session – see if you don’t feel a difference and if you do,