We All Have Issues

When people come to me saying that some aspect of their body needs support (ie.back brace, knee brace, ankle wrapped etc.), invariably I turn to the mechanism that got someone there in the first place for lack of a better term, the root cause.

There is so much nuance with “injury”, but what lies in this, is a space to look at these occurrences, or in other words, things that creep up on us or don’t have a particular blunt force injury to blame it on as something that started with a non optimal pattern. When I say this, it means exactly that - our bodies carry this incredible ability to adjust and compensate to allow us to function like nothing is wrong…until they don’t.

Those nagging little struggles that seem to come and then go, just to arise again and again on a more frequent or severe basis as time passes. Sometimes then becoming barriers to normal day-to-day movements and limitations to what you are now to do in a pain-free range. Pain, that thing we loathe when we are in it but actively seeks to keep us alive and guide us back to equilibrium IF we listen.

There’s rhetoric in this age of medical technology that has led the average person to believe that our body “parts” (I’ll go into why that’s in quotations later) don’t last as long as we do anymore. Replacement surgeries absolutely have a place in modern medicine but just like some other interventions ie. Think things like pain medication and anti-inflammatory drugs -the question as to why the rampant need for these things rarely gets asked in the realms that make profit off of them.

It seems as if this is being sold as the main line route to wellness and pain cessation to the general public with few alternatives being spoken about. By no means am I damning the world of modern medicine, I find it fascinating and valid but not the ONLY way out.

I love the idea that most people that practice bodywork often find focus to study in the things they suck at themselves. For me, I have a very lengthy list. I rarely talk about it but following an 18-month stint of intense care for my ailing mother until she passed away I had the most intense “back” injury of my life. I thought I was doomed for life. Burning down both legs, wasn't capable of moving without insane, life-robbing pain.

What came of this was trips to the emergency room where the use of their protocol imaging rendered “nothing remarkable” on my X-ray. Completely and totally unhelpful in the sense that I had no tangible overtly medical explanation for this pain intensity. I left with a prescription for Torodol and Tylenol and went home. I knew I wasn’t always in pain, I also knew something had changed. And that change was dramatic.

I had in the past, an SI joint that felt painful sometimes that left me pulling up my pants funny, a hip injury from weed-whacking acres of lawn, and a fall on my hip that definitely were remarkable but nothing quite like this. As I pondered, I was realizing that for 18 months leading into this, I was in a catastrophic grief state. My precious mom perishing before my eyes, doing all that I could to help her ease into the next place in as little misery as humanly possible.

You know what your body does in stressful situations? It’s called fight or flight. I barely feel like I took a whole breath some days. As I would lay on the floor at home with a lacrosse ball jabbed into the painful areas i conceptualizad that this had more to do with my pain than anything physical movement-based ever could. I chatted with my friend, Whisper, at the time about the core and pelvic floor and the connection to breath…and there it was… at least a part of the answer. I hadn’t been breathing anywhere but up into my neck and shoulders for nearly 2 years!

By way of that, I had created a non-optimal pattern that prevented me from core and pelvic floor activation that led me straight to the path of the most significant injury (pain-wise) I have had to date.

To say my road to recovery and function was straight is a precise lie. It has been all curiosity and leaning into the investment in myself. I recall when I was laying on the floor unable to breathe without crying in pain that I got to this place somehow and there has to be a path back. Curiosity has led me down many paths that have informed my entire life’s story.

Reporting that today I move freely and am the strongest I have ever been! My lates personal record for a deadlift is 225 lbs! Something I never imagined possible while laying on the floor contemplating how I was going to put my own pants on.

We make choices everyday- even neutral is a choice. I chose a 1% improvement daily, not 100% overnight!