Pain is a signal.
Why does it keep coming back?
When pain keeps returning, the first question is often, “How do I make it stop?”
The answer to chronic pain may lie within another question:
Why does it keep coming back?
Often, the problem is not where it hurts.
Ongoing pain may reflect patterns of adaptation and compensation elsewhere in the body. The area that hurts may be the place working hardest to manage an imbalance rather than the place where that imbalance began.
Corrective bodywork looks beyond the painful area to understand how the body is organizing itself as a whole.
The orchestra of body movement
The body does not move one part at a time.
The human body contains more than 600 muscles and more than 200 bones, all working together under the constant guidance of the nervous system.
Consider something as ordinary as taking a step. For a moment, nearly all of your body weight is supported on one leg. Yet you do not simply tilt or fall to the unsupported side.
That is because the foot, ankle, knee, hip, pelvis, spine and upper body are all making coordinated adjustments. Muscles throughout the body continually change tension to keep you balanced and moving forward.
Your nervous system is continually monitoring your relationship with gravity and making adjustments to maintain balance, stability and efficient movement.
This built-in programming runs constantly in the background, monitoring and adjusting the body to maintain balance. This ongoing self-regulation is part of what is referred to as homeostasis.
If one part of the system is not moving or contributing efficiently, the rest of the body does not simply stop. It adapts.
That adaptation may require individual muscles to take on work they were not primarily designed to perform. A muscle that normally helps stabilize may begin doing more of the work of movement. Another may remain shortened or active longer than it should. Others may have to work harder simply to keep the body balanced against gravity.
This ability to compensate is one of the body’s great strengths. But when those compensations continue long enough, the muscles and joints doing the extra work may eventually become the places where pain is felt.
The painful area may be where the compensation is showing up, not where the original imbalance began.
Where it hurts may not be the source of the problem
The knee is a good example.
In a whole-body approach to chronic knee pain, it is useful to look beyond the knee and toward the core.
Muscles throughout the lower leg, thigh, hip and pelvis all influence how force travels through the knee. If one region is not contributing efficiently, another may have to compensate.
If the pelvis is not well balanced, if the hip is not controlling the leg efficiently, or if the foot and ankle are changing how the leg meets the ground, the knee may be asked to manage stresses that did not begin at the knee.
The body adapts by changing muscular tension. Some muscles may shorten. Others may work harder to stabilize the leg. Over time, the knee can become the place where that accumulated stress is felt.
That does not mean every knee problem begins somewhere else. Injury, degeneration and other medical conditions can also be important. But recurring knee pain can sometimes be part of a larger musculoskeletal pattern.
The knee may be where the pain is felt, but understanding why it keeps returning can require a whole-body consideration of how the core, pelvis, hip, leg, foot and the rest of the structure are working together.
Chronic pain is a signal.
After nearly 50 years of working with the body, I have often found that the path toward change begins with the core musculature.
The core musculature influences relationships throughout the body, including the pelvis, spine, legs, shoulders, neck and even head posture. It plays an important role in how we move, maintain balance and continually organize ourselves in the dance we have with gravity.
When the core musculature is not working in a balanced relationship, the rest of the body may adapt around it. Muscles elsewhere may tighten, overwork or take on responsibilities they were not primarily designed to perform.
Muscular tension can also affect nearby nerves. In some situations, tight or overworked muscles can reduce space around a nerve or place pressure on it, contributing to irritation, tingling, numbness or pain that may be felt somewhere else along the nerve pathway.
The body’s fluid systems are another consideration. Interstitial fluid and lymphatic movement help maintain the environment around the tissues. When fluid movement is reduced or an area becomes congested, local pressure and tissue mobility may be affected. Restrictions or congestion involving the tissues surrounding the visceral organs may also influence how the abdomen, diaphragm, pelvis and neighboring structures move and respond.
These changes do not necessarily explain the source of pain by themselves, but they may become part of the larger pattern of pressure, sensitivity, restriction and compensation that the body is managing.
That is another reason the painful area may not tell the whole story.
That is why my work does not begin by simply chasing the painful area. I look for the larger pattern of muscular tension, compensation, tissue restriction, congestion and imbalance, and for how the core and surrounding systems may be influencing that pattern.
As those relationships begin to change, the body may have a better opportunity to move toward balance and use its own restorative processes more efficiently.
If this way of looking at the body from a therapeutic perspective resonates with you, corrective bodywork may be worth exploring.
Sometimes the next step is simply looking at the problem differently.
Learn more about appointments in Truckee and Reno, or contact me to discuss whether this approach may be appropriate for you.