A physical trauma is usually easy to spot because our body displays damage reasonably well. For some tissues trauma is not displayed at all and can be the cause of injury and further trauma which is more obvious. A single blow knock or stumble can be an easy place to start in piecing together a dysfunction of movement history but not all dysfunctions are relative to accidents, bumps, knocks or obvious external trauma. Some are insidious.

What can be forgotten is the effect of gravity on our body and the various tissues that our body is made up of. Each tissue within our body responds to gravity. If our body tissues do not receive the corrective force of gravity they will never heal completely. Maintaining a compensatory pattern of movement takes any corrective loading away from the affected tissue meaning that the fault will stay for the rest of your life. As one area of the body changes its elasticity (coefficient of restitution) there is a ‘knock on’ effect to other body tissues. The tensegrity model of our body shows us that our body is able to displace and spread the load of our movement during our lifespan. As this spread decreases in diameter we stiffen and become less and less efficient at moving. Decreased efficiency of movement leads to poor motion. Give poor movement patterns enough time they will lead to wear and tear.

A Japanese study was able to demonstrate how corrective adjustments to the upper cervical spine were able to reverse radiographic signs of wear and tear. In our experience even severe degeneration can yield some improvement. The medical model of degeneration describes a process that is unrelenting and continual meaning if you have degeneration it can only get worse.  Having experience of gaining some improvement in severe cases provides evidence that when helpful stimulus is found our body can still heal.

The body brain connection is one that mirrors from our actual body to a smaller body within the brain (humunculus). Some of the structures involved in movement are also utilised in emotional trauma and thus when we are emotionally upset we move differently. When our thinking is bringing up barriers giving us no way out our posture changes from when our thinking is about freedom. The knock on effect of poor movement from our body to our brain is under reported and little understood by most healthcare professionals. As you can tell by being human that emotional states change you and so does the way you think. The way we think and feel is largely dependent upon coping patterns we learn in life and could be paraphrased to say its the way we move through our life. Hence poor movement patterns have a part to play in emotional and cognitive traumas. Hopefully you are starting to develop an idea of why at Life Right we use such a variety of methods to help people that involve emotional, cognitive, behavioural, developmental and learning approaches to name a few.