Symptom vs Underlying Cause
Have you ever felt pain in your ankle? knee? hip? back? shoulders? neck?
WHETHER ITS PAIN IN YOUR LOWER BODY, UPPER BODY, OR ONE SIDE GREATER THEN THE OTHER, WHAT IS THE ONE THING IN COMMON WHEN YOU EXPERIENCE PAIN?
You do what ever you can to not feel the pain, consciously or subconsciously. When we talk about pain, this can be anything from a little discomfort or ache to excruciating pain. The lower the discomfort/pain the more the body responds subconsciously, without you even really paying much attention to the pain. Over time, the longer you do nothing to correct it, the worse it gets, and will typically build up from small discomfort to eventually being excruciating pain.
WHAT'S THE FIRST THING WE TYPICALLY DO TO NOT FEEL THE PAIN?
Lets take pain in the foot or knee from a sprain or some type of trauma for example. If you start to feel pain when you put pressure/weight on it, the first thing you do is to take weight off it. This pain is then considered to be a dysfunction, as the foot/knee can not function normally. The easiest and quickest way to take the weight off is to limp and compensate with your other leg/side of the body.
WHAT IS THE RESULT OF THE BODY COMPENSATING?
In the example of foot/knee, the opposite side of the body (ankle-knee-hip) will compensate, including the upper body, from lumbar spine and supporting muscles up through shoulders and even neck. Even for you to continue doing everyday things like walking, bending over, twisting, the whole body must compensate in order to keep you upright.
When your body compensates for a dysfunction, it changes the dynamics of how your body functions, starting with the muscles. Each part of our body is designed to do a particular job. When we compensate, we transfer the responsibility from one body part to another or multiple other body parts and overload them. The other parts are now not only overloaded, but due to the change in dynamic muscle movement the body is now positioned in an alignment that the body is not use to. If this is not corrected, over time the compensating parts will no longer be able to compensate as needed, and will now become a dysfunction.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW THE COMPENSATION BECOMES A DYSFUNCTION?
So you go from one too now having two parts of your body dysfunctional. Now these two dysfunctional parts need help doing their function of the body and look to other parts of the body to help compensate. If you don't correct the two dysfunctional parts, what do you think happens? Yes, you got it. The new compensations will eventually turn into dysfunctions. And the existing 1 dysfunction can turn into, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...
So your opposite ankle/knee starts compensating and becomes dysfunctional. Left un treated, this will lead to upper body becoming dysfunctional, and then the most common dysfunction; your hips/pelvis which typically triggers the most common pain; back pain.
The more dysfunctional your body is, the easier and therefore quicker the body will become even more dysfunctional. You can get to a point where your body needs to move in order to relieve and heal the pain, but because your body is so far out of its functional design posture, moving only makes it worse. Joints wear out, blood circulation is restricted, organs stop functioning properly.
SO HOW DOES DYSFUNCTIONS AND COMPENSATIONS RELATE TO MY SYMPTOMS AND THE UNDERLYING CAUSE?
The symptom refers to the pain you are feeling. Most people when they come in for an assessment/treatment, have had injuries from 2, 5, 10, 20+ years ago that have not been fully rehabilitated. Their body is more likely to be dysfunctional in 2+ areas. The symptom is therefore 99% of the time at the compensation (overloaded) body part and not at the area that created the chain reaction throughout your entire body, the underlying cause.
SO HOW DO I CORRECT THE UNDERLYING CAUSE?
Firstly you must understand, that bones do what muscles tell them to. Your body moves because your brain triggers muscle action which then moves your skeleton to the extent of a joints range of motion.
If you consider the game tug-of-war, where you have two teams, one on either end of a rope, trying to pull the other team past the middle line.
Now, If we think about each team as being a muscle and in this instance lets consider one team being the muscles in the front of your body (called the flexors) and the other team being the muscles in the back of your body (called the extensors).
In tug-of-war, there's typically only one scenario that plays out. Teams will fatigue until one team out powers the other and there is only one winner.
Now this is the outcome that happens with most people. Either the flexor muscles (front team) or the extensor muscles (back team) out powers the other and you get results like the postures below:
AS mentioned above, the body needs to compensate in order to balance and remain standing. The body will continue to compensate until one or multiple parts cannot compensate any more.
The body tells you this with pain in one form or another.
The longer the body is in compensation mode, the greater the chance of dysfunction in one or more parts of your body. As a result it is extremely common that the site of pain is actually not the site of the problem.
Secondly, you need to consider what correct alignment is and compare this to your current alignment. This will determine the deviations, compensations and dysfunctions your body is operating with.
Thirdly, you need to build a HOLISTIC blueprint to treat the symptom and correct the underlying cause. We build your blueprint based on:
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5 guiding principles
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8 Laws of Physical Health
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Combination of Mental and Physical Strategies & Techniques
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Incorporating AI (artificial intelligence) to enhance effectiveness
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The ability to utilise the strategies & techniques anywhere, anytime
HOW TO COMPARE & CORRECT YOUR ALIGNMENT
We offer a no obligation free postural assessment.
What’s included:
✅ Full visual and functional assessment of your body
✅ Understanding how your body deviates from optimal design function,
✅ Diagnosis of whether your deviations are compensations or dysfunctions.
✅ Strategic Action Plan to correct the underlying cause
Benefits:
✅ Relieve & Eliminate Chronic Pain & enhance your positive mindset
✅ Prevent Injuries & avoid spending time on the side lines
✅ Speed-up recovery so you're back doing what you love sooner
✅ Enhance Performance to be your best & compete with the best
✅ Improve your range of motion to move more freely & breathe easier
✅ Increase your strength; agility, endurance, power & speed.
✅ Increase flexibility and stability from head to toe.
✅ Feel more relaxed & loose, helping you sleep better
✅ Gain full body awareness & improve focus
✅ Gain confidence to sky-rocket your results