Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Daily Awareness

I always ask my patients how their daily activities may be leading or causing some of the discomfort they present with.  Most blame a new exercise or sitting for to long etc...surprisingly this usually isn't the culprit.  It's something that has been done quite a bit of and is a small enough irritant that it ends up causing "a bigger event" to be the one that gets blamed.

I was dealing with a nurse maid type knee for most of the summer.  It would swell a bit and be annoying.  Not really painful unless I put full weight of my knee cap on the ground.  I'd manage it and would get better and then I'd think I did some squat wrong and it would get irritated again.

Well I started to take my own advice and have some awareness throughout the day on what my knee was doing.   When I'm working I'm thinking pretty hard about anatomy and movement and how things are playing about, feeling for tension, getting proper depth...it doesn't usually lend time to introspection.  Which I'm guessing why it took me so long to figure out.  I for some reason developed a habit of bracing my knee that is being irritated right into the side of my chiropractic table.  It didn't cause pain, but over the course of 6-7 hours a day for weeks, was enough to irritate it.  So that when I put a major load into it, it flared up.

Pay attention to how you are using your body.  Pay attention to how that feels.  Realize it is often the small micro movements that are creating the big movements that get blamed for your painful tissue or joint.

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