“If you don’t make time for your wellness, you will be forced to make time for your illness.” – Unknown.
Having good posture starts at your base, and that means your feet. If your feet are uneven, it can cause a number of uncomfortable or painful issues up your legs, hips, back, shoulders, and into your neck, which may result in headaches or migraines, as well. That’s why ensuring that your feet are even is so important, yet the most overlooked issue relative to discomfort and pain.
But determining the root cause of your pain doesn’t start with the feet. Instead, it starts with a deep dive into your medical history. I need you to be as descriptive as possible, as it is extremely helpful in pinpointing the underlying condition and how to treat and correct it. Don’t stress! I ask plenty of questions to help you describe what you’re feeling, and my years of experience allow me to understand what you may wish to relay to me but cannot place into words.
Once I have a full understanding of your medical history, I perform an evaluation on you, where I take measurements from numerous locations on your body to determine what is correct, imbalanced, and uneven so that I can ascertain the root cause of the problem is that needs to be corrected. I always start at your feet – your base – because the smallest imbalance or unevenness will be amplified when we get to your hips, let alone your lower back and shoulders. It is also extremely important, to begin with the feet so I don’t miss anything to help you get you out of pain and back into your life as fast as possible because that’s why you come in for treatment, right?
Maybe you’re waking up with Plantar Fasciitis in the mornings. That feels like little rips and tears in the bottom of your feet. While it may not be showing up as bilateral pain (both feet), in my experience, working on both feet is extremely important, as you could be coping and not be aware of it. And trust me, the last thing you want is for the pain in your one foot to be gone immediately after treatment, only for your other foot to now be hurting you. Or for you to begin walking differently, as a result of only one foot no longer being tense, and for that to result in a new issue within a couple days. That’s why having an experienced practitioner who looks at the body as a whole is so important. And when you do, the results can be nothing short of amazing. In fact, many of my clients have renamed this treatment “Cloud Feet” because by the time the treatment is done, they feel like they’re walking on clouds!
But, to the surprise of many, a lack of foot pain doesn’t mean that your feet aren’t the problem. Sometimes, knee and hip pain actually comes from your feet! This is where performing posture and pain assessments and manual muscle testing throughout the evaluation assist me in determining the root cause and verifying it. Also, while going through the assessment, I build a custom treatment plan specific to your needs and goals – because a generic treatment plan isn’t going to get you back to pain relief and enjoying your life with the speed you deserve. Quite honestly, it amazes me how few practitioners develop custom plans specific to their clients and then scratch their heads when the patient complains that they aren’t seeing any benefit or progress. But I digress…
If you want to treat chronic sciatica, frozen shoulder, chronic shoulder pain, chronic bursitis, your neck/head sinking forward from looking at the computer, or any other condition or issue, we will work together to develop a treatment plan specific to you to maximize your results.
So, what does a treatment plan look like?
Once we establish the root cause of the pain, how long you’ve been dealing with the pain, or how badly injured it is, I can develop a length of treatment broken down into stages like the crawl, walk, run process. For our purposes, the stages would be: first an initial assessment, then getting you back to baseline, then lengthening, strengthening, correction, and re-education, another reassessment, and finally testing/reconfirming the results! Just as important to ensure that your path to pain relief is as quick as possible, assessments are done at the beginning, middle, and end of each treatment session, with sessions usually lasting an hour.
