Slip, Slide, Boom!–February 11, 2016
Points….Ice!
Winter is not done with us yet! The ice wreaks havoc on many fronts. We’ve seen several people in the past month for help with fall-related issues.
Here are three typical injuries and how we are able to help—
Head vs. Ice
Slipping on ice, no matter how careful, often ends up with some part of the body rapidly hitting solid ground. Worst case it’s the head. Yesterday, we helped a mom who ended up flat on her back while slipping on ice while walking her dog. Hard landing on both the lower back and head—double ouch!
How We Can Help
Her head and neck movements were highly protective and painful. Hitting the ice clearly upset the connecting nano-movements! Jordan was able to restore very small movements connecting her head and body so her head was calmed. The impact on the lower back disrupted movement flow between legs and core. Jordan was able to re-establish these movement flows leaving mom moving better and ready to handle after-school activities with her grade-schoolers! We’ll work on getting all her movements back to light and bouncy in a few weeks once her body has recovered from the overall trauma.
Checking in a couple days later, she feels clarity in her head and the goose egg has all but disappeared.
Body vs. Ice
Body weight suddenly slamming onto the ground usually compresses parts of the body enough to warrant intentional de-compressing. Several weeks ago, a woman came by after falling on ice slamming her knee onto the ground. She thought it wasn’t too bad since she didn’t end up with a bad bruise, but a week later walking was still off kilter.
How We Can Help
The fall messed up the finely tuned differentiated movement relationships across the knee. The impact also threw off the angle of the femur in the hip joint so overall, her leg wasn’t interacting evenly when moving. We restored the little nano-movements which link muscle interactions at the knee and hip. Once the muscles were coordinating, the hip settled back into its regular place. Circulation improved and the slight swelling disappeared. Walking felt so much easier!
Points for Breaking the Fall!
If you are lucky enough to grab onto something to break the fall, a strain to the shoulder is your reward! This one is a bit trickier to restore since the muscle strain propagates into the core and possibly legs. The body is amazing at how it can shift to protect itself.
How We Can Help
In the process of stopping the fall the body gets pulled off center. A big part of restoring this injury mode is to re-center all the basic movement relationships in the core in addition to restoring the arm/shoulder interconnections. This injury type commonly takes two sessions to put everything back together. Crazy!
Note from Cara
Winter…I find the melting snow makes for some slips going on my morning walks. There are three common ways you can be injured as you have read above and how we can help with each.