| Poor posture has a vital role in causing pain. I'm not talking about just sitting up straight like most people do when they hear the word "posture". I'm referring to deep core muscle tightness that pulls the body forward and causes a shortening of the muscles in front of the spine, deep in the front aspect of the hips, inner thighs, quadriceps, and calves. The video above explains these concepts much better then words can, but I'll attempt to do so here. If you have pain, it's probably on the back side of the body either in the neck, upper back, middle back, lower back, buttocks, hamstrings, calves or bottom of the feet like with plantar fascitis. It's also probable that you've received a lot of treatments of many kinds in these areas with limited results. You're probably asking why and what does posture have to do with this. Here's the problem that most therapists are missing. Muscles that pull the body forward rarely hurt, yet the muscles that 'try' to fight and keep the body upright hurt a great deal. Therapy is usually rendered to the painful areas and not the pain free areas that are often times causing the problem. I'll say that again in another way. The muscles that are actually making your life difficult don't usually hurt so very few people think to treat those muscles. Yet it's these muscles that make the muscles along the back of the body work like crazy (and therefore hurt) trying to keep you upright. Therapy often times goes like this. The first step is to give you exercises for the muscles in your back that hurt. This allows the muscles to compensate better which means they can more easily fight the tight muscles in the front of the body. If your problem isn't too severe this might work fine for you, but it doesn't fix the true problem in my opinion. Stretches and deep tissue work are other types of therapy you may have received. These will help relax the tight muscles for a short time before they have to get back to work fighting against the muscles in the front of the body. This is why relief from massage therapy can be short lived. This is nothing against any type of therapy because these painful areas often need treatment. It's just that other areas of the body really need work as well and are often ignored or not realized. The muscles that I'm referring to are the muscles in the legs and pelvis that rotate the pelvis forward. Just for definition rotating forward would be clockwise motion of the pelvis if your looking at someone from the right hand side. Another way of looking at it is that the front of the pelvis goes down. This forced forward rotation adds extra curve to the lower back which pushes your internal organs forward and contributes to your belly sticking out. All your spinal muscles contract (ie. compensate) to handle the imbalance in the pelvis. Every muscle in the back from your neck down through the back, buttocks, hamstrings, calves and feet all have to contract to keep you upright. The muscles that are under the most stress are the ones that hurt. It's rare that all the muscles along the back hurt. The tight muscles in the front also dramatically affect your posture. The pelvis rocks forward, the lumbar curve is accentuated making your gut stick out. Your shoulders roll forward and your head juts forward. This is all due directly to the shortened line of tissue that I've been talking about. The path of tension starts in the calves, comes up into the inner thigh muscles, up into the front of the hips, inside the pelvis, up through the front of the spine and ribs, up into the neck and head. These muscles however rarely hurt. It's these muscles that need to be treated and lengthened to take the stress off the muscles in the back of the body. This is what I do in the office. Using the Graston Technique I can quickly release adhesions and tension in the muscles and without even touching the back muscles people often feel much more relaxed and upright. Of course I do treat in the complaint areas because people have adhesions there as well. More to come... | 
