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Lower Back Pain
Lower Back Pain
A few weeks ago a new client came to me with a complaint of lower back pain. This was not chronic. He had only developed it about a month before, but it was severe enough that he had gone to the doctor and gotten imaging, which did not show the cause of his pain. He was given muscle relaxers, which he felt did very little.
In my initial intake with him I asked if he had pain anywhere else. He described a toe injury that he had sustained about a year ago and said the toe still hurt once in a while. When he got on the table I did an initial assessment, feeling movement in his hips and lower rib cage, his thighs and lower legs, and finally I checked the dorsiflexion/plantar flexion balance in his ankles. His right ankle moved much easier into plantar flexion and had little dorsiflexion, while his left ankle moved easily into dorsiflexion and had limited plantar flexion.
SMRT Wins Again
Using SMRT, I worked his ankles, the posterior right lower leg and the anterior left lower leg. I then worked his right hamstrings and his left quads. Finally, I spent a few minutes on his toe. Toward the end of the session I had him get dressed so we could check pain with movement. He walked up and down our hallway, bent over to tie his shoes, twisted from side to side. He had a look on his face, like he was waiting for or expecting pain, like he was looking for that moment when everything would seize up again. That moment did not come.
Yesterday he told me that he had not had real back pain since the session, a little stiffness here and there, mostly after he had to drive for longer periods (this makes sense, it would have reinforced the plantar flexion/dorsiflexion pattern we originally identified), but not pain that limited his movement in any way. His toe also had not hurt at all. Fantastic!
Please join me in Omaha, NE to learn SMRT for the lower extremities (thighs, knees, lower legs, ankles, and feet) by registering here. 10% early registration discount on Full Circle’s Omaha, NE SMRT class held from May 18-20, 2018 ends Wednesday, April 18, 2018. This class is 1/2 full as I write this post.
