Pain, Tension & Movement
Sometimes the reason for coming is simple: something hurts.
Maybe your neck has been bothering you for months. Your jaw won’t stop clenching. One hip feels different from the other. Your shoulder doesn’t move the way it used to. You’ve been told your posture is the problem, or you’ve done the exercises and something still doesn’t quite feel right.
You don’t need a more complicated reason than that to come see me.
What people come in with
Much of my practice involves people dealing with pain, tension, restriction, or movement that no longer feels as comfortable or natural as it once did.
Sometimes there’s a clear history: an injury, surgery, repetitive activity, years at a desk, or a movement someone performs thousands of times. Sometimes there isn’t an obvious explanation. And sometimes a problem has been present long enough that there are several things contributing to how it now feels.
The place that hurts isn’t always the whole picture.
If your shoulder hurts, of course I’m interested in your shoulder. But your shoulder also moves in relationship with your ribs, spine, neck, breathing, pelvis, and the way the rest of you organizes around the movement you’re trying to make.
The same is true of a jaw, hip, back, or knee. Bodies don’t divide themselves into the anatomical chapters we use to study them.
This doesn’t mean that pain in one place must be caused by a problem somewhere else. It means that looking beyond the place that hurts can sometimes give us useful information and more possibilities for working.
Where do we work?
Sometimes exactly where you feel the problem.
Sometimes somewhere that seems closely related.
And sometimes we discover that changing support or movement somewhere else alters what happens in the area that brought you in.
The question isn’t only “Where does it hurt?” It’s also “What happens when you move, breathe, support yourself, and organize around it?”
Posture is something you’re doing all the time, not a position you succeed or fail at holding.
Posture, asymmetry & scoliosis
Many people come because they’ve been told they have poor posture, because one side of their body feels different from the other, or because they have scoliosis or another longstanding asymmetry.
I’m generally less interested in making someone conform to an ideal picture of alignment than in understanding how their body is actually organizing itself.
Can you find support without adding unnecessary effort? Can movement travel through more of you rather than repeatedly concentrating in the same place? Can your body adapt when the situation changes?
Bodies are not perfectly symmetrical, and they don’t need to be. With scoliosis especially, the goal isn’t to force the spine into a theoretically correct shape. We can work with the body that is actually there and explore where more movement, support, breathing room, or possibility might be available.
When pain has been around for a while
Pain is real, and it isn’t always a simple measure of what is happening in the tissues at that moment.
Especially when pain has persisted, many things can become part of the experience: previous injury, movement habits, sensitivity, protection, expectation, sleep, stress, workload, fear of aggravating something, and the ways we’ve learned to move around what hurts.
That complexity doesn’t make pain imaginary or “all in your head.” It gives us more things to be curious about.
Sometimes changing tissue or movement is useful. Sometimes discovering that a movement can happen differently matters. Sometimes reducing effort somewhere changes the experience somewhere else. And sometimes simply becoming able to distinguish what is actually happening now from what you’ve learned to anticipate opens another possibility.
Persistent pain often asks for curiosity rather than a single explanation.
When your body is part of what you do
Not everyone comes because something hurts.
I work with musicians, athletes, yoga practitioners, dancers, movement teachers, and others whose activities ask a great deal of their bodies.
Sometimes there’s a specific limitation. Sometimes a familiar movement requires more effort than it seems like it should. Sometimes someone is simply curious about whether there are other ways to organize what they already do very well.
More options, rather than one correct way
Efficiency doesn’t necessarily mean using less effort everywhere. Different activities require different amounts and kinds of effort.
I’m interested in whether you have choices: whether effort can be distributed differently, whether another part of the body can participate, and whether you can adapt rather than relying on the same solution every time.
What might we actually do?
There isn’t one technique I use for pain or movement concerns. What we do depends on what you’re experiencing and what seems useful as we work.
A session may be largely hands-on, or movement may become central. We might explore how you’re standing, walking, breathing, turning, reaching, or supporting yourself. Sometimes slower craniosacral work becomes relevant. Sometimes relationships through the ribs, diaphragm, abdomen, or pelvis become part of what we’re noticing.
You don’t need to decide which approach you need before you arrive.
You can come because your neck hurts.
You don’t need to understand anatomy, fascia, pain science, or which kind of bodywork might be appropriate. Bring what you’re experiencing. We can start there and see what becomes useful.