Advanced Massage for Stress & PTSD Part 2: How to Identify if you have Chronic Stress or possible PTSD?

 

I’ve had a lot to think about in my experiences both working with PTSD clients and also living and working through the last year of covid-19 crisis. The following is theory based on anecdotal data and a lot of scientific reading. Yes I’ve seen it play out with hundreds of clients but I don’t have the time or resources for a true scientific study. So I want to make that clear. But I think it’s a useful paradigm to try out and see what insights it may give us about ourselves and our stress.

We really like to convince ourselves that we are very evolved, and in a lot of ways that is true. We build fantastic machines that perform relative miracles to anything we could conceive of in primitive times. Intellectually, most of us understand that we need thoughtful solutions to modern problems. Including working together as a team on projects that improve our safety and daily lives.

However, a lot of the older nervous system programming shows up under stress and can cause a reversion to our less evolved selves.

10,000 years ago, most problems required a physical solution. Think about pre-tool making. You either gather fruit and other edible plants, or physically catch, wrestle, and kill your food. Or both. In order to hunt (or avoid being hunted), you needed three basic skills: hiding, running, and fighting.

These three skills show up in all animals as instincts and we are no exception. While most of us have learned to largely tame them, they still show up in small and medium ways.

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Video: Great Exercise to Rehab an Old Ankle Sprain

Transcript Including Detailed Instructions for Old Ankle Sprain Rehab Exercise

DW: I’m going to show a quick foot retracting exercise that I give to a lot of clients to rehab an old ankle sprain or to help find better balance in their feet.

Most of us in some point in our life have had an ankle sprained or two or ten and that causes the ankle almost all the time to roll outwards this way. You have a compensation that your brain does rather than leave your foot rolling out sideways because it doesn’t feel right just walking on the edge. And that is to externally rotate your hip or your knee or both and that allows the foot to fall more that way.

You’ll see some clients will show you this one foot out other clients will show you the other and some show both, right? This is really a long-term compensation for a stuck ankle that never got unstuck. What’s supposed to happen when you walk is that you roll through the ball of your big toe when you come forward that way right and that should stay contacting as the very last thing until you bring your foot forward.

With an old ankle sprain you’ll get some version of this and that big toe never contacts the floor completely. And so to relearn how to do that I have a very simple exercise!

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How to find the right sports massage therapist for you?

What is sports massage and how can it benefit you?

Before looking for specific qualities in a sports massage therapist, it’s helpful to understand what to expect from a session. Sports massage can comprise any of the manual techniques that a licensed massage therapist is trained in. These techniques are performed with the intention of addressing your specific concerns around your active and/or physically demanding lifestyle. 

Often, our athlete clients will come in with an acute injury they sustained while practicing their activity. Such as an ankle sprain or a torn rotator cuff. The therapist will then work to help alleviate pain. Sports massage can decrease inflammation, assist with proper scar tissue formation, and increase range of motion or stability at the injured joint. 

Other times the concern is minimizing delayed onset muscle soreness during peak training times for a specific event. Or promoting recovery after an event like a race or competition. Frequently, an active person is simply in pain or is having trouble performing at their desired level. And is looking for someone to help them determine the root cause of the dysfunction. These are all issues that our staff at Bodyworks DW can help you tackle.

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