This past weekend my eyes were opened to an entirely new way of approaching structural imbalances. For those of you wondering what a structural imbalance is, it can most easily be described as asymmetry in the body— one shoulder higher than the other, a head tilt to the side, a rotation of the trunk.
I took a seminar called Posturology 101 where we learned how to chart. Charting is an exhaustive method of recording someone’s three-dimensional posture. Using this method, I can study the patterns in a client’s body and have a record to refer to after treating them to see if my methods are working.
A fellow participant was practicing charting on me and came to the hypothesis that my left femur was about 6mm longer than my right. I have suspected this leg was longer than the other since childhood, when I would stand still for long stretches at church every Sunday morning, but never had a method to confirm it. So I grabbed the 6mm thick foot lift they had in the room and placed it under my right foot, stood still and gazed into the mirror. At first I felt some weird sensation in my lower right back, the same spot my chiropractor always adjusts. After thirty seconds my lower back settled and felt great, as if I just had an adjustment. Then I looked closer and realized my shoulders were even. Cool! My left shoulder has been higher since I can remember and no matter what I did in the past, it would stay that way. My neck and head had also straightened out and my back felt wonderful after only one minute of standing with my right foot on a 6mm lift.
(The next thing for me to do is go to my chiropractor for an x-ray shot in a very specific way to confirm the leg length difference. Then I will get a lift for as many of my shoes as possible. Maybe then I can run without back pain.)
Before this weekend I knew the skull was made up of several bones and that in a healthy skull the bones shift freely. But I thought it was to an imperceptible degree. I now know better. As the teacher was lecturing towards the end of our third day, he paused mid-sentence and stared at one of the students who was seated with her right leg crossed over her left, causing her hips to tilt.
Do you like to sit like that when you are learning?
Yea, I guess so.
Then he motioned for the rest of the class to stand by him and look at our fellow student’s face.
Uncross your legs and sit flat please.
As she did, something shifted in her face, but I could not detect what it was.
Re-cross them please.
Then I saw it. When her feet were both flat on the floor, her right eye socket was lower than the left. But as she crossed her legs, the bones comprising her right eye socket shifted, bringing her right eye nearly even with her left. Witnessing this, I began to wonder: how does such a shift in posture and bone alignment effect her vision, balance, headaches, cognition, sinuses, and immune system? I was riveted! I still am.
Our teacher related other similar clinical observations and anecdotes about how patients have addressed learning challenges by changing their posture. Scientific studies still need to be done and clearly the subject warrants more attention and research. But while I wait for my NIH grant, I really want to practice some more charting. So, if there are any willing guinea pigs out there, give me a call at 212-FURTHER.
Jamie Dreyer is the Co-founder of Blog Further and the President of Further Fitness NYC.
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February 10th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
You are a D.O. at heart!! That is most of what we are learning in addition to the normal medical school material in my school. We have not learned charting specifically, but we have learned to assess people’s posture, leg length discrepancies, vertebral and sacral (referring to the sacrum) static and dynamic positioning, and how to treat all of these modalities using myofascial release, counterstrain techniques, muscle energy and high velocity, low amplitude thrusts (what most people think of with the word “adjustment”). I look forward to a time that we meet again, so that we can share all of our collective knowledge, it will be very interesting. Great post!!!