The Breathe Approach to injury rehabilitation
At our Melbourne CBD studio, we use a 3-fold, evidence based strategy for spinal injury rehabilitation with Clinical Pilates. We will work with you to improve your posture, teach you self muscle-release techniques and develop a program of core strengthening, stability exercises to effectively support your back.
1. Postural improvement
Your posture has a dramatic and profound effect on how your spine is loaded. Spinal injuries almost always benefit from postural fine-tuning, and we'll teach you how to stand and sit with ideal posture, so stress on your injury is minimised. One aspect of ideal posture is effective activation of your postural muscles. Good activation of your postural muscles will help you to stand, sit and move in a manner that gently supports your spine, and spreads loadbearingevenly through your system.
2. Self muscle-release techniques
We understand that living in constant pain, or fear of pain, is not fun. We'll teach you self muscle-release techniques including stretching, Trigger Point release, breathing techniques and visualisation to give you the skills to reduce tension and dissolve your pain yourself. Learn to "nip your pain in the bud" and avoid the upward spiral of tension and discomfort. Balance your system by releasing tight areas gently, safely and effectively.
3. Improving motor activation patterns and core strengthening
One thing that is very common with spinal injuries, is poor muscle activation patterns (aka motor activation patterns). When your motor activation is not ideal, your muscles don't switch on in the right sequence, or in the right proportion; so you may have some muscles over-active, and others not active enough, and thus imbalance, compensation and increased strain to your system, which brings us back to postural realignment...
We'll design a program of exercises specifically for you to improve your motor activation patterns (You'll learn to use the most effective combination of muscles to perform a given movement, especially the movements that were previously causing you pain and aggravation). We'll help you safely strengthen your core and all your stabiliser muscle. Having your muscular system in balance will provide even support along your spine in sitting, standing and throughout movement.
Movements that commonly cause aggravation for people with lower back injuries includes
Getting out of bed
Putting on shoes, socks or pantyhose
Standing or sitting for long periods
Driving, and getting in and out of the car
Gardening
Running
Cycling
Sneezing
Picking even very light things up off the floor
Through improved posture and correct motor activation, we can show you how to change the way you do the movements that are causing you pain, in such a way that there is minimal load on your spine.
We will give you practical, simple, precisely targeted exercises to improve the way your body works, and allow your injury to heal, so you can start to live like a normal person again! For therapists, and those with a technical bent, you can look over our Clinical Pilates Rehabilitation Guidelines on the Info for Therapists page.
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