FlowMotion Back and Joint Therapy

New Clients — Before Booking

Hello and Welcome!

Before booking with me I would like to set expectations with complete transparency! I do not “fix” you; rather, we, working together as an extremely interactive team, figure out how you can help yourself. In short, the focus of my practice is self-care via knowledge and awareness. Please expect some homework. If you are looking for a more passive healing experience, I am happy to refer you to one of our many wonderful local practitioners who practice massage, acupuncture, chiropractic, etc. I encourage you to practice whatever form of self-care you need at any given time — sometimes self-care means being pampered by someone else.

I highly recommend prior to working with me…

My primary teacher Gary Ward has created a self-care online video course: Wake Your Body Up . He has priced the course so that it is accessible to everyone; it is priced in UK pounds, but it is roughly $15 for 3 hours of incredibly valuable content!!! I encourage you to go through this course before booking with me. Occasionally, people feel so much better just from taking this online course that they no longer feel a need to book with me. And if they do choose to book with me after taking the course, we are 20 steps ahead in terms of where we start working together.

If you choose to work with me, please expect:

1. A thorough analysis of your injury history. You’d be amazed how, for example, that left ankle sprain when you were a child might impact your right shoulder today!
2. A full body analysis of available joint motions and preferences (e.g. your ribcage really likes to rotate right, but it never rotates left), as well as static holding patterns (i.e. posture). This assessment includes the 33 joints in each foot — a quarter of all the joints in your body are in your feet!!! The joints in your feet have a huge impact all the way up the chain to your knees, hips, pelvis, back, shoulders, neck, and jaw!!!
3. Gait (AKA walking) analysis. I will take a video of you walking using an app which allows me to analyze your patterns and preferences (e.g. your pelvis really likes to rotate right, but never left). Why gait? Gait is a universal repetitive human movement that involves every joint in your body in all three dimensions of movement. Even a sedentary person takes 2000-3000 steps a day — imagine how many times an active person is repeating the gait cycle (from heel strike to heel strike). If a movement bias/asymmetry shows up in your gait, it almost definitely shows up in all your activities (e.g. picking up a baby, sports, gardening, etc.). This analysis will be integral to designing a corrective exercise program individual to your movement patterns (preferences, asymmetries, etc.)
   
   
4. An education about joint biomechanics and anatomy. We spend a lot of time looking at anatomy books and skeletal models. I am a firm believer that the more you understand about what is happening under the covers, the better you will be able to help yourself. Beyond enhanced self-care, this knowledge will empower you to be a more informed consumer of the healthcare system in general.
5. An individualized home program reflecting your movement analysis. You will learn not just what to do, and how to do it, but most importantly, you will understand the “why” (see above item about education). We will design a program that realistically fits within the time constraints of your lifestyle. Please expect to commit to an absolute minimum of 10 minutes 4-5 times per week.
6. A plan! At the end of the session, I will recommend a course of action moving forward. On very rare occasions, clients experience enough improvement after the intake session, that follow-ups are not necessary. This is the exception, not the rule. In any case, working with me is very finite! I offer packages of three follow-ups and six follow-ups. Those are not magic numbers. Some people come in with a single issue, and some come in with what I fondly think of as a “laundry list” — e.g. my left shoulder, my right knee, my low back. In most cases, these conditions didn’t happen over night, and they usually do not resolve overnight (although sometimes we get lucky!): “Healing is a process, not an event.”
7. Thorough support post-session. A detailed email with your home program including links to videos of your exercises; availability to communicate between sessions to answer questions and check your form; and analysis of your gait video.

 

If  this resonates with you, please get in touch!