Can you see beneath the tip-of-the-iceberg?
Have you ever strained your ankle or a part of your body?
If you did, have you also had the experience of pain or discomfort in other areas like your knees, your hips, your back or maybe even your neck while you were recovering?
This is the result of a ‘compensatory mechanism’.
Your body, in support of healing the injured area, would ‘inhibit’ normal movement in that area, and in this case, your ankle. This is a ‘reflexive inhibition’ that is beyond the control of your conscious mind.
As a result, the other parts of your body have to work much harder to keep you moving without you even noticing it. That is, until something else starts hurting!
If you have a special needs child with stiff ankles, whether it is a result of cerebral palsy, stroke, genetic disorder or autism, be aware that your child might also have stiffness in other parts of their body, for example, their hip joints, pelvis and spine.
As I had mentioned in my last newsletter, our body is a unified organism with many systems working in harmony with one another. Any limitation in one area of our body inevitably affects other areas.
Instead of trying to ‘fix’ the stiff ankles, through applying the Feldenkrais® and Anat Baniel Methods, I look to improve the overall organization of movements in your child’s body. One aspect of which would be to increase movement in areas that are stiff AND facilitate stability in areas that are overly mobile.
With this new ‘movement information’, your child’s brain could then reorganize itself. I see this in my work everyday. These children begin to move more effectively all on their own!
It is very important to remember that our brains are information systems and need to be fed the right kinds of information for it to function at its best. More on that in the next issue…
For now, see if you can look beneath the tip-of-the-iceberg of your child’s problems. Challenge yourself with an openness to a new understanding. An understanding that would help you better support your child with their development in the long run!
