Dooley Noted: 1/19/15
This past weekend, I was in London teaching NeuroKinetic Therapy (NKT) level I.
When you’re an instructor and therapist, it’s not always easy to find someone to treat you.
When you write a daily, quite personal blog, it’s even harder. People get nervous they won’t be able to help you.
But I’m lucky to know some amazing therapists.
I went to five different practitioners, each with a different idea of what was going on with my painful arm.
Their treatments and correctives minorly helped, so I was grateful. But the big picture wasn’t there.
Then my friend volunteered an hour to help me. He nailed it on the first assessment – and he taught me how to be subjective.
His name is Rob Kavanagh.
He combined elements of ortho/neuro, Anatomy in Motion, and NKT.
I admitted to him that I was not resonating with certain gait phase analyses, particularly with shift.
Rob said something that changed my life.
“You can’t understand it because you can’t do it.”
He said I’d never be able to assess something I couldn’t feel.
So he took off the road blocks – both of which happened to be in my jaw.
He discovered with NKT that my jaw was actually attempting to shift for my pelvis that couldn’t.
And I was wondering why I was having chronic jaw tightness. Not pain – just tightness.
With every step I took, estimating a minimum 15,000 a day, I shifted my jaw instead of my pelvis.
This may also explain why I was getting consistent lower lip irritation and fever blisters on the right, an area innervated by the same nerve that innervates my pterygoids (jaw shifters).
This lip nerve is sandwiched between the pterygoid muscles.
The irony is the day before Rob assessed me, I dissected 4 sets of lateral pterygoids. I removed the muscle’s two heads with the jaw joint to which it attaches.
I noted how the joint was packed with more position sense per surface area than any other joint.
And even as I spoke this, I couldn’t understand how it applied to me.
Every step, every day.
As Rob released my jaw, I felt enormous tension leave my face.
He retested my insufficiencies. The NKT tests were no longer inhibited.
He stood me up to work on shift with the same AiM position I previously couldn’t understand.
I felt the familiar clicking in my right hip as it tried to create a faulty shift.
As Rob encouraged me through cues, the clicking stopped for the first time in years.
He encouraged me to keep my jaw loose as I flexed my lumbar spine.
We are all told to posture up and avoid flexion. But the lumbar spine needs to flex – especially in shift.
All of my thoughts started unraveling.
In 2006, I strained my right adductor magnus running a marathon. I ran 50 miles a week, and I couldn’t shift my pelvis to the right. If I had, the adductor would have shortened.
In 2008, I broke a small bone in my left foot just walking around. I was shoving more weight into my left foot because I couldn’t shift my pelvis to the right.
Then my lead foot suspension was compromised, because I couldn’t adduct. I was avoiding two gait phases!
It explained a stronger left pistol squat – and my struggles with getting the right to come online.
Most of all, it explained my overworked right arm, who didn’t have permission to internally rotate in the shift phase of gait.
Rob looked away from my pain and attacked a source with a very long history of its presence.
And he did it in an hour.
My biggest take home point was how I couldn’t access an objective assessment for my patients because I could not subjectively feel it in myself.
I was so humbled and motivated that I nearly cried.
I have much to learn for my patients.
I will learn it from feeling it within myself.
I believe that’s why many therapists miss the mark.
They fear they are demanded to be in pristine condition, not allowed to feel when things go awry.
Non-traumatic Injuries don’t just happen with spontaneity.
There’s a root.
It’s worth exploring.
It took me 6 tries to get closer to the big picture.
I hope you don’t give up.
I hope you try new things.
I’m glad I’m shifting my mind – and my hip.
As always, it’s your call.
– Dr. Kathy Dooley