Increase movement range

Movement range is not just important to sportsmen and -women. Curious how osteopathy can help increase your movement range? Let's go over the basic reasons why osteopathy can help increase movement range.

If anything, movement, or lack of it because of stiffness or pain, are what people come to see an osteopath about. 

Osteopaths focus on finding obstructions that prevent movement from occurring. They are highly trained to observe and palpate the structures of the body to find out where this loss of movement is occurring. During the appointment, the patient may be asked to perform some simple movements to aid the osteopath in their diagnosis.

Patients often say “What is the best posture for me?” or “I feel my posture is not good”. The truth of the matter is that there are no optimal postures, and the only bad one is the one you’ve been in too long. “Motion is lotion”, as the saying goes.

Muscles that are tight, in the back or hips for example, that feel stiff, will mean you will want to move them less and this will in turn affect the function of the joints. This will then affect other structures, as compensatory patterns are established. For example, a loss of range of motion in the ribs, perhaps from a fall, will affect the intercostal muscles, which will go onto affect the spine. Thus osteopaths will improve movement in an area to relieve pressure on other areas that need to recover.