” The way you see yourself can ‘literally’ change your appearance and actually becomes what others see.”
Becky first came to see me for Pilates and Core retraining two months ago. She is a successful published Author at forty seven years old and standing at an exotic five foot ten.
She has never exercised beyond an occasional yoga class. She felt like she didn’t have a torso, only legs. Ever since her classmates in grade school started calling her ‘Daddy Long Legs’, she believed it and kept that image for many years. Her legs actually looked extremely long with a short and almost disappearing torso.
She wanted to lose ten pounds and find her body. She also had chronic knee pain and would leak urine when she would cough or sneeze.
During our first session, I asked her where she thought her leg began, “you know the top of the leg”, I said. After some confusion, she finally pointed to the area above her pelvis up towards her waist.
Since my work involves the brain and how it integrates with the whole body, I knew that since she believed something for so long, she literally became what she saw. She WAS all leg. Not much of a torso, and no awareness of her true core and pelvic floor.
Because she thought her legs attached above her pelvis, she used a lot more energy just to walk, lifting her whole bony pelvis on each stride pulling it along for the ride. This puts unnecessary stress and tension on her knees and did nothing to exercise her pelvic floor like normal walking does for less leaking.
Her feet were also stiff from wearing high heels for many years which added more knee pain and more leaking.
We started our Pilates sessions with Movement MappingTM.
Movement MappingTM is an anatomy awareness program developed by my partner, Dr. Theresa Nesbitt. A neurologic based program that recalibrates proprioceptive awareness which is like our brains’ GPS System. This updates our inward perception (proprioceptive awareness) and location of joints and bony landmarks within the body, making efficient movement automatic and effortless.
After Becky’s re-education on where her leg joint is, she now points below the pelvis. She has stopped recruiting her bony pelvis along with her every step she took. Her knee pain went away as she began using her body automatically in a more precise way using recruiting less muscular effort.
Her legs now have taken on a different proportion, her torso is visible and she moves freely.
We also did Movement MappingTM, with her feet and ankles. This has allowed her feet to absorb more impact. The knees and pelvic floor won’t have to do the job of absorbing shock which should be delegated to the foot.
I knew that unless Becky became aware of her true core and the bottom of her torso, the Pelvic Floor, her knee and leaking symptoms would become worse. The intra-abdominal pressure would be too great without the support of the pelvic floor muscles and she would be basically her organs out like an upside down tube of toothpaste.
Today Becky looks at her herself differently. She found her body. No more Daddy Long Legs, but a beautiful torso that she thought never existed. No more knee pain and less leaking.
She is on her way as we continue to journey into the center of her core and sculpt her body from the inside out.
La Dolce Vita 😆