Self-care and clinical assessment
As many practitioners know, pelvic torsions are very often held in the pubic symphysis and can be neutralized by resisted adduction. It’s the one alignment pattern for which I’ll interrupt a standing palpatory assessment, since it’s so quick and easy to fix. For years, I’ve had a habit of asking clients to do this maneuver to themselves (usually in a seated position), rather than doing it with my help. When I do it this way, I’m making sure that not only are they able to perform the maneuver, but that it’s also correcting the problem.
For quite awhile, this was really the only example in my practice of what could be a category:
(1) assess a problem;
(2) ask the client to do a corrective maneuver;
(3) reassess to confirm that the correction worked
This year, I’m beginning to collect a few more examples. Here are 2 of them:
(1) I find a sacral rotation or tilt in a prone client. Before attempting any other corrective measures, I ask the client to turn over, bend his knees, and push them out against a strap around his legs. When he turns over again, the sacral misalignment is greatly improved. (Since I wrote this, I’ve changed my procedure: when a prone client pushes his thighs outward against my hands, that gaps the SI joints adequately. This simplifies the process.)
(2) I find a Type II flexed lumbar fixation in a prone client. I ask her to lie on the floor with a small foam roller beneath her mid-lumbar spine and sink into the flexed spot for a few moments, then recheck the spine. The flexed fixation is gone.
It’s fair to say that both practitioner and client are going to be more confident about a self-care measure when they’ve seen it work. I’m going to see how many examples of this I can find in the next few months.
Excellent!