Metaphors for Healing: The Tale of the Detour

One of the main roads leading to The Center in Langhorne was closed this past week.  As I drove in each day to the office, I was surprised by how little it seemed to affect the traffic patterns.  While there were some more cars in certain areas, traffic still moved at a consistent pace – very little interruption or delay.

This got me thinking, as most things seem to do, about the human body.  We can look at how detours affect traffic to gain a new perspective. A perspective on how the continual process over time of injury and compensation within our bodies leads to the pain and dysfunction that is currently plaguing us.

Imagine one main road being closed in a town. For the most part, traffic will still move along at a good pace – very little interruption or delay.  Now imagine another road being closed and the detour route now having to be detoured around.  At this point, traffic would begin to back up more. More delays, more frustration. Finally, a third road is closed, and traffic is stopped dead – gridlock.  There are only so many roads for cars to drive upon.

This is the state that most of you find yourselves when you first come to Inner Circle.

For decades, your body has endured injury: big injuries, small injuries, bumps, bruises, stresses, too many activities, not enough activity – the insults and injuries of a lifetime.  Life injures us, plain and simple.  Ideally, the body can heal and self-correct a great many of these injuries and return us to a state of balance.  In practice, the body is often attempting to detour around the traumatized region.

This detouring sets up a compensation – some type of movement pattern or holding pattern that alters how the body moves. Then another injury or insult, another stress, another week of overtime work – the body begins to detour and detour and detour until, eventually, gridlock.  There is nowhere else the body can hide these cumulative effects from you.

This is precisely why the process of physical therapy at Inner Circle is a process.  We are neverdealing with a single injury or even a single traumatic event.  You walk through these doors carrying your whole life, every day and year written into your tissue – a living autobiography.

By utilizing the hands-on approach of Barnes Myofascial Release, we are able to begin the process of removing these detours within the body.  As these detours are removed, the process of relearning can begin to occur. We achieve this by beginning to increase flexibility and strength that your body has been lacking for a long time – returning you to a state of balance where the body’s own inherent self-correction can begin to take over.

Just as roadwork will be completed, so too will you heal.  There are no guarantees in this life, but we can be assured of one thing: if you work at something, it will improve.  Who knows how far or how fast these changes will happen but, change is inevitable – the only constant that we can rely on.  Don’t worry, we’ll be with you each step of the way.