Unwinding – The Path to Recovery
Table of Contents
Begin Your Journey
There is an old saying; that anything worth achieving requires effort. Think of your favourite sports athletes. Irrespective of whatever natural talent(s) they may have, they do not achieve all the fame and accolades without work and effort.
Likewise, if you were to decide you want to run and complete the London marathon you are going to have to train appropriately and put the effort in to do so. The work, effort and training does not come without a cost. That cost being pain, soreness and even the desire to quit when it all gets too much. You understand however that despite it not being easy and even painful at times the process itself is necessary to achieve the goal of crossing the finish line.
Similarly, if you set the goal of getting well and overcoming chronic pain and dysfunction, you have to go through a process. That process is known as ‘unwinding’.
Winding Up Through Mechanical Injury
You will have learnt from our other posts that perhaps the most fundamental cause for most life crippling ailments such as sciatica, MS, frozen shoulder, fibromyalgia and the like, is bones going out of place in a direction they cannot self-correct as they don’t have the muscles to pull in the direction required. The direction namely being directly forward in your spine. This is known as a ‘mechanical injury’. Something such as a bump or fall, someone slapping you hard in the back or even a car accident can cause such injuries.
When this occurs your body tends to fall forwards. You now have what we call a Primary Biomechanical Pathology (PBP). However, in order to keep you somewhat mobile your body also twists to a side along with going forwards so that it can compensate for the loss of bone leverage and proper biomechanics.
The compensation that occurs is not just one or two bones moving but rather the entire body moving as one unit in a pattern or sequence to find the optimum compensation for THAT particular PBP. This process is known as WINDING. Because your body compensates so well you think the initial injury has healed. The truth is it hasn’t. All that has happened is that the body found a way to redistribute the pressure and stress away from the site of original injury.
Most people don’t feel the effects of this early on in life when they are still young and strong enough to cope. However, as we age we accumulate more injuries on top of whatever else we had creating more layers of compensation and winding our bodies up even more, just like these rubber bands.
Over the years you build up layer upon layer of compensations and wind up more. When this gets too much you begin to experience pain and discomfort and develop symptoms for sciatica, MS etc. Everybody winds a little differently due to the unique forces at work, creating unique postures, symptoms and disorders. The key point to remember is that the same underlying mechanical problem is the cause – PBP’s.
Time to Unwind
We have learnt that PBP type mechanical injuries cause our bodies to compensate by winding up. This winding up process lends to your symptoms such as pain, loss or mobility, stiffness etc. Accompanying this is usually a posture that is stuck forwards.
With ABC™ we correct your body’s PBP’s therefore removing the need for it to hold on to its compensation patterns. With this it can then unwind and progressively get better.
The process begins by working on one layer at a time. When we correct the initial layer of PBP’s (those bones out of place that the body could not self-correct) the body then DOES correct what it can self-correct. Eventually however it will run out of the bones it can self-correct by which point it has reached the next layer of compensation or winding. We then work on that particular layer by repeating the same process; i.e. correct the bones the body cannot self-correct so that the body can then self-correct what it can and so on and so on until the next subsequent layer(s) is/are reached.
This means that your body structure will be continually changing, falling and twisting in within 3 dimensions as you progressively unwind. You won’t just straighten all the way up in one visit, your posture moves around a lot on the journey depending on the amount of layers still left to correct.
Treatment twice a week will stabilise most people at an optimum rate with presenting symptoms reducing and eventually ceasing altogether.
The graph below outlines what typically occurs once you begin treatment with ABC™.
Your body usually starts to improve by untwisting in a backward direction away from the major mechanical stress problem. To continue improving, the body partially untwists forwards towards the original forward stuck injury position. At this point, you may feel pain in an area of your body that was injured in your past. It hurts because, your body has stabilised and recovered from enough damage that it is starting to use that area again.
However, that area may not have had any force going through it for years, so it is not used to stress because the body had been protecting it, so those structures will ache and hurt. This is a good sign that the body is continuing to unlock. You may need extra visits during this time to help you with your symptoms, but it will pass.
This process of going backwards and forwards is what gives the process of ‘unwinding’ its name and is necessary for your mechanical injuries to heal.
You will probably encounter your first ‘forward unwind’ about a month or two into your journey to recovery. However, they can be unpredictable sometimes so work with your practitioner to get through them.
When unwinding backward (upward slopes), pressure is relieved at the injured sites and the body function improves. In this phase of unwinding, the pain and stiffness decrease as you begin to heal.
When unwinding forward (downward slopes), pressure increases at the injury sites. During this part of unwinding, you may feel sore, painful, anxious, depressed, and fragile because the increased pressure leads you to think you are getting worse – but be assured that you are improving!
Once you pass through the forward unwind stage you will notice that you are functioning better again.
Ups and Downs of Recovery
Remember – the process of unwinding backwards and forwards happens many times during the course of your journey. The more layers of injuries and compensations you have, the more unwinding you will need and the longer it will take. This is why there are so many ups and downs on the graph. Typically, those over fifty years of age need almost twice as much time to complete their unwinding journey than those that are younger. Those with very significant or numerous injuries also will require more time to unwind. The minimum length of time required for an adult is two and a half years.
That may be a shock to some but think of it this way; your body accumulated injuries and developed dysfunction over your lifetime of several decades! In comparison 2 – 3 years of treatment is not very long!
We do our best to inform you of the likely total length of time your unwinding may take, along with an indication of what your forward unwinding symptoms may be. However, it is very difficult to predict exactly what you will feel as you progress. This is an active process and depends on many factors, including your job, lifestyle, and how well you follow our self-care advice.
Each injury you have received must be released this way or you never get completely better. That is why so many people have injuries that seem to hang around forever.
When you unwind through small injuries, the symptoms will be mild – you may not even notice them. When you unwind through the major injuries, symptoms will be much more noticeable and challenging.
As time passes, your body mechanics become healthy enough to unlock significant past injuries. After going through recovery, your body will work so well, you will have no pain and you will be able to do things you have not done in years.
Starting right from the beginning, many people report fuller and deeper breathing, elimination of chronic aches and pain, more energy and mental clarity, and improvement of chronic illnesses.
Unwinding Forward Doesn’t Sound Nice
When we get sick our body’s immune system will eventually increase our body temperature in order to kill off any offending bugs or viruses. In the same way that having a fever may feel uncomfortable and unfamiliar, unwinding forward is a process that some people don’t want to go through. But please understand; like overcoming the bugs through fever it is a part of the healing process.
If your body never unwinds forwards (the down slope on the graph), it never unlocks the major injuries, so we cannot correct them. This leaves you constantly in poor mechanical shape. Though you may feel okay, you will never get any better than the point at which you stopped care because your body cannot self–correct the rest of your injuries. Of course, you can choose how far into recovery you wish to go. That’s entirely up to you.
If you wish to stop your care before full recovery, you must stop when feeling good, which happens during the backwards portion of the unwinding process. However, your body will slowly continue to unwind and eventually start unwinding forward, an uncomfortable portion of the process. New injuries can also force you into a forward position too. This issue could take weeks, months or years to develop, depending on your mechanical stability.
What Happens If I Completely Stop Getting Treated?
Eventually your body will break down once more as it starts to slowly wind up as it did before. Think about keeping your teeth clean or exercise & diet. It’s a lifestyle change. In order to keep getting good results you have to be regular and consistent over a period of time. This is why treatment twice a week is optimal for the most effective recovery.
If you are content with your current state of physical wellbeing you can opt to reduce this to once a fortnight in order to maintain your condition and to correct any break down that builds up.
Our goal is to help you get back to health and be the best you can be. Let us get to the root cause of your ailment(s). We offer a FREE consultation including a demo of the ‘First Rib Manoeuver’ before you decide on proceeding with any treatment. You will feel the difference to your pain and movement right from the off.