How scars create compensations in your body.
Having a baby is a life changing event in many ways. A whole new way of living yours and your families lives. But with all the joys that come with having a baby you can also be left with ongoing pain and annoying symptoms that seemingly come from nowhere.
When your tummy is cut open for your C section, be it a planned or unplanned, you body goes into over drive internally trying to heal the wound. Your brain and body, rightly so, sees the wound as danger. Harking back to caveman days your brains main aim is to lay down scar tissue wherever it can to heal you so you don’t get eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger. It wants to keep you safe, its main priority is NOT are your muscles working correctly to give you a balanced posture. Life carries on an you have to continue to do things to give your body the stability and mobility it requires this is often where compensations from scar tissue can creep in.
Think of scar tissue like an old school fuzzy pictured TV. The scar tissue creates a disturbed message pattern from the muscles to the brain then back to the muscles. This mixed message does not allow the muscles to fire as they should when asked. By using a form of muscle testing, Neuro Kinetic Therapy (NKT3) you can find out if the scar is relating with how well the muscles are working. By touching the scar gently and repeating the muscle test you can see if the muscle begins to function as it should. The touching of the scar is like touching the aerial of the fuzzy tv and the picture becoming clear. By touching the scar or the tv aerial you have just allowed the message to pass from brain to muscle and back to the brain again, allowing the muscles to momentarily work as they should. Now I’m not saying you walk around touching the scar all day every day. This is where I advise you get in touch with a NKT 3 practitioner and preferably an Anatomy In Motion (AIM) practitioner who can give you specific scar work followed by full body movement work to retrain your brain to work the joints and muscles as it should.
Body compensations and pain are not only seen with C section scars it can apply to any scar be it an episiotomy, tummy tuck, breast enhancement or reduction, back surgery, knee surgery, any sort of scar. Scars really are important to assess when looking for the root cause of a person’s pain.
Common Compensations the body can create from a C section scar
Lower back pain – pelvis becomes anterior tilted – very dipped in the lower back
Flat feet or pain in one or two of the feet
Pain between the shoulder blades
Diastasis Recti – gap vertically in the middle of your belly where the abdominals have not re-joined as they should.
Pelvic Floor issues – incontinence
If you are reading this post and identifying with the symptoms or pain or you want to have you scars tested please feel free to get in contact and see how we can help you. If you are part of a mums group and would like to set up a test and treat scar workshop it would also be great to hear from you too. At Move Well we are very proactive in helping to empower you when it comes to learning and looking after your body.