I saw two new patients today. Our goal is to always try to find the cause of the problem, usually rooted in birth trauma. I present these cases to show how I connect the dots in space and time.
A nine-month-old presented with right-sided weakness. Neurologists found no pathology.
Fascial restriction was in her right shoulder and hip joints. Her hip joint had pronounced medial (internal) rotation causing a noticeable pelvic imbalance. Both areas started to release nicely with the Gillespie Approach.
To avoid a lot of medical testing and parental angst (Does my child have a brain injury?), pediatric health care practitioners need to acknowledge craniosacral fascial strain inhibiting neurological development. Many babies cannot develop optimally because they can be stuck in fascial pain limiting their ability to first commando belly crawl and then creep on their hands and knees.
If I ruled the world, newborns would be checked minutes after birth to correct these issues. The families would never have to deal with these problems.
The second patient was a 57-year-old woman who has had low back pain ever since high school. It has now become unbearable. She has no history of any significant trauma in her life. What is the root cause? When I see a story like this, all roads point to birth trauma that was never recognized or addressed. On evaluation, her legs immediately went into a frank breech position. In therapy she went into an extreme frank breech where her legs significantly went past the vertical position of her trunk. In the past I have found that this position can put tremendous strain on the lower back, her chief lifetime complaint.
She was also an archer where her lower back fascia was severely pulling into her neck. Thus we connected her low back pain to her chronic neck pain from birth trauma.
On top of that, she was dealing with her hysterectomy scar pulling on her pelvis and low back. For CFT future visits we are looking to become strain-free from these three problems plus whatever may present deeper in her onion.
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