Does your Bra Strap Slip?
Is today’s blog post over reaching a bit? Can every issue in life really be related to, or about, the psoas?
It’s possible.
I love my work because I truly never know where it will lead me. I am a detective in search of clues that will help people deal with whatever body issues they present to me. And I get presented with some wild stuff. I don’t subscribe to any one method though I think many of them have merit and I am happy to borrow/steal an idea, or an exercise, that suits my needs.
People need to know how their body works if they want to change the way their body moves and functions. That’s the main thread of my approach—if you know how your body is designed to work, you will make better use of the design.
Bras are designed to stay on top of the shoulders. Someone was in the studio the other day and in the course of a session her bra strap slipped a number of times off of the same shoulder. She replaced it unconsciously until I commented on it and she said it happens all the time.
I asked her, as I ask everyone, if she could feel that one shoulder was lower than the other. She replied in the negative but I could see the beginning of a light bulb turning on above her head. She arrived with back pain and didn’t expect to be talking about her under garments but…
In fact, the shoulder that the bra strap slipped from was her lower shoulder and also the side of her tight psoas which is what I believe was causing her back pain. Was this the answer to her pain? Of course not; but it was a little kernel of information that could help her get a sense of her body over time.
We did all of the usual things I do in an initial session- worked on standing upright instead of leaning backwards, checked the tone of her core,and introduced the psoas as the muscle of walking, standing, and trauma.
At the end of the session I told her that she would know if the work that we did together was working if after a good long time she noticed that months had gone by since her bra strap had slipped. That might be an insignificant thing to some, especially men, but could be a truly useful insight for others.
Whatever works is the way I look at it.