Here is why learning to walk is such a good idea: When Mary S. came to our studio with a chronic ankle injury that wouldn’t go away even after repeated attempts with a physical therapist, endless chiropractic sessions and a host of different orthopedists who couldn’t provide relief, she was skeptical that walking lessons could make a difference. It didn’t take much convincing— after teaching her how to transfer weight successfully from the shin to the foot with a new walking pattern all of the good information and manipulation she had received from the above practitioners allowed her to leave free of pain after just a few sessions.
Chiropractic, massage, physical therapy and the like all address injuries locally without necessarily working on intrinsic movement patterns. What is the point of fixing the shoulder if the injury to the shoulder is due to the way the shoulder and the spine relate to the pelvis? Rehabilitation needs to be holistic and the FitzGordon Method is here to change the way the entire body moves. Learning to walk involves getting the whole body to move as one interconnected unit.
Walking is the best way to bring permanent change to the body—because we all do it, and we do it over and over again. The human body will accept any pattern we put into it whether that pattern is good or bad. This is how chronic injuries develop out of seemingly innocent or even unknown events. The injury becomes chronic because your body adapts a new movement pattern due to unconscious compensations. Learning to walk, or re-learning to walk allows you to repattern your body to move in the directi0on of your choice.
Very few of us have consciously chosen the pattern with which we walk. It isn’t hard to change that. The idea of the FitzGordon method is that learning to walk correctly and walking that way for long enough the body will adapt this new pattern, and you will have a new body primed to achieve optimal health.
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