As an IT professional, Neale spends a lot of his time seated in front of a computer. Like many IT professionals, Neale has spent most of his life enjoying learning about computers and interacting with their systems. This experience means a lot of time spent in a particular position. With 12 years in post-secondary education (read more here), I’m certainly familiar with spending a lot of time in front of a computer. But what Neale and I also have in common is a love of troubleshooting and learning systems.

Neale shared with me that he has a history of bad posture, a stuck spine and flat feet. He first got introduced to my work by joining one of my ongoing classes. His comment to his wife after his first class with me ‘I had to move my pelvis. You know how much I hate that!’ Shortly after joining the classes he realized he needed me to take a closer look at what was going on in his body.

When I met Neale I was immediately struck by how tall he is. Many tall people have told me that their posture suffers, possibly from having to adapt to a world not sized to them. For Neale, I focused on two areas; his flat feet and his stuck spine. For his flat feet, I reintroduced his arches by cuing him to move his foot joints and the joints all way up to his pelvis to lift his arches off the ground. I taught him how to lift and lower his arches and then let him put that movement back into his repertoire of day to day movements with home homework I sent him home with. For Neale’s spine, I taught him how to move his pelvis, ribcage and head in coordination with one another. I cued him to move his pelvis and ribs opposite to one another and let his body incorporate those movements into what we taught his feet to do.

Later, I checked in with Neale to see how things were going with his feet and spine. He told me that he went to the gym and squats that were impossible for him to do before seeing me were now possible. He had no idea that the lack of movement in his feet were somehow responsible for the limitations in his squat.

I enjoy working with technically-minded clients like Neale because they enjoy understanding why their body feels the way it does and they want to be able to trace events and outcomes within their body’s systems. Having quick wins like giving back some movement in the feet and spine can go a long way to restoring a client’s confidence that they can make changes to a body that seems to be stuck for a long time.