Often car accidents leave subtle effects that are invisible on medical imaging and hard to catch during medical visits, massage, physio, etc. This feeling of “I’m not the same as I used to be before the accident, but I can’t say what’s wrong” refers to functional disorganization, where the consequences are not in a particular ‘spot’ or joint, but in the way many joints function together.
Besides more serious and diagnosable conditions such as a whiplash, there are typical patterns to such injuries:
- One side of the rib cage is strapped and gets impacted at the front
- The unstrapped shoulder is thrown forward during the impact and pulls muscles in the back
- Many little joints where ribs connect to sternum and spine get impacted asymmetrically
This injury spreads out across many joints and eventually gets compensated through disorganization of the entire rib cage, which in turn impacts the posture, spreading the changes upwards to the neck and downwards to hips, knees and ankles.
Often such injuries manifest themselves decades later as aches, pains and neurological symptoms, when the original cause is all but forgotten and the insurance has long run out.
As a Feldenkrais Practitioner I helped my clients restore the movements and eliminate pains after car accidents. This is a very individual work, please enquire about individual Functional Integration® lessons.
Dimitri Popolov, GCFP
Acture FM 