You’ve always had a flexible body.
When you were younger, maybe you were a gymnast? Dancer? Yogi?
You could do party tricks with your bendy body and you didn’t think much of it. That was cool except, well, until you started to hurt.
Twisted ankles? Dislocated joints? Back pain? Randomly feeling blech?
Hypermobile bodies can be uncomfortable. But with the right routine, many people can feel better.
I work with you to find strength, stability, and ease of motion–maybe even less pain.
With luck, you can enjoy your favorite activities more, and manage your body less.
What is a hypermobile body?
Hypermobile bodies have loose, unstable joints.
This can mean many things–from being “double jointed”, to having a bendy body that can do extreme yoga poses, to being so loose that your joints dislocate frequently. Sometimes your whole body is affected. Other times only some of your joints are unstable.
This instability is caused by loose ligaments. In its most severe form, you may be diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), a collagen disorder that results in loose joints and other connective tissue disorders.
With so much instability, your most immediate problem is to build strength so you can stabilize your joints.
But joint-lax bodies often come with other complaints as well. Collagen is found in many body systems so many parts can be affected. This can cause symptoms from GI issues to heart conditions, from anxiety to chronic fatigue.
With so many complications, it can be challenging. If you help one condition, another may get worse. It means lots of appointments–PT’s, chiropractors, doctors, acupuncturists….
It’s hard.
You can start to feel embarrassed because you’re the “sensitive” one who always has a problem. From the outside, it doesn’t look like anything is wrong even though you never feel well.
And you can feel frustrated because your body seems unreliable. Always hurting. Always tweaking. Always needing to be managed.
How do you stabilize your hypermobile body?
Your first goal is building deep strength. This strength is different than weight-room strength. This strength is from the more subtle muscles that can hold you together.
I have lots of tools in my toolkit for this.
We use closed kinetic chains, prone exercises, sensory feedback, and mindfulness to help you learn where your body is in space, and how to grow strong.
We go slow and steady so you don’t destabilize along the way.
And during the sessions, we find strategies to address any of your other issues so that our work doesn’t make other conditions worse.
When your pain decreases, the activities you love become even more enjoyable.
When your body is strong and connected, it’s freeing. Powerful.
Contact me to find out more about hypermobility and how you can become stable and strong.
