Ortho-bionomy for Athletes and Sportsmen/women
Whether you’re a professional athlete or an amateur sports person Ortho-Bionomy is an effective treatment for those experiencing acute or persistent injuries, have stress and strains in muscles and joints or need rapid recovery after an event or match.
While engaged in sport, or when doing intensive repetitive training, we can easily develop patterns of strain and tension. This usually occurs in the fascia or connective tissue which then affects our muscles, joints and bones. Unless we can recognise and relieve this strain and tension, it can limit our movement and become a pre-cursor to injury or increased pain. When we combine these tension patterns with a high impact activity or add the intensity of competition there is the very real risk of injury.
“Through interacting with the reflexes …… we re-train and refine our body’s capacity for rapid change and adjustment”
Ortho-Bionomy helps the body release tension and — through neural feedback and proprioception — an increased range of motion. In this way we can support your body’s structural integrity while also learning a more coherent and efficient way of moving. This coherency makes it less likely that we will injure ourselves, as our body is more able to respond to and absorb the forces that we place upon it while tackling, running, throwing, kicking etc. It also reduces the amount of energy required to perform in whatever our sport – and that means we are able to perform at a higher level for longer periods of time with less fatigue.
Ortho-Bionomy’s achieves all of this by stimulating your body’s natural self-correcting and self-regulating reflexes*. These reflexes, responding to proprioceptive feedback, are active in your body all of the time. They are what allow you to maintain balance despite the continuous movement and constantly changing forces acting on the body.
Through interacting with your reflexes and proprioception, Orthobionomy can re-train and refine your body’s responsiveness and capacity for rapid change.
In the recovery period after high impact training or an event, Ortho-Bionomy brings relaxation and a reduction in tone to fatigued and tired muscles, which improves blood and lymphatic flow to the area. This clears away the waste products that contribute to the feelings of general soreness and tiredness and brings the nutrients and fluids that the tissues need for recovery and repair.
Ortho-Bionomy addresses the micro-traumas that occur during sporting activities which can limit your ability to recover or which can become the source of future injury or pain. It also helps to reduce any associated inflammation.
Ortho-Bionomy’s achieves this by stimulating the body’s natural self-correcting and self-regulating reflexes. These reflexes are active in your body all of the time. They are what allow you to maintain balance despite the movement and constantly changing forces acting upon your body during whatever sport or activity you are engaged in at the time. Through interacting with the reflexes in this way we re-train and refine your body’s capacity for rapid change and adjustment which is essential when involved in any sport.
If you are training and competing at a highly competitive level, Ortho-Bionomy assists in bringing your cardio-vascular system back to a state of rest. Not only does this help settle any residual psychological stress associated with competing or training but it reduces your feelings of fatigue. This is vitally important for maintaining repetitive high-level training and competition.
I see Ortho-Bionomy as particularly powerful because it engages with your body and its particular needs. I will track with you how your body responds to each of my interventions. Noticing responses in this particular way is a way of working with the body-mind, so that all of who you are is invested in the process and the outcome.
Through a combination of hands-on work, visualisations and working with your intention we are able to help you to develop greater confidence in how your body moves and what it is capable of. This is particularly important following an injury. Not only does this approach improve the coherency of your movement but it will have an impact on the mental aspect of your performance.
Ortho-Bionomy will help you ‘get out of your own way’ by bringing your attention back to your body. By actively engaging with how the muscles and other tissues are responding and building confidence in that, the negative chatter can be subverted, your mind re-focussed on your performance and alertness enhanced.
My training in Somatic Psychotherapy contributes to my Ortho-Bionomy practice by bringing an understanding of the psychological relationship of the mind with the body. I tend not to make a separation between them – tension or inflexibility in our body or in our thinking will generally be reflected in the other. Likewise, creating increased responsiveness in your body will allow more responsiveness and flexibility in how you think.
With a deep appreciation of the impact that injury, pain, fatigue and fading confidence can have on your sense of who you are – and how that can be reflected in how you are in your body – I am able to work with the depression, anxiety or other mental health issues that can so easily occur to athletes involved in elite or high level sport.
It’s never just about treating an injury – I am engaging with and treating you. All of you.