It's Connected
Beth Jones 
Had a fun session with one of my older female clients today.
She came in for a movement evaluation after struggling with recurring shoulder & neck pain. I had provided some relief a few weeks back after a massage, but the pain returned.
My client is an active pickleball & corn hole player. She's recently upped her pickleball intensity by joining a local competition - she admitted to gettin bitten by the intensity bug when playing a hard competition.
During the movement evaluation, I looked at her cervical mobility. She has significant restrictions in extension, rotation, and lateral flexion - especially to the left side.
As we were discussing this & moving onto shoulder mobility, we started talking about pickleball again. At one point, as I mentioned the concern of her limited neck rotation (looking over shoulder), she moved her arm across her body like she was going to hit the ball backhand.
"Stop!" I said. "Do that again."
As she moved back into that position I saw it - a clear story unfolding as she shifted her body to be able to hit that backhand shot without rotating her neck.
"There it is!" She stopped & smiled because she could see it (and feel it) too.
Her limited neck mobility had her contorting her body to be able to play the sport she loved. This adaptation was now building up as she became more active, and was putting strain on her traps and other support muscles, most likely being the driver to the pain she was experiencing.
Here's the thing I want you to sit with for a second: that's not a bad habit. That's her nervous system doing exactly what it's built to do.
Her body found a way to keep playing the sport she loves, even with a restricted range of motion it didn't feel safe moving through. It solved the problem - just not in a way that was sustainable. The compensation worked, until it didn't.
This is what I mean when I say pain and tissue restriction are rarely just about the tissue. Your nervous system is constantly making decisions about what feels safe to do and what doesn't, and your body follows those decisions - often without you ever noticing it's happening. That's what makes moments like "there it is!" so powerful. It's not just information, it's a felt experience. She didn't just understand the pattern intellectually - she could feel it happening in her own body, in real time.
After the eval, we sat and discussed the next steps - particularly shifting from massage-only sessions, to my 1:1 Bodywork + Movement sessions, where we start with some manual therapy and then end with directed corrective exercises. She'll have a home program to do in the in-between - the space between these weekly sessions where the real retraining actually happens.
This combination is where the somatic side of the work really comes in. So many of us are disconnected from what's actually going on in our bodies - we relax through the massage or move through the exercises in a robotic, get-it-done kind of way, without ever really feeling what's happening underneath. This work asks you to slow down instead - to move with intention and understanding, to actually feel what's going on in the body, and to notice the changes as we start correcting the patterns that got us here.
Part of that work is retraining the muscles that have been picking up the slack. But just as much of it is helping her nervous system trust that the new movement - full neck rotation, full range - is safe, so it stops reaching for the old workaround. You can strengthen and stretch all you want, but if the nervous system hasn't gotten the memo that the new pattern is safe, the old one tends to creep back in.
That's the benefit of having a movement assessment when pain keeps coming back, even after massage, foam rolling, red light - all the good stuff. Often you need to find that "ah-hah" moment that provides the connection between what you're doing & what hurts. Once you can feel that connection - not just hear about it - it's pretty easy to see the path forward to bringing you back to pain-free play.
Interested? A movement evaluation might be the missing piece - the moment where you finally see (and feel) the connection your body's been trying to show you. I offer this work both in-person and virtually, so let's chat and see what's the best fit for you.
This is where healing actually happens - not just in the sessions, but in the in-between. More on that soon.
