Physiotherapy – how can it benefit me?

Physiotherapy is often associated with the treatment of pain or an injury. And yes, whilst

Physiotherapy does alleviate pain arising from many different conditions, did you know it can help

with other symptoms, too?

Physiotherapy is defined as a modality that “restores movement and function in the body” (NHS,

Scotland). It can also help to reduce the risk of injury. How’s that? Well, treating troublesome areas

before they develop to injury can save you in the long run from potentially struggling with pain and

taking pain meds, having to go through numerous sessions of treatment, weeks of rehab, and having

to limit your activity whilst recovering. Identifying these precursors to injury and treating them early

is the key.

So what symptoms should you be looking out for? First and foremost is stiffness and/or reduced

mobility. For example, you may notice one shoulder isn’t moving as well as the other. You may

notice stiffness in your lower back first thing in the morning or a lack of movement in your neck at

the end of a working day. Joints in the spine, the shoulder, the knees (or any joint for that matter)

can get stiff and as a result may not feel as mobile as they should. This may be more apparent during

your yoga practice when you are pushing your body and its joints to end of range. Tightness is

another big one. Often this is indicative of muscle tightness but not always. You may feel tight after

sitting or remaining in static positions for prolonged periods of time, or even after an activity. You

may feel tightness which eases only temporarily after your yoga practice, or maybe not at all no

matter how much you stretch. Other symptoms include weakness, fatigue, numbness, and pins &

needles.

Our whole musculoskeletal system is designed to work in sync; muscles contract to move joints,

which subsequently move body parts. When one part isn’t working optimally, it has a knock-on

effect on the other, and this is when you will start to feel symptoms. Often the difficulty is, by the

time you start feeling symptoms, it’s not just one single muscle or joint causing the symptom; the

“knock-on effect” means there may be multiple areas out of sync. Our bodies are masters of

compensation; when something can’t function as it should, it will adapt. You might think that’s a

good thing, right? Maybe in the short-term but in the long-term, the answer is, no. Compensation

can put strain on entirely different structures from the original problem area, creating a whole array

of other issues!

How can Physiotherapy help with this? We take a holistic approach, meaning you are treated as a

whole and we look at everything. We assess the flexibility of your joints, strength of muscles,

integrity of tendons, laxity of ligaments and sensitivity of the neural system. We treat all problem

areas together, using treatment techniques like manual therapy, joint mobilisations, soft tissue

massage, electrotherapy and acupuncture, to rehabilitate the body back to optimal function. We aim

to improve and enhance not just your yoga practice, but your day-to-day life, and prevent injury

manifestation.

Farana Latif, MCSP