How Full is Your ‘Reservoir Of Compensation?”
Is Your Reservoir Running A Little Low?
We hear our patients saying this all the time –
“Why me?” “Why now?” “I have done this [..insert common activity here..] loads of times before and I’ve never had an issue…”
And really it is an intriguing question. Why should the body be able to cope with doing a certain task hundreds of times before, and then suddenly it becomes a problem?
As osteopaths, we believe this is to do with your body’s ability (or inability) to adapt to change, or to the “insults” we all subject our bodies to. Theses insults don’t just get absorbed by the body without requiring some kind of adaptive response. The adaptive response might be small, or it might be large. Either way, dealing with these little individual problems has an accumulative effect on the whole.
What Happens When The Reservoir Runs Dry?
Think of this beautiful natural lake. Full of water. Now, let’s say that every time you have a small (or large) injury, some of the water ‘leaks’ out. Eventually, if this continues, the lake will be no more, and there will be a dry, empty space there instead.
Every now and then, it rains, which tops up the lake a little bit. We can liken this to doing something good for your body – like eating well, taking a walk, having an extra long lie-in. These little ‘top-up’ events don’t have to be big, but they do have to be frequent, and restorative to your health.
Osteopaths ask you lots of questions, and we pick things out from your body’s history of events that may have had an impact in terms of depleting it’s ability to adapt.
We try to ascertain “why is this person’s ability to adapt depleted? And why now?”
More importantly, what can we do as osteopaths to start to reverse this process? Can we help an area adjacent to the one with the pain to move better? Can we help the muscles nearby to become less tight, more supple, and therefore increase their ability to support the movement that the body is having trouble with? We can address many areas, usually with good success to help them be better, and lots of small improvements add up to an overall bigger improvement.
Are You Doing Enough To Replenish Your Body's Reservoir?
And then we turn the attention back onto the patient – what can YOU do to help restore that lovely lake again?
What can you do that will “top you up” in terms of energy, vitality and positivity? For each of us it is different – some like to walk in nature, some like to switch off and watch ‘easy tv’, some like to go for a swim in the sea….
So, we ask you this – what can YOU do to restore your reservoir, today?
We’re also happy to help if you’re not quite sure where to start with your body. Get in touch.
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