2/21/07- My Spine- Kinesiology

Michelle Black

2/21/07

Kinesiology

Journal #2: straighten the spine

Image: Instead of using an image from the text, I decided it would be in my best interest to explore images based on your suggestions from the skeletal assessment day. I have scoliosis due to ½ inch difference in the length of my legs. You suggested that I imagine lengthening up and widening out on the right side of my upper back. I’ve thought a lot about this lately.

My right leg is shorter than my left, and is causing pain in my back. Most of the time, the pain is between my shoulder blades and into my neck, but periodically, I will have pain in my lower back. Both of these areas will hurt or feel awkward till I or someone (aka Ron) will pop it.

I have noticed more lately that when I imagine good posture, focusing on lengthening my right upper back, the pain isn’t nearly as prominent. However, this isn’t the case so much when I am sitting. The pain seems to increase between my shoulder blades unless I slouch my shoulders more forward (which I have yet to find out if this is also a skeletal or muscular deviation).

My lower back has been giving me more difficulty lately. I found while walking around campus that when envisioning my right hip higher, at least as equal to my left, it eases the pain on my lower back. I have yet to contact anyone about getting a lift in my right shoe, but it’s looking more and more promising the more I envision it. On the other hand, when I am sitting, the pain comes more from having my habitual anterior pelvic tilt, so it may be a combination of the two.

I haven’t noticed as much of a difference about the pain when I am dancing. However, I have been able to recognize why certain movements seem harder for me on one side than on the other. I am much more able to balance on my right foot than on my left. Oddly enough, this is the opposite in turns. It’s much easier for me to turn on my left leg than my right, especially when my left leg is straight out in front of me rather than under me. I wonder how much of this is just because of the commonality of having a prominent leg or because of leg length differences and/or how my back is compensating for it. With the turns, for example, is it harder to turn with my left leg out because there’s more leg to hold up? Is it easier to balance on my right because it’s not as far from the ground? Is it harder to balance on the left because of how my spine has learned to correct itself in upright posture?

These are some of the observations that I have made since the skeletal assessments. I have to admit that I feel sort of like a mutant knowing this deviation that has caused such a chain reaction of a problem. It seems to have raised more questions for me than answers, but I hope to be able to further understand my body to learn how to best train and compensate for the deviations.