Your Window of Tolerance
Through everyday life our bodies experience a number of stresses and strains, occasionally creating misalignments. Some bones can misalign into directions you can’t self correct as the body doesn’t have the muscle required to do so.
We often don’t notice at the time because as a bone shifts slightly out of alignment our muscles go to work to help create a position of relative balance.
As a consequence the position you adopt will never be as stable or balanced as what it was prior, but you’ll get on with life. The more misalignments that occur, the more the body needs to compensate, creating a build up of tension over time.
Initially your body can absorb these misalignments because your body’s window of tolerance is broad. However, as this continues your ‘window of tolerance’ becomes narrower. Your body has less ability to handle the physical pressure that life throws at you.
You may recognise this in yourself. Simple movements like picking up something small from the ground or twisting in a simple way can result in greater and longer lasting pain than you would expect.
The reason is, your body is running out of places to compensate. It has no choice but to take you in a direction that results in pain. If you give it enough time the pain will often settle down (which is often just your body compensating further), but now you’re even more vulnerable to another episode.
We see this pattern often. What starts out as a single episode of pain from some incident that ‘rights itself’, becomes a reoccurring pattern with increased intensity and regularity. Unfortunately sometimes it progresses into lasting pain that never seems to resolve.
This is essentially a body decreasing its ‘window of tolerance’ to all that life throws at it.
The unwinding process we undertake with clients essentially broadens your window of tolerance again.
After the initial period treatment period you should be feeling relief from your presenting complaint. That’s the pressure being removed from the area in pain.
We encourage clients to aim for a more stable structural position as we know that the more stable you are, the wider your window of tolerance.
Life will always push your body around. It’s unavoidable and part of life.
A healthy body, however, can absorb these stresses and misalignments. Your body just finds an appropriate compensation and you get on fine. The majority of time you never even recognise it occurring.
This is exactly what we aim for.
If you keep to a regular adjustment, scheduled beyond the initial treatment period, we can tidy up those misalignments when you’re in and you won’t build up layers of compensation again.
That’s why we see maintenance care as a healthy lifestyle choice.
Dr Ben Coupe
There is no need to put up with pain any longer
Schedule your first appointment with our expert ABC™ Chiropractors and get back to doing what you love.