Physical Therapy is reversing the process that resulted in pain or poor movement.  Allow me to explain.  Our bodies don’t just stop when they have slight difficulty with an activity.  They compensate. . .  but at a price.  Our bodies don’t self correct.   Weak areas continue to get weaker.  Tight areas get tighter over time.  This is how our body compensates in order to complete the physical tasks throughout our days because we are not strong enough or flexible enough to maintain good positioning of our joints and bones.  Exercise and stretching will correct a lot of this if you know your tight and weak areas.  If you don’t know them, then a physical therapist can identify them for you.

If you don’t do anything to correct these areas, then sooner or later the extra stress on these body parts that do not have balanced strength and flexibility will wear out.  This means the tendons, ligaments, and joints will start to have small tears and damage.  This can progress to greater tears, pain and damage.  Physical Therapy stops this regression and creates a healthy balanced environment by strengthening the weak areas and stretching or manually mobilizing the tight areas.  This allows the area to heal and prevents further damage from occurring.

Physical Therapy also helps train the nervous system to coordinate muscles to create better movements.  This is done through repetition and awareness of proper motion patterns.  Associative Awareness Technique also trains the nervous system, but its purpose is to eliminate overactive patterns of protection that involve muscles and pain, and occur even at rest.