Bowen Québec / M-J St-Onge

06/09/2020

The pes anserinus (translating to "goose foot") is a shared attachment of three muscles on the medial knee: the semitendinosus, gracilis, and sartorius. This area tends to get inflamed whenever there is too much buckling inward of the knee, such as when the outer hips aren't engaging well enough or there is over-pronation of the foot. They also can find themselves severely overworked if there's an injury to the medial collateral ligament of the knee. They work harder to try to support the knee to take stress off the ligament.

02/21/2020

🔈 DEEP PELVIC PAIN? IT CAN BE PSOAS MUSCLE TENSION

The psoas muscle may be the most important muscle in your body. Without this essential muscle group you wouldn’t even be able to get out of the bed in the morning!

In fact, whether you run, bike, dance, practice yoga, or just hang out on your couch, your psoas muscles are involved. That’s because your psoas muscles are the primary connectors between your torso and your legs. They affect your posture and help to stabilize your spine.

The psoas muscles are made of both slow and fast twitching muscles. Because they are major flexors, weak psoas muscles can cause many of the surrounding muscles to compensate and become overused. That is why a tight or overstretched psoas muscle could be the cause of many or your aches and pains, including low back and pelvic pain.

Structurally, your psoas muscles are the deepest muscles in your core. They attach from your 12th thoracic vertebrae to your 5 lumbar vertebrae, through your pelvis and then finally attach to your femurs. In fact, they are the only muscles that connect your spine to your legs.

Your psoas muscles allow you to bend your hips and legs towards your chest, for example when you are going up stairs. They also help to move your leg forward when you walk or run.
Your psoas muscles are the muscles that flex your trunk forward when bend over to pick up something from the floor. They also stabilize your trunk and spine during movement and sitting.
The psoas muscles support your internal organs and work like hydraulic pumps allowing blood and lymph to be pushed in and out of your cells.

During prolonged periods of stress, your psoas is constantly contracted.
The same contraction occurs when you:

▶️ Sit for long periods of time
▶️ Engage in excessive running or walking
▶️ Sleep in the fetal position
▶️ Do a lot of sit-ups

02/19/2020

🔈 PELVIS TENSEGRITY
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The pelvis is the center of gravity and the largest bony complex in the human body.
The pelvis and sacrum are linked via strong ligaments and muscles, creating a tension system that works with the compression-bearing bones to create a local tensegrity system.
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These ligaments are visualized in the picture, they include the posterior SI ligaments (Iliotransversosacral, Axile, Zaglas, Bichat), anterior SI ligaments, the iliolumbar ligaments and the sacrotuberous and sacrospinous ligaments.
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Locally, these ligaments need to have balanced tension to maintain SI joint integrity and normal bone positions in space.
If one of these ligaments is injured and loses its optimal tension/quality, disruption of the tensegrity balance ensues.
This leads to increased compression stress in the pelvis/SI and hip joints, but also leads to distortion of the global tensegrity of the body.
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For example, in the picture we can see a normal, balanced pelvis icosahedron on the left with the horizontal balance beams through L4 and the greater trochanter did the femurs.
On the right, we can see the consequence of an injury to the right SI joint/ligament complex. This leads to pelvic and sacral shifting, unleveling of L3 (blue dot) and functional scoliosis, anterior-inferior shift of the left ilium, valgus stress in the left knee, and pronation stress in the left foot-ankle.
The white arrow represents the downward compressive force of gravity. If the tensegrity is balanced, the body can adequately resist gravity without breakdown.
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Disruption of this tensegrity system is the source of joint degeneration and pain, all results of decreased space/compression in the joints.
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This is but one example of how loss of connective tissue tension/quality leads to compression stresses as well as local and global distortions of the tensegrity system.
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In biotensegrity, micro affects macro, local affects global!

Credit: Stefanduell

12/26/2019

12/21/2019

Whether you run, bike, dance, practice yoga, or just hang out on your couch, your psoas muscles are involved. That’s because your psoas muscles are the primary connectors between your torso and you…

09/02/2018