Flexi-Move pain management and massage therapy

28/11/2025

The most important part of the massage happens when you leave.
The table work is the software update.
The next 24 hours are the installation and reboot. How you hydrate,how you move, how you sleep; that’s what determines if the update takes or if the system reverts to its old, buggy version.
You are the active participant in your own recovery. I’m just the programmer.

27/11/2025

One hour of therapy cannot fix 23 hours of neglect.
I can give you the best massage of your life. I can reset your nervous system, improve your mobility, and dial down your pain.
But if you then spend the next 23 hours slumped at a desk, stressed, and dehydrated, you are pouring the recovery down the drain.
The session is a catalyst. Your daily life is the treatment.

26/11/2025

CHAPTER 1. THE WALKING SYSTEM

(retold by Flexi-Move)

Out of all the superpowers nature handed to humans, the most underrated one is this: walking on two legs. We treat it as something basic, almost automatic. But Earls opens the chapter with a slap-of-reality statement:

"Bipedal walking is an engineering masterpiece, a controlled fall that we constantly catch ourselves from."

And this is where things get spicy, because most people have absolutely no idea what’s really going on.
Walking isn’t legs. Walking is a system.
Earls basically says: forget this idea that walking is left foot, right foot.
That’s like calling a symphony a couple of noises one after another.

Here’s what actually happens (Flexi-Move style metaphor):

Imagine an orchestra where everyone has their part, but if just one musician nods off, the whole performance instantly turns into school band after lunch break.
Same with the body. For a step to be light, efficient and natural, the following all need to work together:
fascial chains transmitting force through the whole system;
a pelvis that rotates like a well-oiled rotor;
ribs that contribute to energy transfer;
feet acting like springs instead of wooden clogs;
core muscles keeping gravity in check;
breathing synced to the rhythm of the step.
Earls highlights the big idea:
"the body doesn’t move top-down or bottom-up, it moves as a whole."

Gait is a flow. A transfer of energy. A spiral of movement passing through the entire structure.
And guess what?
Most people walk in block mode: pelvis on its own, ribcage on its own, and the feet… well, they’re mostly just there for decoration.

And that’s a problem.
A big one.

Walking = controlled falling forward.
Earls reminds us:
"To take a step, the body doesn’t push itself backwards with the foot, it lets itself tip forward slightly, and the next foot catches the fall."

It’s efficient.
It’s biomechanically elegant.
It’s how our ancestors moved.

But modern humans try to walk as if wading through sticky mud: clenching the torso, locking the pelvis, slapping the foot down like a brick.
Every step becomes a tiny internal argument with yourself.
Earls, politely but without mercy, gives the verdict:
"we’ve lost the natural “falling” rhythm and turned walking into manual labour."
Force transmission: a motorway, not a bunch of side streets.

The key idea of the chapter:
A step only becomes efficient movement when the body transfers energy through the fascial lines.
Think of it like belts in an engine:
one belt snaps - the whole system runs with vibration, noise, and heat.

In the body, this shows up as:
the foot doesn’t catch the ground - the shock goes straight to the knee;
pelvis doesn’t rotate - the lower back takes the hit;
ribcage doesn’t move - breathing falls apart;
head isn’t stabilised - neck is constantly tense.

Earls states clearly:
"the quality of your gait is a litmus test of your biomechanical health."

Walk lightly - the whole chain is transmitting energy.
Walk heavily - somewhere in the system a wire is broken.

The core idea of the chapter:
This chapter is the foundation for the entire book.
Earls explains:
"Walking is an integrated system, not a mechanical sequence."

Trying to fix your gait with foot exercises or glute work alone
is like trying to fix an orchestra by tuning just one violin.
To improve your walk,
you have to work with the whole system.

26/11/2025

How many times you hear: "it hurts when you press there!”
Of course it does. I’m pressing on a protected area. The real question is: Why is it protecting itself? Is it weak? Overworked? Compensating for a lazy neighbor? Pain on pressure is a clue, not a diagnosis. Treating every tender spot with brute force is medical illiteracy.
Therapy isn't about finding what hurts. It's about understanding why.

26/11/2025

You don’t need a massage. You need a reset.
A massage is a tool. Not a solution.
If you leave feeling great but return to the same postures, the same stressors, the same movement patterns: nothing has changed.
My job isn’t to fix you in 60 minutes.
It’s to give your body a clear signal, a moment of alignment, so you can go back into your life and reinforce it.
The real work happens between sessions.

25/11/2025

24/11/2025

If you leave a massage bragging:
“I nearly cried, it was SO painful!”
… that wasn’t therapy.
That was trauma with essential oils.

Proper deep tissue is intense but intelligent.
If your therapist is trying to dig a tunnel to Australia... run.

23/11/2025

No, I’m not trying to turn you into a hydration influencer.
But your fascia really does glide better when it’s not drier than a British sense of humour.
Pain decreases when tissues are juicy.
Science.

23/11/2025

I decided to start retelling Earls' book from scratch. In the first version, I didn't follow the chapters, which caused some confusion for readers. I'm correcting that now, so sit back, get comfortable, and let's begin our journey into "Born to walk."

FOREWORD (retold by Flexi-Move)

Picture this: you’re still that same creature shaped by millions of years of evolution for one primary purpose: to walk.
Not to sit hunched over a laptop, not to commute in a car, not to do 10k steps for the sake of a fitness challenge, but to live through movement, movement woven into every cell of your body.
And here’s where it gets interesting, because James Earls drops a bold statement right in the foreword:

"we’ve forgotten how to walk the way nature intended."

Yes, technically we move one foot in front of the other. But the quality of that movement? It’s like comparing freshly ground coffee with the sad little instant sachet you find in a budget hotel. Both are technically coffee… but they belong to completely different universes.

Earls builds towards the idea that becomes the thread of the entire book:
"Walking isn’t a function. It’s a full biomechanical symphony, involving fascia, muscles, breath, balance, spatial awareness, and even our mental state.
And if even one instrument in that symphony is out of tune, the whole gait collapses, and with it, the body. Back pain, fatigue, poor posture, dodgy joints, reduced stamina, they all trace back here.
He raises the uncomfortable question:
"How did a fundamental human skill become a problem area for most people?"
The answer is painfully simple:
a sedentary lifestyle; artificial ground surfaces (tarmac instead of forest floor); footwear that blocks natural foot mechanics; stressed, shallow breathing; a total lack of real physical load.

Earls is pretty blunt about it:

"modern humans don’t walk, they imitate walking."

And the mission of this book is to bring back real, natural gait, the kind that’s hard-wired into our biology and makes life easier instead of wearing us down.

He emphasises one more thing:
This isn’t a “do step one-two-three” kind of book.
It’s about understanding how movement ripples through the entire body, and what we can do to restore that harmony.

This foreword is an invitation not just to read, but to relearn how to move so the body works with us, not against us.

23/11/2025

Stop blaming every ache on age.
You’re not rusty, you’re under-moved.
Joints love rotation.
Muscles love circulation.
The nervous system loves safety.

Age is not the enemy.
Doing nothing is.

22/11/2025

The girl in this photo was taken in 1990.
Her name is Susan.
She is 45 years old. She has two children.
Susan never exercised. She went to bed late.
She ate whatever she wanted. She drank soda instead of water.
What is Susan's secret?
Susan has no secret.
Susan is the woman in the upper right corner of the photo.

22/11/2025

Inflammation: why your body’s quietly on fire, who’s at risk, and why your insides keep paying the bill for your "mmm, tasty" moments

If inflammation were a person, it’d be that exhausted bloke in the corner of the office, clutching a lukewarm coffee, muttering:
“Brilliant. Another crisis. Cheers for that.”
And here’s the thing:
Inflammation itself isn’t evil.
Chronic inflammation is, though, that’s when your body behaves like an overheating laptop from 2008: loud, slow, confused, and two minutes away from shutting down completely.
Let’s break it down; simple, honest, slightly painful.

What actually causes inflammation?

There aren’t a thousand reasons, just four, but they do the job far too well.

1. Injury
Cut yourself, pull something in the gym, twist your back doing absolutely nothing, your body sounds the alarm.
That’s normal. That’s repair mode.

2. Infection
Bacteria and viruses show up uninvited, then, immune system picks up a hammer and goes: “Right. Who started this?”

3. Toxins
Smoking, alcohol, pollution, cheap chemicals posing as food; your body’s basically forced to deal with your questionable life choices.

4. Metabolic chaos
This is where the fun really starts.
Obesity, insulin resistance, visceral fat, sitting all day, sugar, stress: all of it contributes to a constant, low-grade internal fire.

Who’s most at risk?

1. Weightlifters
Yes, you.
Yes, even if you take creatine.

Strength training = micro-tears + mechanical stress = local inflammation.
And if: your sleep is shocking, your diet is random, your stress is higher than your deadlift, your recovery is “yeah, I’ll rest… someday,” then local inflammation becomes systemic.
Your body basically operates like understaffed NHS nurses on a night shift.

2. Anyone carrying extra weight
Fat tissue isn’t storage, it’s an organ. It pumps out inflammatory signals like a broken fire alarm.
More fat = more alarms = more inflammation.

3. The perpetually exhausted
Lack of sleep > hormonal chaos > immune dysregulation > inflammation > even worse sleep.
It’s a self-sustaining disaster loop.

Why cardio is your fire extinguisher

If inflammation had a natural opponent, it’d be gentle cardio.
Cardio: lowers systemic inflammation, improves insulin sensitivity, helps circulation, calms your overworked immune system.
30–40 minutes of light cardio 3–4 times a week. Walk, jog, cycle, use the cross-trainer you bought and never touched.

Now for the tasty bit.
Diet. And the bill your body has to pay.

You eat a sausage.
It’s delicious, warm, comforting.
Your brain goes: “Ooooh… lovely. More of that, please. We DESERVE this.”

But while your brain is basically purring, your internal metabolic conductor, a stern, no-nonsense bloke, steps out with a baton and sighs heavily.
He starts sorting things:
protein - fine,
fats - okay, manageable,
salt - honestly, again?,
sugar… excess sugar… oh brilliant. Extra paperwork. All night. Every night.

Any sugar fuels inflammation.
ANY sugar.
Glucose, fructose, honey, healthy syrups, pastries; your body reacts the same way:
sugar ^ > insulin ^ > metabolic stress ^ > inflammation ^ > YOU ↓

Every sweet snack is like tossing petrol into the inflammation bonfire.
Your brain? Having the time of its life.
Your body? Paying the debt.
Brain: “Yay!”
Body: “My joints hurt, I’m exhausted, and you’ve given me three extra hours of unpaid overtime.”
This isn’t karma.
This is biochemistry.

Foods that crank up inflammation

sugar, pastries and white bread, fast food, deep-fried everything, processed meats (yes, the sausage), trans fats

Foods that help put the fire out

oily fish (omega-3), berries, vegetables and leafy greens, proper extra virgin olive oil, nuts and seeds, fermented foods (kefir, yoghurt, kimchi)

Flexi-Move’s Golden Rule

Don’t try to treat inflammation with tablets if your lifestyle is one big trigger for inflammation.
Fix the cause, your body will do the rest.

What you can do today
1. Add cardio.
2. Sleep properly.
3. Cut down sugar and junk food.
4. Eat more veg, fish, berries, fermented foods.
5. Lower stress: massage, breathing, walking, anything.
6. Don’t overtrain.
7. Keep an eye on weight and metabolic health.

Chronic inflammation isn’t fate.
It’s a consequence of habits, habits you can absolutely change.
And the sooner you start, the sooner your body stops paying the bill for every “mmm, tasty” moment your brain insists on having.