Treat the cause, not just the site of the pain.
Our body is an amazing thing, and pain can show up in areas you don’t expect. Most therapists treat where it hurts. I work out why it hurts there, and treat that instead. It shows up four ways.
Biomechanical compensation
A rehab client comes in with hip pain. The hip is not necessarily the problem. Six weeks ago they injured a knee. The knee feels fine now, but while it was healing they unconsciously changed how they walked, shifting their weight onto the other side to protect it. That compensation pattern is what built the tightness in the hip.
Treating the hip directly gives short term relief at best. The actual job is releasing the tissue that tightened from the changed movement pattern, and helping you understand why it happened so it does not simply recur.
Myofascial referral
You come in pointing to a persistent knot at the top of the shoulder blade, something that has been there for ages and nothing seems to shift. The common approach, mine included early in my career, is to hammer directly on the knot until it releases, often leaving you bruised and sore for days.
The knot is very often not the problem. It is serratus anterior, the muscle wrapping around the ribs under the shoulder blade, sitting tight and restricting the blade’s natural glide. Treat that with muscle energy technique and the knot resolves on its own, because the tissue can move properly again. You leave feeling like you have had a solid workout, not battered.
This is an area many therapists avoid treating properly because of client comfort, which means the actual cause can go untreated for years. I am comfortable and thorough working this region as part of standard clinical practice, with draping managed to your comfort throughout.
Nervous system pain modulation
When you are under a physio or exercise physiologist’s care, I work from their plan rather than running a separate one. That means respecting explicit contraindications and using hands on work to reinforce what they have prescribed. I might hold your shoulder girdle in the correct position while you actively move through an exercise, guiding the scapula’s natural glide so you feel what the correct pattern should feel like.
Pain can persist as a learned response after tissue has healed. Pain is real, but the trigger might not be there anymore. Taking you through a movement slowly, within a pain free range, helps the nervous system unlearn that association.
Fascial line work
Climbers hold long, hard positions under load, and the tightness that creates does not stay local. It travels along fascial lines and can show up as restriction, or even rotation, somewhere else entirely. My approach is not to hammer the obviously overworked forearms and shoulders. It is to trace and release the actual chain that is tight, so you move freely again without feeling weak or worked over.
I’m not just working the joints. I’m following the fascial lines down the body, working out whether they’re making the body twist. It’s about helping them move and feel more free, not just released.
Every session starts with a conversation, not an assumption.
I want to understand how I can help you feel better and move better, so that at the end of this session you feel calm, heard, and feel and move better.
And on pressure: if your pain is above an 8, I’m putting too much pressure through you.
Ready when you are.
Booking takes a minute and the intake form comes to you.