Thank you for attending Wellness Embodied for treatment yesterday.

As you will see from some of your treatment plan, comprehensive pain and injury management includes future prevention of pain and is a long term strategy for improving your wellbeing and quality of life. Below are the ways you may feel today after your first visit. Please email or call us at any time with questions and we’ll endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible.

1. You feel FANTASTIC! Great! The majority of our clients experience symptom relief soon after treatment. We aim to offload painful tissues and areas, mobilise stiff joints, calm overly sensitised nervous tissue and advise you on self management and getting back to what you love doing ASAP! A small caveat here: Stiff joints take an average of 6 treatments and dedication to your exercises, postures and day to day activity changes to fully loosen. Tight and weak muscles will take at least 3 months of hard work and guided rehab to fully strengthen and rebalance. And obviously all of this is affected by your day to day work, activities, postures and positions 🙂
2. You have some post treatment Pain: We’re proud to say that we don’t tend to cause a lot of post treatment pain, as we are meticulous in our skilled and specific assessment and treatment approaches. HOWEVER, if nobody ever got post treatment pain, there would probably be a lot of people who should be pushed harder to get better quicker! Common reasons for post treatment pain include: – ‘bruising’ type pain around the spine or joint which we have been mobilising. This is totally normal as we’ve pressed firmly on a stiff area. use of an ice pack, suitable pain killers or anti inflammatories or a topical cream can be useful for 24-48 hours. Make sure you keep moving and contact us should you have any questions or concerns. – tenderness around the muscles, ligaments or other soft tissues: again, this is normal from soft tissue release to increase length and tissue mobility. See above advice re pain management and contact us with any concerns. – uncomfortable taping, insoles, braces or otherwise: Human bodies are complex and we pride ourselves on our problem solving approach. A taping or bracing approach may work for 90% of our clients with similar issues, but not for you. That’s ok- it allows us to better understand your condition and plan your treatment journey. Discontinue using the support/ tape etc immediately if you have skin irritation, increased pain or major discomfort. Ensure you bring this up at your next appointment, or contact us with any urgent concerns.
3. You don’t know if you feel better. Pain, particularly that which has been around for a long time or which has caused a break from sport or activity, can be difficult to measure. As physiotherapists, we look at objective outcome measurements such as changes in movement and strength, to see if we’ve made a difference. As the client experiencing pain or dysfunction, it can often be harder to tell if there is an immediate change. Some changes to look out for rather than focusing on your pain include: improved sleep time, slight increase in the time you are able to do an activity ( eg walk) for, less fatigue/ stress/ anxiety, improved balance, improved patterns of movement ( for example, less limping or more ‘fluid’ movements) . And of course, refer to the treatment continuum diagram ‘Stages of Healing’- we don’t expect a miracle after Day 1, but we’d love to start seeing some changes after treatment 3-4.