To move smoothly, all your tissues need to flow and glide. If they cannot, or do not, then the body will attempt to compromise. And eventually, it can fail. This leads to restriction, pain and immobility. Which can of course create a viscious circle of reduced ability.

What can cause changes in the glide? Joints we all sort of understand. Pain, swelling, inflammation and instability will lead to changes around that joint. But the soft tissues can also experiene those, leading to a conceptual stickiness, where tissues simply don’t want to move over each other smoothly. Some stickiness can be temporary, some can be more permanent (scarring), but stickiness within the system can lead to drag on the tensegrity, reducing the adaption capabilities. This is why you can see limitations in the shoulder and find the solution in the ankle, why mobility exercises that improve tissue range of motion can reduce pain globally, and why it is sometimes so hard to achieve complete resolution in a presentation. You haven’t dealt with the underlying lesion.

The thing is, trying to get your head around this is only the first element of treatment. and it can be particularly difficult, to detach from the description and go looking, or listening, to where another problem lies.

Treat close, check the chain, look at the centre, improve the chain, repeat.