Horse riders are a special breed of people: We work hard to care for our horses, we bend, twist and lift heavy weights on a daily basis and that can play havoc with our body. We often habitually muck out one way, or sweep one way, heavily favoring one side of our body, yet we expect to be able to sit centrally on our horse to help his body and use each side of our being independently. That takes some serious skill! Riders don't think twice about trying to work out what's gone wrong with our tack or our horses if we encounter a problem, but riders ourselves generally are very last on the list to ever get any attention, and the impact on our horses from that can be huge. Did you ever think that your own body and your riding can be hindering how your horse uses his body? If we sit in an unbalanced way, our horses have to not only compensate for their problems, but ours too which will limit how well they perform. Certainly not what we want if we are competing! Osteopathy can be a really us...

In today's modern world many of us suffer from injuries and pain in our muscles and joints arising not only from our hobbies, but from our lifestyles, work and illnesses too. We now spend far longer sitting behind computers, bent over our mobile devices and stuck in traffic behind the wheel of a car. We appear to do very little exercise and tend to neglect our bodies. When it comes to pain, too often we see only the symptoms being treated medication but sometimes we need to look at why the pain is originally occurring, not just that it's there. Sciatica is a prime example of this. We often hear that someone has sciatica and the doctor has prescribed medication to help to mask the pain, but the definition of sciatica itself is pain effecting the leg, therefore it's use as a diagnosis doesn't describe what the root cause of it is. The sciatic nerve is made of 5 nerve roots that exit the spine, and combine together to create a thick, cord like nerve which runs through the pelvis and down ...

Whilst working, many of us are not aware of what our posture is like. The risk from poor posture comes from a reduction to the movement in the joints of the body, along with repetitive patterns of strain. When we get pain from our poor posture, medical advice and physical therapy treatment will often be required to reduce the imbalances created over a period of time. So what can we do to avoid these restrictions? Well, quite a lot, beginning with good sitting posture! In an ideal world, good posture includes the head being positioned over the top of the spine and the buttocks, with a slight 'S' shaped curve through it. Neck and shoulder muscles should have even tension at the front and back of the body, and the lower back should be in its natural curved position.It's advisable to support your pelvis against the back of the chair. Good posture makes breathing and digestion more efficient by helping to de-compress the front of the body. Chair Ergonomics. When working in the office, there...