What a Dancer's Eye Taught me About Why People Hurt
“I can’t squat anymore — it hurts my knees and back.”
I hear this almost daily in my clinic. And almost daily, I watch the same person squat pain-free or at least more comfortable within minutes with some simple movement coaching.
The problem isn’t that they can’t squat. The problem is their body and their nervous system has forgotten how.
What I See That Others Miss
My background is somewhat unusual for an osteopath. Before I spent five years studying musculoskeletal medicine, I was a dancer. Before I learned to diagnose conditions, I learned to see movement as a Pilates teacher.
What I see when I watch people move is this: somewhere along the way, our bodies lost the ability to differentiate between fundamental movement patterns. For example, many people’s bodies no longer know the difference between a squat and a hip hinge.
Instead, they end up somewhere in between — which is optimal for neither task.
The Hip Hinge We've Forgotten
The hip joint is one of the most powerful joints in your body. Your glutes are the most powerful muscle group you have. Yet when most people bend down to pick something up, often the majority of the force goes through their knees or lower back.
Why? Through our sedentary lifestyles, our bodies have disconnected from what it feels like to move from the hips. For many of us, our glutes now function mainly as a seat cushion. We’ve lost the embodied sensation of what it’s like to be in hip-hinge position and feel strong and safe.
Your nervous system now associates bending with danger. Hence all those “I bent down and my back went” stories.
The Squat Revelation
Here’s what happens in my clinic: someone tells me they can’t squat because it’s too painful. I watch them try, and I see their body confused — trying to squat but moving like they’re doing a hip hinge, or attempting a hip hinge but squatting instead.
With a few subtle movement cues — helping them understand which joints should move when, and in what sequence — they’re suddenly squatting pain-free. Same person, same body, same day. OK, maybe it takes a few more attempts – I am not a magician, but our bodies are! What a difference a few, solid attempts make. The nervous system now feels much safer in the movement because their body remembers how to do it properly.
The Missing Piece
When I graduated as an osteopath, I felt overwhelmed. My training was heavily focused on manual therapy (often with very questionable promises) and while I could help people feel better in the short term, I wasn’t addressing why their problems kept returning.
Don’t get me wrong — manual therapy has its place. Hands-on treatment can be incredibly effective for pain modulation and helping people feel more comfortable in their bodies. Sometimes that’s exactly what someone needs to feel safe enough to start moving again.
But I realised I was missing a crucial piece: movement education. Teaching people’s bodies to remember patterns they’d lost, not just repeating an ‘exercise’.
Now I combine both approaches. Manual therapy to help manage symptoms and create space for healing, and movement coaching to address the underlying patterns that sometimes created the problem in the first place.
Because here’s what I’ve learned: you can treat symptoms all day long, but if someone’s nervous system still sees basic movement as dangerous, those symptoms will keep coming back any time a person puts themselves into the same situation.
What This Means for You
If you’ve been dealing with recurring pain, especially around bending, lifting, or getting down and up from the floor – the basic things we need to do daily – the issue might not be strength or flexibility. It might be that your body has simply forgotten how to move in these fundamental patterns.
The solution isn’t necessarily more treatment. It’s helping your nervous system remember what safe, strong movement feels like.
And sometimes, that can happen faster than you think.
Ready to reconnect with how your body is meant to move?
If you’ve been avoiding bending, lifting things of the floor, or squatting because of pain — let’s change that.
I offer one-to-one osteopathy and movement-based rehabilitation at Clapham and Crystal Palace Clinics.
Whether you’re recovering from an injury or simply feel your body isn’t moving like it used to, we can work together to retrain the patterns that matter.
Appointments available at Clapham and Crystal Palace Clinics
Book your session at Moving Fox Osteopathy Clapham Clinic
Book your session at Moving Fox Osteopathy Crystal Palace Clinic
Have questions or want to learn more?
Contact me today to discover how my unique blend of hands-on therapies and movement coaching techniques can help you achieve your goals!