How many of you can solve a Rubik’s Cube? I confess that in my youth at school, I could, and quite quickly too, but now I really struggle!
The purpose of asking this apparently rather bizarre question is that I have come to liken treating stubborn recurrent injury or life affecting chronic pain to the challenge of solving a Rubik’s Cube.
The analogy is quite startling. Firstly, when you get handed a Rubik’s Cube to solve, it can be in any state. Secondly, as you begin to solve it, you have to build a strategy, but key to this is that as you move pieces around, you are obliged to think several stages ahead in order to achieve your overall objective. Thirdly, if you pick the wrong strategy – or indeed just stick to exactly the same strategy every single time – it will take much longer to solve than if you work out a new strategy each time, and finally, the whole essence of a Rubik’s Cube is that it is a multi-dimensional challenge – just getting one side looking great might give you satisfaction, but it doesn’t solve the overall problem!
Ok, so how does this analogy translate into solving stubborn recurrent injury or life affecting chronic pain issues?
Well, let’s take the points above in the reverse order and look at them from a holistic therapy perspective.
Solving the Cube is a multi-dimensional challenge. My very first qualification was as a Clinical Remedial & Sports Massage Therapist. I treated people with injuries, aches and pains at cycling and running events and also in my own clinic. However I never really felt that this approach was getting to the true root cause of their issues. I wanted to understand more about WHY injury happens, but until very recently this profound question has never been researched. I needed to better understand the underlying processes in the body that lead to problems occurring. Often I was told that there isn’t any such underlying process – that injury and pain “just happen” – but I simply could not accept this. So I went in search of something to provide this “missing dimension”.
