Amber Nimedez

There have been a lot of videos, blogs, and articles on Cirque Du Soleil performers on the site and I am most excited about that! Like Ms. Ozzie Jacobs, I too have a similar background of being a gymnast, dancer, and yogi. I absolutely admire and get inspired by the athletes in Cirque. The amount of time they put into their practice, the dedication, the mental preparation, the discipline... it is a work of art. For these performers, they are dependent on their bodies to function correctly.

As a gymnast, I personally experienced a lot of SI joint pain before putting alignment as a top priority. Having several clients who are dancers, gymnasts, and yogis, there have been similarities in symptoms with them all. Sometimes, if you are hyper mobile or too flexible, there may be too much lax in the joint area. If you do not have the stability in the joint, you may be setting yourself up for injury.

I witness people in pain all the time. People getting out of the car holding their back, people in the gym rotating their shoulder because "it just hurts so much", people flexing and extending their knee saying "it just doesn't work the way it used to". Almost every person I talk to has some sort of pain going on. Getting surgery or going to the chiropractor seems like a regular trend these days. The excuse: "well, this is what happens when you get old".

Really? That's what happens when you get old? You complain about pain and expect someone else to get rid of it? As an Exercise Therapist, I have witnessed client after client with the same story. "My back-shoulder-hip-knee-ankle hurts and my doctor thinks I should have surgery. I've seen and tried everything under the sun, and the pain just won't go away...can you fix me?" My response: "YOU can fix YOU".