We are often left searching for answers as to why pain happens in the first place.
If you are interested in understanding why you are in pain, you must first understand that the basic design of your body is kind of like this house:
If you strip the house down, you would see something like this:
Notice how the beams of the floors and ceilings are all horizontal, and the beams of the walls are all vertical. The walls intersect with the floors and ceilings at 90 degrees. These vertical and horizontal lines and 90 degree angles are so important because gravity comes down on the planet earth at 90 degrees!
So, what does all this have to do with your body? Check out the following image of Function Freddie: 
Notice how the human body has eight load bearing joints: two shoulders, two hips, two knees, and two ankles.
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The vertical lines intersecting with the shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle on each side are kind of like the walls of the house.
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The horizontal lines from shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, knee to knee, and ankle to ankle are kind of like the ceilings and floors of the house.
And if you look closely, notice how each intersection of a horizontal line with a vertical line on Function Freddie forms a 90-degree angle. Here’s a close up of one of Function Freddie’s hip joints showing up this 90-degree angle at the joint.
Your body really is built kind of like a house, to withstand gravity with load joints that form 90 degree angles throughout your body! Now what if you came across a house that was leaning, like this one:
You probably wouldn’t want to go inside, right? But why? Now we know that gravity comes down on the planet earth at 90 degrees, and if the walls, ceilings and floors of the house do not form 90-degree angles then…
gravity wins and the house loses!
Our bodies are the same way! Check out the photos of this girl:
Let’s break down what we’re seeing in these photos:
Notice the position of her eight load bearing joints in the photo on the left. The stick figure next to the photo on the left will help you to see her load bearing joints more clearly. Could you pass a straight line through her shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles? Could you pass a straight line from shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, knee to knee, and ankle to ankle in that first photo? The stick figure helps us to see that the answer is no, you cannot pass a straight line though these joints, nether horizontally nor vertically.
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When the photo on the left was taken she had hip pain.
Now look at the photo on the right with it’s associated stick figure. Now can you pass a straight line through those joints? Not perfectly, but her joints are visibly in a better horizontal and vertical alignment.
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When the photo on the right was taken her hip pain was gone.
When it comes to why we have pain, this happens with all of us!
When the load bearing joints of our bodies are not horizontally and vertically aligned, we have pain. When the joints are better aligned we have less or no pain.
Here is another example:
In the photo on the left she had SI joint pain while squatting. You can see that her load bearing joints were not in the correct position. In the photo on the right the SI joint pain while squatting was gone. You can see that her load bearing joints were in a better horizontal and vertical alignment with one another.
It’s that simple!
So the way to get out of pain is to get the joints of the body to be more aligned, like Function Freddie.
I hope you enjoyed this article. If you have questions or comments, please contact me at maryann@realigntherapy.com.