In the world of Physical Therapy, tissue will get “tight” when the body is in need of stability. The body seeks stability when there is weakness. As a Physical Therapist, I would never work with a patient to stretch something if I was not also working to strengthen because I would be removing the body's natural protective mechanisms for creating stability and not offering any stability (strength) in its place. This would place the body at risk for injury. Sometimes, we are tempted to address the pain but not the root cause of the pain. It is like changing the bandage on a wound that is gushing blood. You don’t need a new bandage, you need to stop the bleeding. If you zoom out a bit on the situation you can easily see that it doesn’t make sense, however in the moment we can be too close to it to realize it.
I was speaking with another Physical Therapist about this exact topic one day, only we were talking about me and not a pt. I was getting ready for a run and telling her that I needed to take a moment to stretch my IT band, she quickly and gently reminded me that my issue wasn’t tightness it was weakness and that the tight IT band was holding me back from hurting myself because I wasn’t strong enough to be in proper alignment. I knew that, but appreciated the reminder and felt like there was a larger picture here that I should be seeing, but I couldn’t zoom out enough to see it.
I set out for my run feeling great. I had nothing on my mind and I was simply enjoying the run. As I relaxed into a meditative state my mind drifted. Samuel has been so much like a tight IT band. The reality is that I was not strong enough in my mediumship skills when I met him and on one hand I could say that his tightness created pain and held me back, but the reality is that I wasn’t strong enough to stand in my alignment yet and him holding me back allowed me to build enough strength to be in alignment and not get hurt. There were so many moments in our relationship, or even just after it ended, that all I could see was how he was a tight IT band but when I zoomed out he was only there because I wasn’t strong enough on my own yet and he was ultimately meant to protect me.
