A Personal Story about Achieving Pain-Free Living from Julie McLean, Registered Kinesiologist and owner of Align Family Health & Fitness Inc. in London, Ontario
For anyone who doesn't know, I was in a serious car accident when I was 8 years old - I recovered and continued to be active my entire life. Yes, I healed and went on to continue to be active and excel in athletics, but how did I heal and how did my body feel and cope into adulthood, during motherhood and my work life?
In my 20's and 30's, I actually struggled with maintaining high levels of energy for a regular 8 hour day. I had difficulty looking up (weak and tired neck muscles), my jaw got tired chewing gum, my ears have always been sensitive to the cold that would result in earaches, I noticed my left eye twitching unexplainably, pain in my mid-back, weakness and pain doing a push-up to just name a few.
During my 4-year undergraduate degree in Physical and Health Education at Queen’s University, I started to learn how the body works. Everything from body mechanics, muscle and soft tissue health, effects of movement and exercise on our physical, emotional and mental health, injury prevention and how to recovery from injuries. You see, in my grade 12 year I completely tore my ACL (a ligament in the knee) in competitive soccer and had knee surgery. I was told by the orthopedic surgeon to expect to get arthritis in my knee. Getting this news at 19 years old motivated me to learn ways to prevent arthritis from forming in my knee and find practical ways to keep not only my knee joint moving and functioning, but all my joints and connective tissue healthy.
Over the years, I have personally worked with various health care professionals. All have added to my knowledge and understanding of my body. It is my goal as the owner of Align to bring in health care professionals that help keep the body moving in a healthy way. Now, our studio is not giant so we can’t have every discipline represented in our space, but we can help connect our clients with trusted health care practitioners both at Align and locally in London, Ontario.
Our newest addition to our team is our Osteopathic Manual Practitioner, Vishal Khare.
Vishal has an undergraduate degree in Kinesiology from York University and diploma in Osteopathic Manual Practice from the Canadian College of Osteopathy. He successfully defended his thesis on “The Effects of Global Osteopathic Treatments on Dizziness in Patients with Whiplash” in 2021. I learned about visceral and cranial osteopathy from Vishal. This was extremely interesting to me as I suffered whiplash from my car accident when I was 8 years old and my head made contact many times to the side window. To my understanding I was never treated for this whiplash and was curious to learn more about how Cranial Osteopathic specifically could help me personally.
I am happy to share that since adding Osteopathic care as a treatment method to support my own body, I have noticed an improvement in my balance, mobility and strength. My neck no longer feels like it is straining to look up (I have more mobility in my cervical spine). My energy and strength have increased dramatically. I notice the changes the most when I return to an activity that I love. For example, I downhill ski maybe once or twice a year with my kids. Last year, I had knee pain that effected my ability to ski more than 1 hour at at time. This year, I was able to ski with my kids for 4 hours and did not feel the after effects of a sore knee. I actually feel like I have more energy and function now in my 40s (yikes), then in my 20s.
Being a health and fitness studio, we want to support you in your movement journey. We want to help you move more, move more without pain, move with more power and confidence that results in increased energy and strength. We want to improve your posture, mobility and strength in all type of movements (squats, deadlifts, lifting mechanics, getting up and down from the floor, walking, running, jumping, etc), we want to improve your balance and strength for the purpose of staying active with friends and family.
Currently, we have massage therapy, kinesiology, osteopathy and physiotherapy represented at our studio.
Interested in learning more? Feel free to email me personally at info@alignfamilyfitness.com or click below to visit our online booking site to book with one of our health professionals!
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