Back into Balance Physical Therapy

Back into Balance Physical Therapy We strive to help you not only resolve your current physical therapy challenges, but also start you in the lifelong path of exercising with intention.

Our goal is to solve your physical and functional needs and to start you on the lifelong path of exercising with intention. We strive to help you not only resolve your current challenges, but also keep your body healthy and functioning optimally as you age. Since we specialize in individuals care, at each appointment we devote an hour of 1:1 attention. This gives us ample time to assess you and de

vise a program to meet your specific Physical Therapy goals. We want you to know that we are always available between appointments via email or phone to answer any questions or concerns you may have. After discharge we welcome you to return for bi-annual visits so that we can evaluate any changes that have occurred in your body. This will allow us to make appropriate alternations in your exercise program before compensatory movements ensue and your body begins to experience pain as a result. Your exercise program should change regularly as your body changes.

Click the link below to learn more about what's new at Back into Balance PT -
01/26/2024

Click the link below to learn more about what's new at Back into Balance PT -

On The Cutting Edge in 2024! -
01/01/2024

On The Cutting Edge in 2024! -

Click the link below to read about how Back into Balance is on the cutting edge!
12/29/2023

Click the link below to read about how Back into Balance is on the cutting edge!

12/28/2023

Why Yoga Teachers Are Learning to Dissect Cadavers
By Danielle Friedman
Reprinted from the New York Times December 13, 2023

Thousands of fitness professionals and massage therapists have participated in cadaver workshops. They say it makes them more effective at their jobs.The reporter sat in on a full day of dissection and spoke to 20 fitness professionals who attended similar courses, including her own Pilates instructor.

Jane Sato thought she understood the abdominal muscles. For the first decade that she taught Pilates and yoga in New York City, she would tell her students to pull their belly button into their spine to strengthen their core.

But when she saw what actual abdominal muscles looked like during a human cadaver dissection workshop at Mount Sinai Hospital — the crisscrossed layers of tissue, the way the muscles also ran back to front and up and down — she realized her words weren’t nearly as instructive as they could be.

“There’s just a lot more to the picture,” she said. “When you see it in real life, your cues automatically change.”

Now, instead of telling clients to suck in their belly button, she tells them to draw in all their core muscles, “like a hug.”

Ms. Sato is one of thousands of fitness professionals who have sought out cadaver workshops to better understand anatomy and improve their teaching skills. Over the past two decades, at least a dozen dissection courses — most outside the traditional medical system — have popped up, catering to people like yoga teachers, massage therapists and Peloton trainers.

While most of these professions require some anatomy training to become certified, it can vary widely and usually relies on two-dimensional pictures, plastic models and even anatomy coloring books, which can create a misleading picture of how the body works.

“They are looking for more information,” said Rachele Pojednic, the director of exercise science at Norwich University and a research associate at Harvard’s Institute of Lifestyle Medicine. But often, she added, “they don’t know who to go to.” Why not “arm these professionals with as much knowledge as possible?”

A Visceral Experience

Experts say you can’t fully understand the value of a dissection until you participate in one. So on a sunny Saturday in October, fueled partly by morbid curiosity, I went to a lab called Experience Anatomy, in an office park near the Charlotte, N.C., airport. I was both excited and nervous, and keenly aware that I might not be able to unsee what I observed.

The two-day dissection was led by Fauna Moore, an Ashtanga yoga instructor and massage therapist who began attending, studying and then teaching dissections after being disappointed with the anatomy instruction she received during training. (One does not need a special certification to oversee a cadaver dissection, though she has spent years shadowing experienced dissectors.)

After a short orientation, the course’s five students gathered around the cadaver, scalpels in hand. While some courses for fitness professionals teach with bodies (or body parts) that have already been dissected, in this workshop the students would be dissecting a full cadaver themselves. In all cases, the donors or next of kin have specifically donated the body to scientific learning — though they don’t always know whether it will be used to teach medical students, physical therapists or yoga instructors.

As the group stood in silence under the glare of fluorescent lights, Ms. Moore removed a white sheet covering the body. Dissecting a human being can be an emotional and jarring experience, she said, so she suggested that the students give the cadaver, a 75-year-old female, a name, in recognition of her humanity.

The group decided on “Betty.”

New technologies, such as three-dimensional virtual software, have made the human body easier to study — and, some argue, rendered cadavers unnecessary. But medical students still say that seeing, touching and holding real human tissue is far more instructive than pictures or models. And it leads to better, more compassionate care, said Jeffrey Laitman, who has helmed Mount Sinai’s anatomy lab for more than 40 years.

“It’s an enormously humbling experience,” he said. “When you hold a heart in your hand, you are never the same again.”

In the dissection room, Ms. Moore demonstrated how to properly hold a scalpel (“like a pen”). Then she made the first cut, on the upper thigh, showing how to delicately pull back one layer at a time — first the skin, then the sticky white fascia, then the bright yellow fat and so on. The body had been “soft embalmed,” a technique that relies on very little formaldehyde, preserves colors and textures and, I quickly learned, makes things very messy.

“I don’t know where to start,” one student, a massage therapist, said.

“You can’t mess it up,” Ms. Moore replied. “Even if you go a little bit too deep, you can start over somewhere else.”

A New Perspective on the Body

For people who lay hands on clients — like massage therapists and Pilates, yoga or strength trainers — touching actual tissue offers unparalleled learning, said Dr. Carrie McCulloch, a physician and Pilates instructor who co-founded the Mount Sinai dissection course in 2006 with her husband, a Pilates instructor and former dancer named Matt McCulloch, as well as Dr. Laitman.

“They are working with real human bodies,” Dr. McCulloch said, “and they should learn from real human bodies, too.”

Courses range from about $1200 for a weekend workshop to $4500 or more for a six-day program. Anna Kaiser, who owns two popular cardio dance studios in New York and attended the Mount Sinai course in 2012, said the class made her feel better equipped to help certain postpartum clients.

Ms. Kaiser was able to study a donor body that had undergone a C-section and was struck by just how many layers of abdominal muscle were severed. This deepened her appreciation for the seriousness of the recovery, as well as for the work needed to rebuild core strength, layer by layer.

Now, “I can visualize what that looks like,” she said. “It’s very different than seeing a picture in a book.”

Back at the dissection table, the students had begun to reach muscle. “It’s so much more delicate than I imagined,” one commented, pulling apart the four long strands that made up the quadriceps.

In contrast, they noted the toughness of the fascia, or connective tissue, that surrounds every muscle. “It’s very flexible but very durable,” one student said. “You have to put a little pressure on your scalpel.”

One student handed me the iliotibial (or IT) band, which ran from Betty’s hip to her knee and felt strong but surprisingly light and thin, almost like duct tape. For all the years I aggressively foam rolled mine, I pictured it as thicker and knottier. I made a mental note to go easier.

The Case for Cadavers

Over the past twenty years, as research around the health benefits of exercise has expanded, more and more primary care doctors are recommending exercise to their patients, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. As a result, many fitness professionals now find themselves working with clients who have complex conditions, from knee replacements to high blood pressure.

“Health, fitness, treatment, doctors are part of a continuum,” Dr. Laitman said. “Fitness professionals — they see people ofttimes before they’ll go to a doctor.”

Sometimes, after taking a dissection course, “instructors realize that some of the choices they were making for their clients were not well enough informed,” said Mr. McCulloch, who has co-written books about anatomy. For example, some students, after seeing the bones of cadavers with osteoporosis, realized that the bends and twists in their workouts may be too aggressive for a client’s fragile body.

Natasha Standley, a massage therapist and former step aerobics instructor in Ms. Moore’s course, told me later that she learned what is — and isn’t — in her hands when she works with clients.

“Some of the muscles are really, really deep,” she said. The dissection made it clear that the psoas and quadratus lumborum (QL) muscles, which can cause back, pelvis and hip pain, aren’t accessible, despite what diagrams might suggest. Instead of trying to reach them through massage, she said, she plans to incorporate more stretching into her work.

After the students finished lunch (most opted for vegetarian), they returned to their posts at the dissection table. Ms. Moore and a lab assistant had flipped Betty over and put on music to reinvigorate the group. As R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” began playing through an overhead speaker, everyone picked up their scalpels.

The day went smoothly, but afterward I felt shaken. When I arrived at the airport that night, I didn’t see travelers — I saw walking cadavers.

But as time has passed, I have come to appreciate the intricacy and interconnectedness of every muscle, tendon and bone. Spending time with a body that will never move again gave me a new appreciation for my own body’s ability to move. When I got home, I couldn’t wait to go for a run.

Danielle Friedman is a journalist in New York and the author of “Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World.”

Balance the Holiday Rush - Click the link below to learn more about how you can prepare yourself for the holidays!
12/01/2023

Balance the Holiday Rush - Click the link below to learn more about how you can prepare yourself for the holidays!

10/09/2023

Massage Therapy and Physical Therapy Work Together to Get You Back Into Balance

Booking yourself a massage treatment is a great way to relieve stress and reduce tension. A massage is not merely a luxury, but a necessity with therapeutic benefits. Scheduling a massage appointment alongside our unique and customized physical therapy sessions promotes your treatment goals and allows our physical therapists to devote more time to other approaches in addition to manual therapy. Our Licensed Massage Therapist, Amelia, works synergistically with our physical therapy team to provide the results you’re looking for– here’s how:

1. Strength and length. Pain and discomfort often arise from a combination of weak muscles and overused, tight muscles. Physical therapy strengthens and engages the former, while massage therapy soothes and softens the latter. Relying on both modalities tackles pain holistically and allows the nervous system to integrate how to move more functionally.

2. More motivation, less medication. Physical therapy relies on prescriptive exercise to correct imbalance and achieve results. Weak muscles may be challenged or uncomfortable when performing remedial exercise. Massage therapy decreases pain and increases range of motion, making you more motivated to stick to your treatment program. Bonus: pain reduction also minimizes the need for pain medication!

3. Massage benefits: body and mind. There are many evidence-based benefits to therapeutic massage. In addition to pain relief, massage reduces inflammation, improves general circulation, and mobilizes scar tissue. Massage also calms the mind and relaxes the body, which regulates breathing and cultivates an increased awareness of the body.

4. Maintain your gains. The direct benefits of massage facilitate the treatment plan prescribed by your physical therapist, which can expedite your recovery time. And once your treatment goals have been achieved, regular massage maintains these improvements by treating tight muscles that become overworked with daily activities and promoting somatic self awareness to curb harmful habits.

5. Heal holistically. Our massage therapist and physical therapists look at the body holistically, integrating health history, postural anomalies, compensatory movement patterns, and neuromuscular habits. In assessing and treating the source of pain and dysfunction, these modalities work together to relieve symptoms and potentially prevent or delay the need for surgical intervention.

Schedule your massage with Amelia today to enhance your PT outcome!

03/30/2023

Whatever the Problem, It’s Probably Solved by Walking

By Andrew McCarthy
Reprinted from the New York Times March 25, 2023

Mr. McCarthy is the author of, most recently, “Walking With Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain.”

Walking is the worst-kept secret I know. Its rewards hide under every step.

Perhaps because we take walking so much for granted, many of us often ignore its ample gifts. In truth, I doubt I would walk often or very far if its sole benefit was physical, despite the abundant proof of its value in that regard. There’s something else at play in walking that interests me more. And with the arrival of spring, attention must be paid.

I discovered the power of ambling more than a quarter century ago when I traipsed 500 miles across Spain on the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage route. I stumbled upon the Camino by accident and then trudged across Spain with purpose. I’ve been a walker ever since. And I’m not the only one.

Hippocrates proclaimed that “walking is man’s best medicine.” The good doctor also knew that walking provided more than mere physical benefits when he suggested: “If you are in a bad mood, go for a walk. If you are still in a bad mood, go for another walk.” He was alluding to what so many who came after would attest, that walking not only nourishes the body but also soothes the mind while it burns off tension and makes our troubles recede into a more manageable perspective.

Soren Kierkegaard agreed when he confessed, “I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.” And Charles Dickens was even more direct. “If I could not walk far and fast,” he wrote, “I think I should just explode and perish.”
But walking does more than keep the devil from the door. The Welsh poet (and sometime vagabond) W.H. Davies wrote:
Now shall I walk
Or shall I ride?
“Ride,” Pleasure said.
“Walk,” Joy replied.
Walking buoys the spirits in a way that feels real and earned. It feels owned. And walking, like a generous partner, meets us more than halfway.

There’s abundant testimony that a good ramble fuels creativity. William Wordsworth swore by walking, as did Virginia Woolf. So did William Blake. Thomas Mann assured us, “Thoughts come clearly while one walks.” J.K. Rowling observed that there is “nothing like a nighttime stroll to give you ideas,” while the turn-of-the-20th-century novelist Elizabeth von Arnim concluded that walking “is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things.”

And ask any deep thinker about the benefits of what Bill Bryson calls the “tranquil tedium” walking elicits. Jean-Jacques Rousseau admitted, “There is something about walking that animates and activates my ideas.” Even the resolutely pessimistic Friedrich Nietzsche had to give it up for a good saunter when he allowed, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”

While my own ruminations may not approach the lofty heights to which Nietzsche referred, a good long walk, or even one not so long, begins to carve out space between my thoughts that allows clarity to rise up through my shoes in a way that no other mode of transport does. The travel writer and scholar Patrick Leigh Fermor put it succinctly when he said, “All horsepower corrupts.”

Until I went to Spain with the sole mission of crossing the country on foot, I often considered walking a waste of my time. The Camino changed that. The monthlong walk revealed me to myself in a way nothing else had — my looping pattern of thinking, my habitual emotion cycles, my fearful nature. The Camino wore down my resistance to seeing myself, and then step after step built me back up. It altered my place in the world.

Instead of viewing walking as simply the slowest way to get somewhere, I grew to see it not only as a means to an end, but as the event itself. And since I walked the Camino for a second time last year with my 19-year-old son, I’ve come to understand walking as among the most valuable things I can do.

The writer Rebecca Solnit pointed out that walking “is how the body measures itself against the earth.” And through such physical communion, walking offers up its crowning gift by bringing us emotionally, even spiritually, home to ourselves. When on the last day of our walk my son turned to me and said, “Dad, that’s the only ‘10 out of 10’ thing I’ve ever done in my life,” I knew he had arrived not only in Santiago de Compostela, but, more meaningfully, in himself.

The great naturalist John Muir keenly observed, “I only went out for a walk and … going out, I found, was really going in.” Has anyone ever emerged from ambling through nature for an hour and regretted their improved state of being? Perhaps this is what that dedicated walker Henry David Thoreau was referring to when he wrote, “I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.”

So the secret is out there. It’s under the leaves on the trail. It’s right there on the sidewalk. Spring has sprung. Lace up.

Andrew McCarthy is a writer and an actor and the author of, most recently, “Walking With Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain.”

03/09/2023

5 Exercises to Keep an Aging Body Strong and Fit
Declines in muscle and bone strength start earlier than you might think. Build a smart workout habit now.

By Connie Chang
Reprinted from the NY Times March 7, 2023

When we’re young, exercise can enable us to run a race after an all-nighter or snowboard on a diet of Doritos. But as we age, fitness has a much more far-reaching impact, boosting our energy levels, preventing injuries and keeping us mentally sharp.

Aging causes muscles to lose mass, bone density to thin and joints to stiffen — affecting our balance, coordination and strength. At the same time, hormonal shifts and persistent low-level inflammation can set the stage for chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

And the changes start earlier than you might think. Muscles begin to shrink in our 30s and continue their downward spiral in midlife, with up to 25 percent of their peak mass gone by the time we’re 60.

But there’s hope: Exercise can stall muscle loss, cognitive decline and fatigue. “It’s never too late to start exercising, and it’s never too early,” Chhanda Dutta, a gerontologist at the National Institute on Aging, said.

You can’t just start dead-lifting 150 pounds at the gym, though. Start slow, experiment and gradually amp up the intensity.

Experts suggest trying exercises that target one or more of four categories of fitness, all of which deteriorate with age: flexibility, balance, endurance and strength. Preserving function across these domains can stave off injury and disability, keeping you active and independent longer.

There is no magic-bullet, full-body exercise to forestall aging, said Dr. Brian Feeley, the chief of sports medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Here are five movements, targeting different areas of the body, to try.

Strengthen the lower body: Squats and stairs.

During exercise, “injuries happen when you’re fatigued, and your muscles can’t react as quickly,” Dr. Feeley said. Squats help prevent this fatigue by strengthening the large muscles in your lower body while moving multiple joints at once, which improves overall endurance as well as balance and coordination.

Dr. Feeley suggests doing three sets of 10 to 15 squats four times a week. To further challenge your balance, do them with one foot or both feet on a pillow. Or to focus on strength, squat while holding free weights — close to your chest to start or extended in front of you to work your core more.

If you loathe squats, but still want to strengthen the same muscle groups, try climbing stairs, which is adaptable to different fitness levels, said Dr. Maria Fiatarone Singh, a geriatrician at the University of Sydney. Start by walking up and down the stairs, and graduate to sprinting or wearing ankle weights.

For added difficulty, hop up the stairs on one foot or two feet — holding onto the handrail if necessary for safety. “Hopping is a power movement for your hip and knee extensors,” similar to the power training of box-jumping exercises, Dr. Fiatarone Singh said. If you are pressed for time, turn it into a high-intensity exercise, with four four-minute bouts of high-intensity effort, resting three minutes between bouts, four times a week.

Can’t spare even that much time? “Even four minutes, four days a week significantly improves aerobic capacity,” Dr. Fiatarone Singh said.

Get your heart rate up: Take a Nordic walk.

As a cross-country skiing enthusiast, Dr. Michael Schaefer, a rehabilitation physician at University Hospitals in Cleveland, loves Nordic walking — an exercise using ergonomic poles that uses the same movements. No snow required.

“Nordic walking is unparalleled as an aerobic exercise because you’re not just using the major muscle groups of your legs and hips, but your core, shoulders and arms too,” Dr. Schaefer said. The regimen lowers blood pressure and improves the body’s use of oxygen. And when you traverse hills or uneven ground, you’re strengthening your ankles and challenging your vestibular system — a sensory system housed in the inner ear that enhances balance and coordination.

“Start with 15 to 20 minutes three times a week and work up to one hour,” Dr. Schaefer advised.

The basic movement — walking, using poles to propel your movement — can take some getting used to, but online videos or your local Nordic walking group can get you started. The key is to swing your arms as if they’re clock pendulums, keeping the elbows relatively straight and planting your pole behind you and pushing off as your opposing leg strides forward.

Gillian Stewart, the program director for Nordic Walking UK, recommended buying Nordic walking poles, since they’re angled to the position they take during the exercise. In a pinch, Dr. Schaefer said, “regular walking poles would work,” but not ski poles.

Train your upper body: Try hanging around.

If Katy Bowman, a kinesiologist, had her way, everyone’s New Year’s resolution would include a trip across the monkey bars. “It’s such a primal movement, and uses all these parts of our upper body” that otherwise don’t get used very often, said Ms. Bowman, the author of “Rethink Your Position.”

Hanging from a horizontal bar enhances grip strength and shoulder mobility, strengthens the core and stretches the upper body — from the chest to the spine to the forearms.

As with any exercise, it’s best to progress slowly — start by hanging on a bar with your feet supported on a box or chair so that muscles unused to carrying a load can become accustomed to bearing some tension. From there, proceed to an active hang, in which your shoulder blades are retracted and pulled down (as if you’re about to start a pull-up), your core and arms are engaged, and your hands are about shoulder-width apart.

Add a slight swing front to back or right to left to work the core and spine even more. Or mix up your grip — hands facing away from or toward you, or one of each — to emphasize different muscles. An underhand grip, for example, loads the biceps more than an overhand grip, which works the lats.

And you don’t need fancy equipment to hang. Ms. Bowman suggested creating a hanging station in your home with a “$20 doorway chin-up bar that doesn’t take up much of a footprint.” Since she’s installed one, she said, she’s noticed a “radical” increase in her upper body and grip strength — which is linked to a decrease in all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. A little goes a long way too: Begin with 20-second hangs, twice a day, working up to a full minute.

“Frequent, shorter hangs distributed throughout the day are your best bet for making progress,” Ms. Bowman said. Once you feel comfortable with one-minute hangs she recommended eight to 10 of them, with an hour’s rest in between. These breaks also give the skin on your hands some time to adapt.

Strengthen your core and hips: Use a slider.

If you work at an office or a desk, all of that sitting can do a number on your hip flexors, the muscles that help you bend your knees toward your waist and stabilize your spine. And hunching over a desk shortens the muscles in the chest while lengthening those in the back, contributing to text neck, which is muscle strain and weakness of the lower neck, shoulders and upper back.

To counteract this, Nicole Sciacca, a mobility specialist in Los Angeles, pairs mountain climbers with sliders — small disks on which you rest your hands or feet that slide freely on the floor (or, you can use paper plates). Training on an unstable surface increases the intensity of an exercise, forcing you to engage your core — especially the diaphragm, transverse abdominis and pelvic floor — to maintain position.

“It’s great because it asks everything along the front side of the body that’s been sleeping at a desk or in a car to get stronger,” Ms. Sciacca said.

If you’re new to working your upper body and core, Ms. Sciacca suggests holding a simple plank for 30 seconds. Once that’s comfortable, position your feet on the sliders, assume the same position, and work to keep yourself stable.

To progress, move one foot in under your body until your knee reaches your chest. Slide that foot back out while your other foot comes in. Continue alternating your feet for up to three rounds of eight reps, keeping the core strong and the back straight. Or try a timed effort of 60 seconds when you’re ready for more.

Variations include bringing your knees in and then out at the same time or sweeping your legs out in a jumping-jack motion.

Improve your flexibility: Foam roll.

Tala Khalaf, a physical therapist at Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif., thinks of fascia — a system of connective tissue that wraps around our muscles and organs — as the Cinderella of orthopedic medicine. For years, this tissue, which is studded with sensory nerves and can look like a sheath around the outside of muscles or found within them, toiled away in obscurity, ignored and minimized.

But research in the past decade has lifted up fascial tissue as a crucial component of the musculoskeletal system. As we age, fascia becomes less pliable and elastic, which contributes to back pain, stiffness and a limited range of motion.

Dr. Khalaf, who is also a faculty member at Stanford’s Orthopedic Physical Therapy Clinical Residency Program, said one solution was foam rolling, which massages out the fascial kinks and improves flexibility. Best of all, the basic moves are simple and time-efficient. Typical areas to roll include the calves, thigh and back. Experiment to see which exercises provide the most relief.

A Workout Schedule to Get You Started

Now, weave all the threads together — with the aim of least five days a week of exercise. Dr. Feeley recommended mixing and matching exercises that hit the four dimensions of fitness, but notes that its components can be rearranged, depending on what you like and want to improve.

Day 1:
-Squats/stairs
-Foam rolling
-Nordic walking
Day 2:
-Mountain climbers
-Hangs
-Nordic walking
Day 3:
-Squats/stairs
-Foam rolling
Day 4:
-Mountain climbers
-Foam rolling
-Nordic walking
Day 5:
-Squats/stairs
-Hangs

Address

121 East 60th Street, Suite 8D
New York, NY
10022

Opening Hours

Monday 7:30am - 5pm
Tuesday 7:30am - 5pm
Wednesday 7:30am - 5pm
Thursday 7:30am - 5pm
Friday 7:30am - 5pm
Saturday 7:30am - 5pm
Sunday 7:30am - 5pm

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Back into Balance Physical Therapy posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Videos

Are You Having Neck Pain?
Are You Having Neck Pain?

We're back with the Zoom Mechanic at Back into Balance Physical Therapy! Watch as our physical therapist “zooms” in to evaluate the problem and create a solution. Today's Zoom Mechanic, Ayala Usdin, makes a few adjustments to relieve neck pain while looking at your phone. 1. Lift your head and raise the phone up to eye level. 2. Head up and support your raised arm under your elbow or place elbow on armrest. 3. Add a pillow to support the elbows. Stay tuned every Tuesday for more adventures with our Zoom Mechanic! Do you need a Zoom Mechanic? Schedule your 30 minute session today!

Are You Having Pain or Difficulty Getting Out of a Chair?
Are You Having Pain or Difficulty Getting Out of a Chair?

It’s time for another episode of the Zoom Mechanic at Back into Balance Physical Therapy! Watch as our physical therapist “zooms” in to evaluate the problem and create a solution. Today's Zoom Mechanic, Susan Servetnick, teaches you how to get out of a chair safely: First- Slide to the front of the chair Second- Hinge forward at the hips Third- Press your feet firmly in the ground Fourth- Squeeze the buttock muscles to lift off the seat Stay tuned every Tuesday for more adventures with our Zoom Mechanic! Do you need a Zoom Mechanic? Schedule your 30 minute session today!

Do You Need A Zoom Mechanic?
Do You Need A Zoom Mechanic?

Introducing the Zoom Mechanic at Back into Balance Physical Therapy! Watch how our Zoom Mechanic evaluates your workstation and posture, then makes simple adjustments to relieve pain while sitting at the computer. Today's Zoom Mechanic, our very own physical therapist Ayala Usdin, makes the following adjustments: 1. Adjusts the chair height. 2. Adds a back cushion and moves the chair closer to the desk. 3. Centers the computer to minimize repetitive rotational forces on the spine. 4. Places a book under the feet to promote better alignment and weight bearing with feet flat on the ground. Stay tuned every Tuesday for more adventures with our Zoom Mechanic! Do you need a Zoom Mechanic? Schedule your 30 minute session today!

How do I sleep on my side in proper alignment so I do not strain my neck?
How do I sleep on my side in proper alignment so I do not strain my neck?

Shortcuts

Share

Our Story

BACK INTO BALANCE is a boutique Physical Therapy practice that strives to uncover the source of imbalance in the body instead of just treating the symptoms. Our experienced therapists spends one hour working individually with each patient. Our focus is on a comprehensive evaluation of a patient’s body and lifestyle: a proactive plan is created to educate patients how to take care of their body as it ages. Prevention is the cornerstone of our philosophy and we encourage bi-annual body “check ups” to strategically manage the aging process.

One of the many benefits of being a physical therapist for more than 25 years is being part of the transformation that has taken place in the field, particularly as we transition from a medical model of sickness to wellness. We no longer work “on” patients; we work “with” patients. We no longer want to wait for you to get sick or injured; we want to work with you now.

Together we can identify potential red flags before they develop into chronic problems. Together we can bridge the gap between exercising and actually seeing how those exercises translate into making you look, feel and be better at everything you do. Together we can guide you on how to maintain a healthy and balanced body, allowing you to stay active and live your life fully.

Patients today are smarter, more sophisticated, more demanding and armed with much more information than in years past. You know that sitting and being sedentary in 2018 is as taboo as smoking was in the 80’s. Our intention is for you to participate in all your life’s passions and continue to live fully. Oftentimes patients ask why they can’t do “something” that they had been doing for years or can’t exercise at same intensity without pain. We understand how frustrating the aging process is and how it can limit both exercise and everyday activities. The good news is that we have the answers, and would welcome the opportunity to work in conjunction with you toward your goals.

Other New York travel agencies

Show All

You may also like