If you have tried physical therapy, chiropractic care, orthotics, core strengthening, and surgery, and your pain still will not go away, the problem may not be where you think it is. Movement specialist Helen Hall has spent decades helping people with chronic pain and recurring injuries find what everyone else missed, and in most cases, the answer is hiding somewhere far from the site of the pain itself.
In this episode, Helen joins the Health Detective Podcast to share how her own struggles with sciatica and shin splints, stubborn through years of conventional treatment, resolved almost overnight once she started paying attention to how her whole body was moving. As the founder of the PFM Way and an eight-time Ironman, she brings both personal depth and clinical precision to a conversation that covers head position, spinal organization, lymphatic function, and the nervous system, all as one inseparable system.
Her approach aligns closely with the FDN philosophy of investigating the body as a whole rather than chasing isolated symptoms. If you have ever felt like you have tried everything, this episode is worth your full attention.
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In this episode
- Head position is the number one movement issue Helen measures in clinic. A forward head that is angled just 30 degrees forward effectively increases the load your body carries from roughly 11 pounds to nearly 40, creating a cascade of tension that can show up as foot pain, sciatica, shoulder problems, headaches, and more.
- Chronic pain is rarely caused by weakness. People who walk into Helen’s clinic are often far stronger than they realize, precisely because they have been carrying an enormous, unnoticed mechanical load for years without any awareness of it.
- The body does not compensate, it strategizes. Helen reframes the concept of compensation as a sign of how remarkably well-made we are, and argues that pain usually appears only when the body has finally exhausted its ability to keep adapting to a disorganized pattern.
- You cannot change what you cannot see. A simple tool, having a friend take a photo and a short video of you standing and moving, can reveal asymmetries and fixed patterns that have been invisible to you for years, and those fixed elements are the clues worth investigating.
- The sympathetic nervous system, posture, and organ function are inseparable. A forward-leaning spine restricts diaphragm movement, reduces lymphatic flow, narrows the visual field, and keeps the body in a stress-dominant state, all of which feeds back into pain, poor digestion, disrupted sleep, and hormonal imbalance.
- Movement development does not end in infancy. The neurological patterns we build as children remain plastic throughout life, and disorganized patterns from early development can be at the underlying cause of adult pain that has resisted every other intervention.
- Start with the simplest observation. Standing against a wall and noticing how far your head sits from the surface is a low-tech, zero-cost way to begin investigating whether head position is playing a role in whatever is bothering you.
About Helen Hall
Helen Hall is a movement specialist and the founder of the PFM Way and 10 Point, where she uses advanced gait analysis technology to identify the whole-body movement patterns underlying chronic pain and recurring injuries. She began her career as an air traffic control officer in the Royal Air Force before training in fitness, massage therapy, and advanced lymphatic work, with a specialization in circulation and movement efficiency. An eight-time Ironman finisher and recognized as the world’s first female barefoot Ironman, Helen works with both everyday clients and elite athletes and is the author of a book on efficient running. She shares movement education on Instagram at @HelenHallPFM, on YouTube at The PFM Way, and through her website at helen-hall.co.uk.
Resources
For the tools, labs, and training mentioned on the show, visit the FDN resources page: fdntraining.com/resources.
FDNtraining.com/resources
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