About the Author: Stasia Blyskal, DO ’12 became interested in osteopathic medicine during her 10 years as a professional modern dancer. She completed her residency in Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine/Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, NY, and currently has a private OMM practice in New York City. She has taught at TOUROCOM Harlem and at NYIT-COM.
Health for Movers; Moving for Health: Reflections on Dance Medicine in the age of COVID-19
By Stasia Blyskal, DO ‘12
Osteopathic medicine is uniquely well-suited to attend to the health needs of dancers, other performing artists, and yoga enthusiasts. Likewise, as osteopathic physicians, we are ever mindful of how maintaining a healthy structure helps ensure healthy physiology. Thus we are well-poised to counsel our patients on the benefits
of exercise, dance being an enjoyable and cost-effective option for many people. In these times of COVID-19, providing specialized healthcare for movers and ensuring that all our patients keep moving to stay healthy are both, all the more, important.
Health for movers
Dancers place extraordinary demands on their bodies: they are elite athlete-artists. As one might expect, they incur overuse injuries as well as traumatic ones. While most European dance companies have osteopaths on staff, sadly most dancers in the U.S. have not had access to osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM). Even if they see a Dance Medicine specialist – typically an orthopedist or physiatrist – they are typically referred only for physical therapy or more interventional measures. They are thrilled when they discover OMM because it is a form of treatment that thinks and feels the way they do, that understands how, for example, tension or an imbalance in their foot influences their thoracic spine.
Indeed, knowledge of the foot and ankle injuries typically found in dancers, particularly those who dance en pointe, as well as injuries up the entire kinetic chain, is paramount. An in-depth understanding of the complex anatomy of the foot and ankle - and how to treat virtually every bone in the foot - is essential. Because of dancers’ extreme degree of external rotation or “turnout” at the hip joint, one must be proficient in treating the hip and pelvic girdle as well. In my experience, balanced ligamentous tension (BLT) approaches are incredibly effective. Indeed, because of the ligamentous laxity found in so many dancers, more vigorous approaches, such as high velocity low amplitude (HVLA), are rarely indicated. What’s more, when using BLT on a lay person, s/he may wonder if we are actually “doing anything;” whereas dancers, because of their high degree of musculoskeletal awareness, can truly feel – and appreciate! – shifts and neuromuscular repatternings as they occur throughout their bodies.
The impact of an injury on a dancer’s emotional and financial well-being is not to be underestimated. Moreover, COVID-19 has brought a hobbling injury to the field of dance as a whole. Dancers cannot gather for their daily technique class, nor can they rehearse or perform, which means they suffer from the inability to move, something so tied up with their identity. It is important to bear this in mind when seeing dancers as patients, regardless of our specialty.
Moving for health
Dancers are in large part responsible for the proliferation of Pilates, yoga and barre classes. This is a positive