A more natural approach to movement in treatment

It has long been traditional to teach the subjects of Anatomy and Kinesiology in a standardised way. For descriptive purposes, and for ease of management, bodily movements have been tidily divided into sectional compartments. Thus, flexion-extension, abduction-adduction, medial and lateral rotation are descriptive terms, and refer to stylised rather than natural or habitual movements. These methods, together with the tremendous amount of time that students devote to the subjects, means that physiotherapists tend to think of movement mostly in relation to these terms, as movements about certain stylised axes, and in certain descriptive planes. Although this approach appears to be an acceptable introduction to the analysis and understanding of human movement, it would be desirable for students to understand, at an early stage, that habitual, natural movement does not follow this model, but rather cuts across and through it, modifying it considerably.