Dancer Back to Movement

Performing Artist Mina Lawton Shares Her Story

As a professional performing artist specializing in classical and contemporary dance, Mina Lawton relies on her body to move in a myriad of ways. When she suffered a setback from a knee injury, she came to Cioffredi & Associates for rehab.

Mina was unable to bear the necessary weight and force through her knee that was needed for her to perform. Despite being more flexible than most people overall, she demonstrated limitation in her left hip flexors and rotators, as well as her quadriceps relative to her right leg. These imbalances affected the control of the knee cap, and the freedom and quality of her movements.

Treatment included manual therapy, including some use of Trigger point Dry Needling (TDN) in order to fully release short, restricted tissue. Then, movement-based exercises were used to reeducate faulty movement patterns that had developed as a result of the biomechanical imbalance. As a professional dancer, Mina has a keen awareness of her body and movement, which really facilitated her improvement.

“The success of my time as a patient at Cioffredi & Associates was not only the impressive effectiveness of treatment of my injury, but the support to overcome the fear created by my injury. This fear can lead to a disconnect from the most important tool and athlete has – their body – and can be more debilitating than the injury itself.”

“Working with Bill allowed me to restart my own personal training and work in an intelligent and positive manner, free of fear of my injury and my body. This allowed me to progress both with physical therapy and now with my own personal practice into the future.”