Why is my gait so rigid?

[bobsled]

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[postdiluvium]

There are probably tons of reasons for this. The most common ones are:

1. Wearing shoes that are not made for your feet. If you wear shoes that are not made for your foot type for a long period of time, complications such as Plantar Fasciitis and heel spurs occur. Also, certain parts can be stretch out further than they should and years of walking on them with no proper treatment had made the condition from chronic to permanent.

2. You're out of alignment. Your body being out of alignment staggers your center of gravity, which causes your muscles to contract and stretch in an unorthodox way.

You should go see a doctor. Also, you need to elaborate on your condition more. With what you have posted, anyone bothering to reply is just shooting in the dark.

[Guffaw Muslim]

Sounds like it might be chronic holding patterns.

Basically, where your body is stressed, it lays down tissue (fascia) to protect, or hold things in place when you continually do repetitive movements (ex: a women always carries a big ass purse on her left shoulder - the tissue in her neck/shoulder shortens - her left shoulder becomes elevated).

This pulls parts of your body out of alignment, and then other parts shift to compensate, taking you away from your structural objective/positive relationship with gravity.

But there are repatterning exercises you can do on your own to lengthen this tissue, here's some http://www.amandamessenger.com/RepatterningExcersises.html

Just remember, your body is constantly shifting and changing, so you will never reach 100% structural objective. It's like doing the laundry, it never really ends.

You could also go see a professional Rolfer/Hellerworker/or other therapist that practices Structural Integration, and see how they could help you.

**But as postdiluvium said, you should go talk to your doctor, this is not a diagnosis, just my opinion on what it could be.**

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_Integration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolfing