Going back to babyhood?
Have you ever noticed that we all enter the world in a fetal position, straighten out and then slowly return to that same fetal position as we age? We also start out walking with wobbly, unstable movements as toddlers. Most of us gain our stability as children. But somewhere in adulthood, we start getting a little more shaky and eventually have difficulty keeping our balance as we walk — just as we did when we were 1 year old.
In the rehabiltation world, a lot of time and research is spent on studying how we all learn to move as children. This research is important for treating children with movement disorders, but is also very valuable for use in adult rehabilitation as well. When we become injured, a little part of our brain forgets how to move that body part properly. If the injury is small, we might not even consciously notice this change.
Slowly these small injuries add up and we develop incorrect movement patterns (like using our hamstrings to do what our butt muscles should do and having raised shoulders all of the time). The longer these incorrect patterns are there, the more discomfort we feel and the less coordinated our movements are. Eventually, these incorrect patterns can cause you to lose your independence while walking and doing household chores.
To retrain the brain after an injury, we use many movements/exercises that mimick what we did as infants/toddlers such as crawling and reaching based exercises. Although our patients think we are crazy, the research shows that these movements are the best way to regain stability and strength. Even seniors with balance difficulties can see impressive gains with some of these simple exercises.