Movement Pulse
Research and news across back pain, fibromyalgia, hypermobility, posture, sleep, and the Feldenkrais Method, with practitioner's notes from Chava Sorani, GCFP.
Why the fear of moving and the confidence to move seem to pull each other along
A new analysis in Pain, drawn from a trial of 521 adults, tracks how the pieces of recovery move each other week by week.
Aug 26, 2026
In 18 sciatica injection trials, the people who got salt water kept getting better
Saline was supposed to be the inert comparator. Across 759 patients it was not. Three questions worth taking to your next appointment.
Aug 25, 2026
Patients rated massage and opioids as their most helpful chronic pain treatments
A retrospective review asked 226 chronic pain patients to rate 56 treatments they had tried. The top of the list runs from massage to oxycodone, and the arrangement is the interesting part.
Aug 24, 2026
Why moving in the evening may matter less for your sleep than how hard you move
A review of 25 comparative studies found no clear group level advantage for morning exercise. The signal that did survive was about intensity, not the hour.
Aug 24, 2026
The APA pain guideline backs exercise, then declines to say which kind is better
A summary of the APA's chronic musculoskeletal pain guideline has just appeared in American Psychologist. Its first line list is short and firm. Almost every comparison between one movement approach and another came back as insufficient evidence.
Aug 23, 2026
The body awareness that fades with age is not the body awareness that predicts function
Four studies across eleven years have quietly taken apart the idea that interoception is one ability sliding down one curve.
Aug 22, 2026
A lumbar belt eased back pain in a new trial. How much people moved did not change
A multicenter trial put a soft lumbar belt against usual care for 12 weeks. The belt group improved more, and the secondary results are the interesting part.
Aug 21, 2026
Stiff most mornings? What the largest review of tai chi and qigong actually found
A new BJSM umbrella review grades the evidence for tai chi, qigong and related practices across 1,744 trials. Plus a five minute weight shift experiment.
Aug 20, 2026
Why walking feels heavier at 70 than at 40 is not weaker calves, it is quiet gripping
A recent gait study across 107 adults ages 26 to 86 reveals a change in ankle coordination most people never notice, and points to attention as the intervention.
Aug 19, 2026
The back exercises helped more when older women learned to feel them, not just do them
A small randomized trial gave one group core stability exercises, and another the same exercises plus Feldenkrais awareness lessons. The second group ended up moving with noticeably less fear.
Aug 19, 2026
Fear of moving is linked to thinner bones, but the study cannot tell us which came first
A new cross sectional study found that fear of movement was common in people with osteoporosis and tracked with lower bone density. It cannot say which drives which, and that gap is the whole point.
Aug 19, 2026
Why the balance exercise that works in a class may not be the one that works at home
A new analysis pooled 423 trials and nearly 34,000 older adults to compare 19 ways of training balance. The ranking changed depending on which kind of balance was being measured.
Aug 16, 2026Ready to start moving better?
Try your first lesson for free. No credit card required.