Why I ask about your sleep before your shoulder

The intake questions that seem unrelated are the ones that tell me the most.

How you sleep, how you sit, what you carry and on which side, whether you have been holding your breath for six months — these shape the tissue far more than the single incident you came in to tell me about. The shoulder is rarely the story. The shoulder is where the story finally got loud enough to book an appointment.

So when I spend the first ten minutes asking about your week rather than your pain, I am not making conversation. I am looking for the pattern that will still be there after you leave, because that is the thing worth changing.