Hi,

To shed some light on this thread, sometimes the body shifts away from an injury. Brian Edwards used his system of combined movement examination to determine whether something was a "stretch" pattern of pain or "compression" pattern of pain.

For example, if there is a posterolateral disc bulge to the right, then often the patient will list to the right (if it is possible). The theory is that flexion and lateral flexion left will "stretch" the right posterolateral region of the segment and further exacerbate the disc pain.

The opposite example would be a Wikipedia reference-linkfacet joint that gets caught on a meniscoid - e.g. the right facet joint at L4/5. It is often called "stuck in flexion". In this case, the problem and pain is in the lower right L/S but the patient will list to the left because the facet joint n the right cannot close. A simple manipulation of the joint usually puts things right again.

As for "hugging" the injury - i agree to a certain extent. The body will act to protect an injury. After you have felt many normal bodies and many dysfunctional bodies, it becomes something that you can feel. I understand the concept of feeling this tension but i find it difficult to teach others what i am feeling. I am more intuitive than anything else so it is difficult to teach someone what to feel...

I hope this helps!