Even the most agile and elegant ballet dancer can find himself with back pain just from sitting at his laptop

Paul Liburd, 40, ballet dancer

I met Alan when I moved to Glasgow from London to join Scottish Ballet in 2004. I needed to find a chiropractor and some of the other dancers in the company recommended him. He treats quite a few of the dancers now. As time has passed, we've got to know each other and often chat away when I'm on the treatment table. We talk about everything: from work and whether I'm on tour to where we've been on holiday and what films we've seen lately. I think we have quite similar personalities, and he seems quite a shy person, like me.

While ours is a professional relationship, I bumped into him in the Bier Halle in Glasgow the other day with his wife and baby, and went straight over to say hello and have a chat. He has come to see me perform a few times when the company has been in Glasgow. I don't know how many shows Alan saw before, but he's always interested in what we are doing as a company.

I go to see him mostly for maintenance and to keep things aligned. Unless there's something drastically wrong, I don't see him too often: usually it's every six weeks. Alan is one of the busiest chiropractors in Glasgow so it can be difficult to get an appointment as people book him months in advance.

My key problem areas are my pelvis, which is often out of alignment, and my neck. Alan will ease up the muscles before starting to work, which really helps. He uses the McTimoney chiropractic technique, which is a soft way of manipulating your body. People often have the misconception that chiropractic treatments are harsh, with lots of cracking, but that's certainly not the method Alan uses.

As a dancer, I do have a good awareness of my body and tend to know which parts are not working properly. I go in there and tell Alan what I think is wrong. I can usually pinpoint what it is, but sometimes he may diagnose another part of the body if it's a referred pain I'm experiencing.

As well as dancing I do lots of stretching and go to Pilates to keep in shape. I used to go to the gym but I have a Wii Fit now, so I use that.

As long as I'm in Glasgow I will keep going to see Alan for treatments. He's a great guy and I trust him.

Alan MacInnes, 39, chiropractor

I'VE KNOWN Paul for four and a half years now. Over time we've got to know each other fairly well, although it's been a gradual thing. I always follow what he's doing at Scottish Ballet and, depending on the programmes he's working on, I might see him more often.

Paul is not going to walk through the door with the same problem each time. Sometimes, when he starts a new dance programme, he can come in with something completely different to what he's had before.

Treating a dancer is different to treating most other people. Paul's body is his livelihood, and it's more finely tuned than the average body. He doesn't have a typical dancer's body: his physique is similar to that of a sprinter. He's extremely professional about what he does, and if I ask him to do something - say a series of stretches at home - he will do it. In some respects he's easier to treat than other people because he will comply with any advice I give him. Not everyone does that.

By far the biggest percentage of people I see have jobs where the day-to-day sitting, leaning and twisting at their desk is causing them problems. Their body is not moving about, or is holding twisted positions for hours at a time. In Paul's case, it's the sheer repetition of rehearsing that inevitably leads to problems.

It can take time to learn what is causing a problem. Even Paul has come with a pain that's turned out to be related to how he's been sitting at his laptop, rather than as a result of dancing. Although he is using his body in a very physical way with his job, he'll still be doing things at night like leaning and twisting while watching TV or working on the computer.

Paul is a private person so we tend not to delve too deep in our conversations - it's mostly general chit-chat about holidays, family and what's happening with the ballet company rather than anything too personal.

I've been to see Paul dance in different shows but I find it hard to watch solely from the perspective of the dancing itself. I always watch the dancers' movements carefully as that gives me a good understanding of how certain areas of their bodies are getting stressed.

Paul is always a professional. That has contributed a lot to the longevity of his career and being able to perform at the highest level the way he does.

Scottish Ballet will perform at the Edinburgh International Festival in September

Interviews by Susan Swarbrick