I've had this same problem before, and allways spent a long time setting, then re-setting, my constraints. It allways seemed counter-intuative until I read a comment that twillis made recently about how she sets up her constraints, and the solution is in the modeling. Set up your character with the hands, feet, and everything else is straight down when you apply the constraint. Then the orientations for the constraints all work with x, y and z in the same orientation as the world x, y and z. This seems to solve the disconection with the world coordinates, and helps the constraints make more sense. Hope this helps, and twillis, chime in here if I've mis-understood your reasoning.