Month: January 2013

The Inevitable

The Association for Hanna Somatic Education is the organization formally responsible for mainstreaming Hanna Somatic Education.  How is it doing?

There is no Association for Hanna Somatic Education “out there”.  The Association has its home in and as we, ourselves.

THE POTENCIES NEEDED TO MAINSTREAM SOMATICS

To “mainstream” somatics, we need four “potencies”*:

1. integrity
2. relationships
3. communication that inspires people’s sense that something is possible and do-able
4. persistent action (attention and intention)

First potency:  integrity
Integrity isn’t honesty.  Integrity is stable wholeness and completeness — what makes a collection of parts into something organized that produces an intended result.  When we have integrity, we are pleased to be seen.  We’re “playing with a full deck” — complete, competent, proficient.  We have the fortitude to be honest. Without integrity, we’re too shaky to be honest, particularly where it counts — in cleaning up messes and dysfunctional situations — and we’re incapable of living up to our promises.  Integrity is an essential principle that allows something to live.

Integrity is the nature of the second potency:

Second potency:  relationships
We operate as relationships of all sorts.  We connect. We cooperate. We get results. We share the benefits.

Relationships are resources. Relationships are the recipients of our gifts and abilities.  Until we forge and activate relationships, we’re left only with our own resources and stay small.

Relationships are the setting for the third potency:

Third potency:  communication of the advantageous possibilities
Communication isn’t, “talking to people.”  Talking isn’t communication.  Communication happens when someone internalizes what we mean to put across — and when we internalize what someone else puts across.  Communication is the outer form of the intentions we are exercising.

When we’re in communication, people:

• Trust our integrity — so they listen and internalize
• Treat the advantageous possibilities we’re talking about as something new and unique — so they listen with fresh attention, rather than pigeon-hole what we say with what they already know.  (“Is it like chiropractic?”…)
• Feel these new possibilities as something they can partake in.
• Recognize and be inspired (so they are drawn into enthusiastic action).

When others communicate with us, we experience the magic of another viewpoint that may alter and expand our own viewpoint and our potency for change.

Communication is the feedback look that connects us in the fourth potency:

Fourth potency:  persistent action (directed attention and exercise of intention)
That means, do what Thomas Hanna personally told me to do, “Be relentless.”

“Relentlessnes” may mean, to communicate relentlessly until we get the desired result; to develop relentlessly so we can walk our talk (be the result we promise to others) and deliver results to others; to take steps to “mainstream” somatics (the proper mission of the AHSE) until it happens; to “Keep our eyes on the prize”, taking whatever steps necessary to stay on or to get back on track.

So, to have a chance to succeed, we need to enhance and exercise our integrity (both individually and as a group), connect, communicate and persistently take action — relentlessly, in mood of, “success is the only acceptable outcome.

How does that feel?

Here’s the juicy part:  As we further our purpose, the energy we get back fuels us.

What We Can Do

1. Discover and enhance our power by finding (creating) these four potencies in ourselves.
2. Discover the resources we have to tap into the juicy flow that allows Somatics to tap into the world-culture — the five cultural streams, our own clients, our own abilities.
3. Communicate

_______________________________________
* credit to The Landmark Forum-in-Action Seminar

Remember a time when someone tickled you.

You wriggled and squirmed all over the place, didn’t you?

Remember a time when you got hurt.

You tightened up and pulled in the injured place, didn’t you?

The two actions are related and very similar.

Very often, an injury leads to a long-term muscular contraction action.  People think it’s only momentary, as in limping when you sprained an ankle or as in pulling your hand back when inadvertently touching something hot.

But everyone’s familiar with the lasting change of movement an injury can provoke, the limp that never goes away, the postural change that occurs after a whiplash injury.

Physical therapists do their best to eliminate those after-effects, but they tend to persist, anyway.  One reason is that medical practitioners tend to focus on the site of pain or restriction, without taking whole-body patterns of contraction into account. Without dealing with the entire pattern, the parts of the pattern
left untouched by therapy tend to re-create the entire pattern.  That’s
why therapy so often fails to produce a complete result or takes a long time.

When a somatic educator works with such muscular tension patterns, we look beyond the site of pain; we look to the whole contraction pattern, which spreads out from the site of pain the way the fracture lines of a damaged window spread out from the center of damage.

The quandary therapists (and somatic educators) face is, “How do we identify the entire pattern?”

One common way used by somatic educators and therapists to assess patterns of injury is to listen to the client/patient’s report of pain and to correlate it with the report of injury.  They may (and should) go further:  to watch the client/patient walk and otherwise move, to examine by touch (palpation), and to move the client/patient passively to discern restrictions to movement — all useful.

However, there is an assessment technique that goes beyond palpation:  to observe he client’s response to being touched, namely, to wriggle and squirm.

Even with sensitive palpation, touch elicits that response.

It’s very revealing — because the way someone wriggles exactly reveals his pattern of trauma reflex.

Thomas Hanna outlined what I call, The Spectrum of Reaction, in response to touch (found in The Handbook of Assisted Pandiculation, available to Hanna somatic education practitioners). 

It goes like this.

1. ticklishness without pain
2. pain upon being touched
3. intermittent pain without being touched
4. ongoing soreness
5. spasm 

If a person is ticklish, he is contracted (tight) at (and around) the site of ticklishness.  You can’t tickle a person who’s relaxed.  There’s no “tickle” there.

If a person is sufficiently contracted, muscles are fatigued but below the threshold of pain, and mere touch is sufficient to surface them above the threshold of pain.

If a person is more contracted, muscles are fatigued but below the threshold of pain, and mere movement using those muscles is sufficient to fatigue them enough that they hurt.  Since movement is intermittent, pain is intermittent.

If a person is yet more contracted, muscles are sufficiently fatigued to be sore all the time.

And if a person is yet more contracted, muscles are sufficiently sore to trigger a cringe response, which tightens the muscles further, makes them burn more, triggers an even heavier cringe response and the person goes into spasm.

Touch at even the “ticklish” level of contraction is sufficient to trigger the cringe response which, known by another name, is The Trauma Reflex.  At that level, it may not hurt, but the protective movement action is there, the very action that, like the fracture lines of a broken window, spreads out in a pattern from the site of injury.

In assessment, we can use the “tickle response” to show us that pattern.

Therapists may use that information to address the complete pattern using whatever modalities they choose.

Somatic educators may use that information to coach the client to contract in that pattern, deliberately, as part of a pandicular maneuver — the “omni-yawn” we use to free a person from the grip of muscular contractions maintained by muscle/movement memory in the condition we call, Sensory-Motor Amnesia.

What is “Sensory-Motor Amnesia”?

SENSORY-MOTOR AMNESIA

First, let me touch on the “amnesia” part.

When people first react to injury (cringing in Trauma Reflex), we may, if we pay attention, notice the entire way our movements change from that instant.  The limp is obvious.  The pain is obvious.

However, as with all sensations that persist for sufficient time, those sensations fade.  The change of movement, the change of coordination, fades from our awareness.  We may believe we have recovered from the injury.  However, the changes of movement persist, un-noticed.  Meanwhile, we also have forgotten what it feels like to move freely.  The new, cringe pattern has displaced the free movement we had — and we may not (and often don’t) notice it (except for the pain, which may seem mysterious, or seems to portend some serious disease).  That’s the “amnesia” — a change of muscle/movement memory — and it may persist for decades.

“Sensory-Motor” merely means “the combination of movement and the sensation of that movement”.

So, “Sensory-Motor Amnesia” is the loss of the memory of what free movement feels like (and ability to do it) — and its replacement by altered sensation, movement and coordination.

THE “TICKLE RESPONSE” REVELATION

The “tickle response” allows us to recover awareness of how our movements have changed; it’s a first step to recovery from Sensory-Motor Amnesia, recovery of free movement, comfort, and fitness for activity.

Use it judiciously.  Save yourself some trouble in your assessments and get better results with your clients/patients.

an example of multi-contraction Sensory-Motor Amnesia (article on sciatica)

 
an example of a clinical somatic education procedure that involves a multi-contraction pandiculation
Notice the moment of “tickle”.

RESOURCE
EXPERIENCE PANDICULAR MANEUVERS BY YOURSELF

FIVE CULTURAL STREAMS TO THE MAINSTREAM | HANNA SOMATIC EDUCATION (“Hanna Somatics”)

Hanna Somatics can perhaps most readily merge into mainstream culture through five cultural streams:

1. the military (including the Veterans’ Administration Hospitals)
2. elder care
3. public education
4. professional athletics
5. nurses in standard medical settings

There’s a relation among these five that we will eventually formulate.

For now, I just want to delineate each (the “differentiation”) step;
later, we will fit them together (the “integration”) step.  You may participate.

DIFFERENTIATION

The Military
 
Those who most need somatic education in the military are soldiers returning from deployment.  We might expect to see lots of startle reflex, in addition to trauma reflex triggered by wounds.

I envision the Veterans’ Administration bringing somatic education in, at first, in a small way, through some personal connections in the VA and “people who know people” (possibly within the medical community) — at first, to handle Trauma Reflex (effects of wounds) after hospitalization and tissue healing,  being a support to the physical therapists, or after discharge from physical therapy.  For PTSD, positive emotional improvements (in the course of dealing with trauma reflex) might “turn a light on” for someone about the “unexpected” potential of somatic education to speed recovery from PTSD.

Elder Care

I envision somatic education in elder care improving the quality of life of seniors — If you can move, you’re alive! — improving movement and balance, reducing the tendency to have a fall, staying mobile longer, getting out of the wheelchair and on to her feet, off the walker, reducing or stopping use of the cane, out and about, physiologically healthier, not needing many drugs needed by the current crop of oldsters, and less reliant on Medicare, Medicaid, and skilled nursing facilities.  Making getting older more about ripening and maturing than about becoming decrepit, feeble, cold and tired, lumbering and ungainly, heavy, sustained by a diet of drugs, helplessly feeling rotten and taking that “That’s par for the course.”

Certain movement teachers serving the “senior centers” may be interested about the potential of more potent somatic exercises coming out of our field.

As ever, personal connections might make the difference, and then it’s about the senior centers and their movement teachers communicating with each other, passing the word, having somatic exercises take their place for that age group. 

Might be an easy “in”.

Public Education

For this one, I think the “packaging” may be important.  It may be that packaging somatic education as, “somatic education” might just work.  Just might.

I envision Somatic Education (“S.E.”) in the schools providing a sound foundation for “P.E.”, starting with 3rd grade (8 and 9 year-olds learning simple exercises for somatic awareness), continuing to 5th grade, when students learn and practice somatic exercises in P.E. (yes, I know it sounds rather Scandinavian), through the University years, where students learn both the practices and the principles of somatic education as part of a “well-rounded education” supporting the health of the general population.  Health Education.

In this case, it’s the funny matter of “teaching the teachers”.  The key is to identify and locate master teachers — and by that, I don’t necessarily mean the Principals or The Superintendent.  Master teachers are continuously learning, open, curious as to how what you do fits together with what they do.  They use teaching to educate — to draw forth competence, and they recognize it when they see others do it.  They are educators, not just teachers.

Somatic education, done well, can “bootstrap” public education by waking up and integrating that ‘ol central nervous system.  You know — pandiculation is an action done upon awakening.  Think it could help to educate people into greater awareness of their own state?  Maybe wake up superior perceptual and creative capacities?  Just asking.

Good nutrition (“school lunches” and “university food”) is one arm; neurological grooming (somatic education) is another.  Just a thought.

By the way — what’s the other arm?  Sports!

(Does the ultimate athlete have three arms?)

Professional Athletics
where the money is — and therefore the most guarded

The territoriality of athletics is much like the territoriality of the military.  The difference is that money is involved in pro athletics, making it even more territorial.

Somatics has got to be brought in person-to-person — first by one person or another, and then Somatics has got to get “drafted” by a team. Then watch the fireworks fly.

But first it has to catch someone’s attention.  Maybe “somebody knows somebody”, maybe a massage therapist who already works for the team.  Something like that.

I envision members of professional athletics teams, performance-driven as they are, coming to recognize — from seeing someone they know improve — the advantages of somatic education in training, performance, injury prevention, and recovery from chronic injury.  No athlete should have to retire because of a chronic injury unless joint damage is involved — and not necessarily then.

The competititive nature of pro athletics being what it is, once one team starts (and excels), other teams seem likely to follow.  Get out your stick.

Nurses in Standard Medical Settings

In case you didn’t know it, institutional nursing can be heavy labor under stressful conditions.  Good combination for getting tight.  Then, come the lifting injuries.

What’s a nurse gonna do?  Go to physical therapy, probably.

Now, I’m going to be oblique.  Let us say that someone endures a lifting injury, goes to physical therapy, perhaps explores acupuncture, and still has the pain of injury.  What then?

You get what I’m pointing to.

These are a population who would be grateful for what we offer — and, through them, perhaps word could get to physicians’ assistants, and from there, to physicians who acquire their share of physical complaints.  We could infiltrate the medical profession and help it transform itself from within — understanding that there may be some turbulence from “certain others who see things differently”.  Maybe we could present ourselves as “supporters”.  Or maybe we just serve the nurses.

There is the category of nurses, “holistic nurses” — and they have an association.  Just a thought.

GATEWAY TO INTEGRATION

So, we’ve done some differentiation.  I recount them fitting together and one sequence of approach, below. You may see others and compose your own description.

Here’s my question:  How do those five cultural streams interact with each other?

First, my turn.  Then, your turn.  (This could turn into a forum — a sudden thought. Frightening. (or maybe that’s just excitement)

SO.

Of these five avenues, I estimate the Military to be the easiest line of approach, given the population of soldiers traumatized, both physically and emotionally, and the relatively low cost of somatic education and the speed of improvements possible with conditions unlikely to resolve fully with standard therapy.

Next, I think, comes elder care.

Natural sympathies exist for both wounded soldiers and the aged, so stories of success, first in P.E. journals and then in sports magazines, would reflect well upon somatic education and it could go “viral”.

The next two avenues are “protected” avenues:  the young and professional athletes.  Both are the claimed “territory” of standard physical education coaching practices and standard “sports medicine”.

A favorable track record (obtained with the first two groups) can bring the credibility needed to reach public education and professional athletics, to get past the “gate-keeping” (and territoriality) of athletic coaches, trainers, and physical education teachers, who are inclined to the usual “strengthening and stretching” indoctrination of P.E. and sports medicine.  People have to want it.

With somatics pervading these five cultural streams, I envision the mass-communications media picking up on the story of “this new discipline” that has brought such benefit to such diverse groups — a “60 Minutes” segment or somesuch.  (Anyone up for that?)

Pilot programs can be the seeds of those possibilities.

My question is, How do we go about it?  How do we get the “gate-keepers” of those four disciplines (public education, the military, professional athletics, and elder care) to bring somatics in, such that it catches on and “goes viral” (spontaneously expands)?

I’m in no position to do all that with the four cultural avenues I have named; I’m mostly into somatic study and development and I’m not “a mainstream kind of guy” — so, of course, I would ask for your help.  I don’t have the relationship connections, and in any case, I’m best at “development”; others are better than I am in other streams of development.  We need connections into each of those streams.  So, here’s where I would appreciate your input and, God willing, your participation.

Here’s a big idea:  In the 60s, John F. Kennedy founded The President’s Council on Physical Fitness.  Calisthenics took over the world, followed closely by isometrics.  We could check the Council’s current status and see if there’s a viable possibility for us to work together, somehow.  or envision a President’s Council on Somatic Education analogous to President Kennedy’s Council on Physical Fitness — and the direction things would have to go for that to happen.

Now, there may be some who say, “It can’t be done.”  It can be done.  The question is, “How?”

And so, still, I need your help.

MORE TO COME
four capacities “helpful” to mainstreaming somatics.

WHAT YOU CAN DO, NEXT: (options)

1. Apply to be a featured expert answering questions about pain at AllExperts.com.  This is not a big deal, other than you have to know what you’re talking about  — or be OK admitting that you don’t.  It just starts you down a runway.  See if you lift off.
2. Ask your clients to send email to the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) to send an email message asking that an article about Hanna somatic education be published in the AARP magazine.  The email address to use is: