Author: Lawrence Gold

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SuperSize That Somatic Exercise — The Diamond Penetration Technique | SuperPandiculation

The Diamond Penetration Technique is a way to get more done with less effort and less time, and more brainpower, in clinical sessions of Hanna somatic education(R) or with somatic exercises.  The maneuver enhances or potentizes pandiculation (“Whole Body yawn”) technique.

There’s a lot, here, so as you learn this technique for “supersizing” somatic exercises, learn one step at a time before adding the next.  “Learn” means “learn”, not “do once and then move one.”  Really.  Be merciful to yourself and take bite-size pieces, only.

In his original instruction to us, his students of his 1990 Clinical Somatic Education training, Thomas Hanna showed us how to use The Pandicular Response to free people from the grip of The Landau Reaction, which tightens the back/posterior side of the body and, when excessively activated for long periods of time, causes back pain, sciatica, tight shoulders and tension headaches.

In Lesson One (Green Light lesson) for Landau Reaction, he showed us how to coach our client through a Whole-body yawn (pandicular maneuver), beginning with a lifting action of one leg and its opposite shoulder, arm and hand, and head, as in the video, below — to lower them by stages in steps of relaxation, with a mini-in-breath with each mini-lift . . . . . before lowering some more.

First, the video, so you know for sure the maneuver to which I refer.

 

somatic exercise for back pain
somatic exercise | leg lift to activate back muscles

17 Minute First Aid for Back Pain

I have found that “staged” or “stepped” relaxation can be made more powerful by a technique that I have named, “The Diamond Penetration” maneuver.  The reason I have named it The Diamond Penetration maneuver will become clear to you once you start doing it.  For now, I say that it makes use of The Power of Recognition, as I have described it in the linked article, “Attention is a Catalyst“, to amplify the effectiveness of pandiculation, or any other therapeutic or educational technique, for that matter.  Assisted Pandiculation is accelerated learning, and learning involves recognition and development, based upon memory.  Memory, learning, recognition,  function and development are five development stages of a single function.  There’s one more.

Memory — the ground function, memory — persistence of pattern, memory
Learning — modification of the ground function into a durable pattern of memory
Recognition — the closely approximate match of some memory with an experience happening now
Function — initiation of action, memory activated and applied to this moment
Integration — facility to move freely and functionally among different remembered patterns
Evolution — expansion of attention beyond both memory and the moment — the space of emergence of newness, for patterns newly emerging into the moment, to be remembered into existence.

Take the starting initials of each, and you get MLRFIE!  Well, that’s as far as we’ll go with that one, folks — at least for now.  We’ll come back to that strange, unpronounceable acronym, later.

In his demonstrations to us, Thomas Hanna had the person on the table lower the leg part way, then lift a bit, then lower some more, repeating by stages, to complete rest.  He even commented that that same maneuver was what Joe Montana did, spontaneously, after his back surgery and commented ruefully about to what the rapid improvement was attributed — namely, surgery and physical therapy!

Here’s the “inside” of that maneuver:  The lifting action produces a sensation.  By re-lifting after lowering part way, the client re-locates the sensation of lifting (contracting the muscles of lifting the leg).  To re-locate the sensation activates the power of recognition, which is central to all learning.  (No recognition — no learning.)

That’s the central principle of The Diamond Penetration Technique.

Here are the advantages of using The Diamond Penetration Technique.  It:

  1. rapidly penetrates Sensory-Motor Amnesia
  2. rapidly awakens sensory awareness and motor control that has never been awake, before (penetrates Sensory-Motor Obliviousness)
  3. speeds integration of multiple “movement elements” into a single coordinated action
  4. increases the result of a single pandiculation — relaxation and control
  5. decreases the number of repetitions needed for pandiculation to get the desired result
  6. shortens the time needed to get a good result from a somatic exercise lesson

Obviously, these benefits are interrelated and just a tiny bit useful when working to transform yourself.

I have elaborated that principle into a very powerful technique that merits the name, “Diamond Penetration”.  Very powerful.  Clinical practitioners can apply this technique to assisted pandiculation maneuvers; clients can apply it to somatic exercises, and to free-form pandiculations you may do when working out pains or restrictions for which no somatic exercise currently exists.

I have developed several increasingly powerful variations of The Diamond Penetration Technique, which I  outline, here.

  •     “The Quick Return”
  •     “The Quick Return and Sustained Hold”
  •     “The Two-Movement-Element Combination”
  •     “Twos and Threes”
  •     “The Diamond Pattern”
  •     “The Multi-Movement-Element Combination Sequence”

As you can see, these variations increase in complexity.  The way to learn them is to do and learn them one-at-a-time, not to try to understand them by reading or to memorize them all before doing them.

Now the instruction.  I’m going to spread things out in detail, so stay with me.

The Quick Return

Repetition is basic to recognition.

In The Quick Return, we contract into movement and feel the sensation of the end-point of movement (“where we end up in the movement”), then relax part-way for an instant, then re-contract and re-locate the exact same sensation.

  1.     Contract and feel what’s tight.
  2.     Relax part-way.
  3.     Re-contract to feel the exact same thing.

That’s a Quick Return.  It activates The Power of Recognition (familiarity).  We might call each repetition “a pulse of sensation.”

An example from Lesson One could be,

“Lie on your belly, head turned, with your thumb in front of your nose, your hand flat on the surface.  Lift your elbow to the limit.  Feel what that feels like in your neck and shoulder.

Now lower it a bit, and immediately lift again.  Find the exact same sensation at the same place.  That’s called, ‘a Quick Return’.  Remember that for use, as we go along.”

“Mini Quick Returns”

During the relaxation phase of pandiculation, you can do “mini” Quick Returns on the way to complete relaxation.

PRINCIPLE

It takes two incidents or occasions to activate memory; prior to that, it’s just sensory awareness or cognition — no recognition.  In fact, without recognition, something happening is identical to nothing happening; we don’t know what it is, other than that it’s “something but we don’t really know what”, which makes the experience somewhat evanescent.

Now, the thing that makes one occurrence different from two occurrences of the same thing is the contrast between “happening” and “not happening”.  “Not happening” has to separate the two occurrences.  That’s the principle, “Somas perceive by contrast,” or “Somas can perceive only changes.”  In somatic education practice, the common contrast is between activity and rest — which is why I instruct clients, “Come to complete rest between repetitions.”  Without “not happening”, there’s only one long incident.

The Quick Return and Sustained Hold

We know that for a sensation to emerge, and for attention to steady on a sensation, takes time.  Quick things escape our noticing.

So, after the Quick Return, we sustain the action (“sustained hold”) to let it “fade into view”.  Attention steadies in and on the sensation.  The sensation becomes more vivid.

To apply a sustained hold, you do a series of Quick Returns (however many) then hold the final Quick Return; during that holding time, remember the pattern and timing of the Quick Returns that got you there, i.e., brought you into this holding pattern.  Then, you slowly relax, taking time at least equal in length to the memory . . . . . or longer . . . . to complete relaxation.

Thus, you

  1. first sense and do the movement, and hold, then
  2. remember the movement while holding its pattern, then
  3. back out (ease out) of the movement slowly and deliberately to complete rest.

You come to know the beginning of the movement, its middle, and its end — initiating it, sustaining it, and letting it go.

How useful do you think that might be for learning to occur?

The instruction would be:

“Do a Quick Return and hold.  Now, slowly relax.”

PRINCIPLE

Experience takes time.

Sustain the hold for the total amount of time it took to do all the Quick Returns.  For two Quick Returns (three movements into position), sustain the hold for a “count” of three — equal to the time it took to contract and then do two Quick Returns — then relax during a count of three.  (That doesn’t mean, “Relax and then count to three.”  It means, “Take a count of three to go from contracted to relaxed.”)

Comparing Memory to Action

Integrating the flesh-body and the subtle-body (mind).

Having done a Quick Return and Hold, you now remember the sensation of movement and then do the movement, again, to compare it to the memory.  Are they the same?

You might then repeat the movement and compare to memory until the movement and the memory closely match.

PRINCIPLE

Memory is the root of action.

The Two-Movement-Element Combination

Coordination develops when we combine two actions (“movement elements”) into one.

In the Green Light lesson, we lift the elbow-hand-head-shoulder with the opposite-side leg, as in the video.  Those are the two movement elements.

Using the Quick Return, the instruction could be:

  1. “With your hand flat on the surface, lift your elbow to the limit.  Now do a Quick Return (relaxes and re-contracts) and hold.
  2. Now, lift your straight leg.  Now lower it a bit, and do a Quick Return.
  3. Now, do a Quick Return of both, together.” (combination Quick Return)

When doing the Quick Return of both, together, the movements should be synchronized to start and end together. That develops coordination (integration).

HIGHER INTEGRATION

I have discovered another kind of “three” that rapidly integrates two movement elements.  It goes beyond The Equalization Technique.

It goes like this.

Do a Quick Return of the first movement element and hold.
Do a Quick Return of the second movement element and hold.

Both movement elements are now active.  Now, integrate them with each other in a three-part maneuver:

Pulse the first movement element to firm up the second movement element.

You’ll feel it.  If you don’t feel it, you’ve partially lost the second movement element.  Bring it back and pulse the first movement element, again, until you feel it make the second movement element stronger.

Pulse the second movement element to firm up the first movement element.
Pulse the first movement element to firm up the second movement element.

You’ve now forged a better connection between the two movement elements.  That’s the other kind of “three” maneuver, an integration maneuver.

You can use this “three” maneuver with any two synergistic movements of any somatic exercise (“synergistic”  means that the two movements help each other).

Twos and Threes

Now, we get a bit more sophisticated.

Once you or a client have done a combination Quick Return, you’re in a position to do two Quick Returns.  That makes for, not two quick experiences of the same thing, but three.

If that’s confusing, lie on your belly with your thumb by your nose and do two Quick Returns.  You’ll see it creates the same sensation three times.  Just do it.

Here’s the thing:  If, with a single movement, you alternate between one Quick Return (to complete relaxation) and two Quick Returns, you alternate creating two experiences of a sensation with creating three experiences.  That’s a contrast, in itself.

When done as a combination Quick Return, it’s a very powerful way of creating learning that I have found causes a series of internal shifts of sensory-motor organization.

The instruction could be:

  1. Lift your elbow.  Now do a Quick Return and hold.
  2. Lift your leg.  Now do a Quick Return and hold.
    (two movements at the same time)
  3. Now, do two combination Quick Returns (a “three”).  Relax completely.
  4. Now, do one combination Quick Return (a “two”).  Relax completely.
  5. Alternate doing two and doing one.  Continue until you get better coordinated.

PRINCIPLE

Changes of patterns awaken the Power of Recognition and trigger learning.

The Diamond Pattern

Here’s a “diamond” pattern (number of repetitions:

1         2            3              4              3             2          1

.

.   .

.   .   .

.    .   .    .

.   .   .

.   .

.

The instruction could be:

  1. Do (some action, such as lifting the elbow) and hold.  Now, relax completely.
  2. Do one Quick Return (2 experiences of a sensation) and hold.  Now, relax completely.
  3. Now, do two Quick Returns  (3 experiences of a sensation) and hold.  Now, relax completely.
  4. Now, do three Quick Returns  (4 experiences of a sensation) and hold.  Now, relax completely.
  5. Now, do two Quick Returns (3 experiences of a sensation) and hold.  Now, relax completely.
  6. Now, do one Quick Return (2 experiences of the sensation) and hold.  Now, relax completely.
  7. Now, do the action without a Quick Return (1 experience of the sensation). Hold before relaxing to complete rest.

The experience “backs a person out of contraction” and gets them able to feel more and more with less and less stimulation.

To see the value, try it with any movement or combination.

PRINCIPLE

Bucky Fuller pointed out that four incidents or occasions of an event were the minimum needed to recognize a stable pattern.

It goes like this:

  1. one incident or occasion:
    internal experience:  “Something has happened.”|
    (capture of attention)
  2. two incidents or occasions of the same thing:
    internal experience:  “This seems familiar.”
    (recognition)
  3. three incidents or occasions of the same thing:
    internal experience:  “There seems to be consistency.”
    (building upon recognition – “There is something to learn, here”)
  4. four or more incidents or occasions of the same thing:
    internal experience:  “There’s a consistent pattern, here.”
    (development of knowledge)

Test this out in yourself by using your imagination.

APPLICATION

The Diamond Penetration Technique can be applied to single movements, to simpler somatic exercise lessons (e.g., those of “The Cat Stretch” or “The New Seated Refreshment Exercises”), to more complex somatic exercises that involve as many as seven movement elements in combination (e.g., “Free Yourself from Back Pain” or “The Five-Pointed Star”), or to inherent action patterns such as those of walking (“SuperWalking”), twisting, or wriggling.

This technique lends itself to The Equalization Technique, discussed in The Evolution of Clinical Somatic Education Techniques.  In a combination Quick Return, match (by feel) the effort of one movement to the effort of the others; equalize them.  Read the article.

The Multi-Movement-Element Combination Sequence

In general, it goes like this:

  1. Do a Quick Return of the first movement element, and hold.
  2. Do a Quick Return of the second movement element, and hold.
  3. Do two combination Quick Returns of the two movement elements, and hold.
  4. Do a Quick Return of the third movement element.
  5. Do two combination Quick Returns of the three movement elements (with Equalization Technique).
  6. Do a Quick Return of the fourth movement element (if there is one).
  7. Do two combination Quick Returns of the four movement elements (with Equalization Technique).

Keep adding movement elements that fit together (synergistically) until they are all assembled into one Grand Coordinated Movement.

You can do Mini-Quick-Returns with the entire movement pattern, through the relaxation phase to complete rest.

Matching Memory (Subtle Body) to Sensation (Dense Physical Body)

Having done any of the variations, above, you can end a sequence by alternating a single quick return with a moment of rest (or a moment of holding the contraction), during which you remember (or imagine) and compare what you just felt with what you remembered.

You alternate a single quick return with remembering/imagining until your memory matches the experience very closely.

Then, you do a final contraction, hold and remember, then relax very, very slowly.

When the memory matches the experience, you have integrated your subtle and dense physical bodies.  Relaxing at that point enables you to come out of contraction much more completely than otherwise.

PRINCIPLE

We perceive by means of contrast; we correct things by making a comparison.  We gain control by means of memory.

SUMMARY

The essence of this technique involves repetitive pulsing of movements, activation of memory, matching the sensation you remember with the sensation you experience as you do the movements, and slow, controlled release of muscular efforts.

  1. Each pulse of movement creates a sensation that you locate as your “target” for Quick Return.
  2. In each repetition of a pulse, you locate the identical sensation in the identical location.
  3. In combination Quick Returns, you locate the identical feeling of the whole movement each time you do the combination movement.
  4. Each pattern of repetitions (2’s, 3’s, “diamond pattern”) magnifies the Power of Recognition.

Now you know what MRLFIE stands for!

I know there’s a lot.  That’s why you start simply, at the beginning.  Internalize (learn) each level of complexity until you have it all under your belt.

If you’re a practitioner, teach your clients to their capacity, but not beyond.  If they lost the pattern, have them go back and coach them until they’ve mastered what you’ve covered, before going further.

COPYRIGHT 2011 Lawrence Gold ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

reproduction by permission, only

 

 

 

 

 

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Back Pain: What It Takes to End It for Good

From your own experience, you probably know that traditional therapies for back pain usually produce only short-term, partial relief or require regular — even lifelong — care. It need no longer be that way. You can end back pain for good and prevent flare-ups from occurring.

A new discipline in the field of health care: clinical somatic education, gets to the root of back pain and brings it under your own control. Most back pain sufferers who resort to clinical somatic education should expect full recovery in a space of days or weeks.

The 3 Biggest Mistakes Made by People
Trying to Get Out of Pain

What Clinical Somatic Education Does
Clinical somatic education retrains muscle/movement memory. Clients rapidly improve their muscular control and freedom of movement through a mind-brain-movement training process. Clinical somatic education affects the brain the way biofeedback does, but with importance differences, one being speed of results and the other being the durability of the improvement. Changes are usually definitive and need no further professional help.

Clinical somatic education recovers fitness for the activities of daily living.

A New Understanding of Back Pain
Spinal alignment and disc condition are secondary to something more basic: muscular tension — muscle/movement memory.

Muscular tensions pull on the bones (that’s their job) and in so doing, move the bones. That’s how spinal curvature changes with movement. Muscle/movement memory sets our posture and the alignment to which we return, at rest — that’s why spinal alignment changes and gets stuck in misalignment.

Tight back muscles get fatigued and sore; they get prone to spasm; they pull vertebrae together and compress discs, causing bulges and degeneration; they cause nerve entrapment, such as sciatica.

Back muscles are virtually never too weak; they feel weak because they’re tired from being tight all the time, musclebound. Spasm isn’t a sign of weakness, but a sign of hair-trigger readiness to contract — a completely different condition; weakness would be experienced as inability to do their job of keeping you upright.

Rest doesn’t help, much. Muscle memory, not disease or misalignment, keep them tight. Resting doesn’t change muscle memory. Muscle memory sets our postural and movement “set points”.

This statement applies as much to people with degenerative disc disease and herniated discs to those who have only a twinge, now and then. The underlying cause is the same: muscle tension.

“If that’s true,” you may ask, “why doesn’t my doctor (or therapist) know about it?”

The answer is that until recently, the connection between muscle memory and back pain wasn’t recognized. Effects are typically mistaken for causes. No method existed that could rapidly change muscle memory enough to be clinically practical. Word takes time to spread and gain credibility. People are attached to their methods and ideas.

You may think, “Back spasms are too painful, too serious to be dismissed that quickly, or that easily.”

That’s understandable — but a misunderstanding of your situation.

 

Get Free from That Back Pain
(self-relief program)To get a test-able preview of the new method referred to, here, click and send the email, blank. You will receive a quick-response message with the information.

 





Conventional Therapeutics and Back Muscle Spasms
Conventional treatment methods, as you already know, are not effective enough for most people. Most therapies try to strengthen, stretch, or adjust people out of back trouble by working on muscles or the skeletal system. But bones go where muscles pull them, the control center for the muscular system is the brain (not the therapist), and these approaches don’t address the brain’s control of muscle action, so the problem remains or returns. The problem isn’t in your muscles; it’s in your brain, the organ of learning and the seat of muscle/movement memory, which runs the show.

That’s why the relief obtained by conventional therapeutic approaches to back spasms is usually temporary and you remain subject to re-injury and to prescribed limitations to movement, such as “neutral spine position”.

Muscle/memory is acquired, learned. What’s learned can be unlearned, and actually, relearning muscular control is the only approach that works for long term relief of back pain. You must dissolve the memory-based, reflexive grip of musclebound back muscles; it can’t be manipulated away — at least, not for long.

Get Free from That Back Pain
(self-relief program)To get a test-able preview of the new method referred to, here, click and send the email, blank. You will receive a quick-response message with the information.

Medical doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, osteopaths, and bodyworkers use manipulative methods.

But problems arising from muscle/movement memory cannot be “cured” by manipulation because muscular tension is not a disease, but a habit maintained in the brain.

A Correct Understanding of ‘Strengthening and Stretching’
The idea behind the common “strengthening and stretching” regimen for back spasms is usually based on a misunderstanding; it’s a misunderstanding because the muscles involved are almost never weak, but tired; it’s a misunderstanding because the muscles involved are not “short” and in need of stretching, but “in contraction” and in need of relaxation. Sore muscles don’t need strengthening; they need relaxation and a chance to be refreshed, again.

You need to regain your ability to relax, something you can’t regain by being manipulated by someone else; you regain it by relearning to relax — a form of learning, albeit a specialized one for which you will probably need training.

Back Muscle Spasms May be Painful, but Not Themselves an Injury involving any Damage to Spine or Discs
One of the automatic reactions of the body to injury is to tighten up. That’s part of the pain of most injuries, particularly of musculo-skeletal injuries. It’s a reaction that protects the body from further injury. There are cases where the tightening up of back muscles is such a protective reaction, and a necessary one — where actual damage has occurred, such as a ruptured disc or a violent accident. In such situations, surgery may be necessary and changing muscle memory will either not help or produce only temporary relief, at least until after surgery, unhappy news for some, but realistic.

If you’ve seen a doctor for your back spasms, he or she has either discovered that you need surgery or that you don’t. Surgery is a last, desperate resort and most doctors are reluctant to recommend it. If you have been sent for therapy or given drugs, yours is not a surgical situation, meaning that your spasms are not a protective reaction against injury, but chronic activity.

In the majority of back spasms, there is no injury. The back spasms are just a movement malfunction — a tension habit formed under stress. It’s the “tension” part of “nervous tension.”

So, why do back spasms occur? You now have part of the answer. Let’s look a little more closely.

Your muscles obey your brain. Except for momentary reflexes controlled in the spinal cord (tested by your doctor’s hammer tap), that’s the whole story. So, if you have tight, spastic muscles, they’re caused by your brain.

This answer is a “good news/bad news” type of answer. The bad news is that your muscles are out of control, and it’s your brain’s fault! Your brain isn’t broken, just trapped by the memory of stress or injury in your history. The good news is that your brain can be relearn to relax those muscles.

Where do Back Muscle Spasms Come from?

One thing you will almost always notice about people with back spasms, if you exercise your powers of observation, is their high shoulders and swayback. Touch the muscles of their lower back, and you will find the same thing: hard, contracted muscles, not soft, weak, flabby muscles.

The major source of back spasms is the lifestyle of being “on the go” — driven, driving, productive, on time, and responsive to every situation. Tense. This is a new idea for most people, so here’s the explanation.

Our post-modern lifestyle triggers an ancient neuromuscular (bodily) response (known to developmental physiologists as the Landau Reaction); this reaction involves a tightening of the muscles of the spine in preparation for arising from rest (sitting or lying down) into activity (sitting, standing, walking, running). The Landau Reaction consists of the muscular responses involved in coming to a heightened state of alertness in preparation for moving into action. The reaction may be mild, moderate, strong, or extreme; triggered incessantly for years, a muscle/movement memory forms — one that often outlasts the moment (or stage of life) when it was necessary and makes you vulnerable to episodes of spasm.


Many Back Pain Issues Come from the Same Cause

Though injuries from traffic accidents, falls, etc., also trigger muscular reactions that can become habitual, the Landau Reaction is behind most of the back-spasm epidemic in our society. It’s a consequence of accumulated stress.

While you can’t avoid the Landau Reaction (it’s a necessary and appropriate part of life), you can avoid getting stuck in it. If your lifestyle puts you habitually in a state of reaction, you have to “de-habituate” yourself from it, so that your rise in tension occurs only as a momentary response to situations and does not become your chronic state.

Attempts to Break a Back Muscle Tension Habit

 


To get a preview of the new method referred to, here, click and send the email window that opens, blank.

Cures for include relaxation techniques, hypnosis, massage, skeletal adjustments, electrical stimulation, muscle relaxant drugs, and at last (as at first) pain medications.

Until recently, there was nothing better. Now, an effective way exists to rapidly improve muscular control, freedom of movement, and physical comfort. Once you have gained control of your Landau Reaction, a brief daily regimen of certain movements is sufficient to keep you from accumulating the daily tensions of a driven and overloaded life. You can keep refreshing yourself, as needed.

If you have numbness or tingling in your extremities, your problem is more severe and requires a medical evaluation to rule out serious conditions. Even if you have surgery, you will still need to learn to relax the tight muscles that initially caused the problem. If yours is not a surgical situation, then somatic education is probably viable for you.

The new methods used to de-habituate Landau Reaction are highly reliable and have no adverse side effects, apart from occasional temporary soreness the day after a session, soreness that fades out in a day or two, leaving you flexible, comfortable and stronger than before.

MORE:
How to Self-Relieve Low Back Pain (article)
Somatic Exercise for Chronic Low Back Pain (explanation) 

 

 

 

 

 

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Somatic Education | Intrinsic Action, Extrinsic Action and “The Controlling Moment”

Lawrence Gold, practitioner/trainer | Hanna somatic education

a deeper view
of somatic education

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” So wrote Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac.

Failing that, another saying carries the point:  “The biggest problem could have been solved when it was small.” So wrote Lao Tzu, a Chinese Taoist sage, in The Tao Teh Ching, an ancient text of wisdom.

Changing behaviors and entrenched conditions isn’t as simple as it sounds — a mere decision powered (at best) by enthusiasm — as anyone who has worked to change a habit has found.

People do it by “trying” — working harder to change — rather than by uncovering their/our own remaining impulse to be “the old way” — working smarter.

However, without taking into account the root of action, any change of action remains incomplete and in conflict with old ways of acting.  This understanding applies as much to social politics as it does to individual behavior and experience.  That’s why, “You can’t change minds with guns.”

There’s a way of “working smarter”, rather than harder — and that is part of what I cover in this entry.

There’s a “Root” of Action??

The idea that there is a root of action doesn’t occur to most people. That’s because people generally experience action — theirs and others — only once it is well underway. The root of action, because it is small, subtle, goes unnoticed.

So, I will, in this entry, illuminate the nature of the root of action (and it isn’t psychological, but more primordial/rudimentary than that).

In the process, I will show the relationship between the subjective experience of the root of change and the objective (and outwardly observable) bodily sign of the root of action.

Let’s get started.

The Root of Action

The root of action is so common as to go unnoticed, except in certain specialized situations.  Its word is, “readiness”.

Readiness is not merely an emotional state, a state of anticipation.  (“Yeah, boss!  Yeah, boss!”)  It’s a state of preparation, the first step of shifting from rest (unreadiness) into action.  (“On your mark, get set . . . “)  It’s a “steering” action, the step of organizing oneself for a particular activity, generally based upon the memory of the action we are about to do, but also modulated by the relationships of the moment.    It’s that subtle.

Because it is that subtle, as subtle as memory and the subtle effects of one person or place upon another, it generally goes unnoticed.

Memory and imagination go together, are two sides of the same coin.

The act of getting ready is preparation for a leap into a (however vaguely imagined) future which has some connection with a memory.

I call the moment of getting ready, “The Controlling Moment.”  As we leap (or subtly, imperceptibly drift) into action, we rally  our determination, springing (or gliding) forward from that controlling moment into full action.

As we launch into action, we power up.  The controlling moment points our direction.  Powering up builds upon the controlling moment, and away we go.

Now, here’s the odd thing about human beings:  it’s common for us automatically to redirect our launch, so that what we do after the Controlling Moment misses the mark we (think we have) set in our Controlling Moment.

The act of redirecting ourselves occurs automatically, involuntarily, and is based upon memories of life situations similar to the one into which we are launching.  Fears, conditioning, beliefs all change our trajectory, but “behind the scenes”, without conscious awareness.  That means we get unanticipated results.

Not only do they change our trajectory; they also disguise or obscure the Controlling Moment of that action, so that an observer of our action often can’t tell what our precise intention was at the controlling moment — and we, ourselves, find it difficult to tell why things went awry.  (“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” a pathetic saying based on the presently-described dynamic) What we and others perceive is everything that followed the Controlling Moment of that action, but the Controlling Moment remains obscured and obscure.

Why?  Because the experience of “powering up” is so much “louder” than that of The Controlling Moment.  The root remains buried.

That’s why it’s so difficult to self-correct, to change habits, and to understand the motivations of others whose actions we observe.

Two “Layers” of Action

We may regard The Controlling Moment as the core of an action (steering) and Powering Up as the extension of that core (acceleration).

Another odd thing, however:  the two layers don’t always go together.  Sometimes, we get ready for an action but refrain from carrying it out; sometimes, we do an action for which we are not really ready, and our heart really isn’t in it, but carry it out, anyway.  We counteract our own Controlling Moment or we act without the precise internal guidance of a mature Controlling Moment.

In those cases, we have a condition of self-arrest (Controlling Moment without Powering Up — ineffectuality) or poorly organized action (undeveloped Controlling Moment and lots of Powering Up — stupidity or clumsiness).

In such cases, a residue of the action (or lack of action) remains in memory.  The residue of self-arrest is regret, frustration and/or self-recrimination; the residue of poorly organized action remains in memory as a sense of guilt, shame, and/or lower self-esteem.

Integrity

What’s lacking when we have one but not the other is integrity.

Integrity is intelligent, well-regulated, well-modulated power.

In other words, when we have one but not the other, we fail either to exercise our intelligence adequately or we fail to exercise our power appropriately.

What happens as aftermath when we act without intelligence or without well-regulated power is we experience our lack of integrity as disempowerment.

What to do?  What to do?

Forging Integrity

Congruence between our Controlling Moment and our Powering Up shows up as integrity.  To forge integrity, we must correct one or both of our errors — the error of acting without adequate intelligence or an error of the exercise of power .

However, it’s not sufficient merely to power up; we must power up to a degree of intensity appropriate to our circumstances.  Likewise, it’s not sufficient merely to power up to an appropriate degree of intensity; we must power up intelligently, which means in alignment with the intention present in our Controlling Moment.  The Controlling Moment is the truth of any action.

The kicker is that we can’t have intelligence about a Controlling Moment buried by an unintelligent powering up — and powering up always buries the Controlling Moment simply because it’s louder.

So, we have to uncover the Controlling Moment underlying any action or habit we find problematic.

How do we do that?

The First Moment of Attention

Self-correction requires that we catch the fault when it is small.  Otherwise, we have to deal with both the momentum of an action in progress and the direction of that momentum.  Think of turning a vehicle at slow speed vs. at high speed.

Again, unfortunately, we may (and commonly do) miss the Controlling Moment.

One way to catch the Controlling Moment is to slow down so that we can observe the first moment of action, the Controlling Moment.

Another way to catch the Controlling Moment is to repeat the action with close attention each time, so that we ultimately catch the Controlling Moment.

And yet another way to catch the Controlling Moment is to alternate doing an action with refraining from that action, so that, by virtue of the contrast between doing and not-doing, we get enhanced perception of the action.

And yet another way to catch the Controlling Moment is to take instruction (and example) from someone adept at the intended action, so that, by virtue of the contrast between their competence and our incompetence, we catch our own errant Controlling Moment and correct it, with repetition, by degrees (successively accurate approximations).

But, whatever the approach, we must catch the Controlling Moment, so that we perceive the contrast (or difference) between our Controlling Moment and the subsequent Powering Up (which may be out of close alignment with our Controlling Moment) — so that we can self-correct at the root of action.

A master of anything is one who has done so.

I’ve just outlined the theoretical (not hypothetical) underpinning of action and of change of action, and also of somatic education as a way to upgrade our way of operating in life.  I’m going to leave you with that basic understanding without outlining specific techniques of somatic education so that you can form the intention and your own Controlling Moment to improve your access and control of your own controlling moments.  It’s known as “sharpening the tool”.

What follows is an addendum of interest to practitioners of somatic education and Rolfers.  To continue this consideration, please see this entry on The Big Pandiculation.

We continue.

For Practitioners of Somatic Education

photo of Moshe Feldenkrais
Feldenkrais

Feldenkrais pointed out, in “Body and Mature Behavior”, that laboratory studies showed that we can sense a stimulus about 1/20th of the intensity of another, immediately preceding stimulus.  That means, when a stronger stimulus immediately precedes  another, weaker, stimulus as little 1/20th as intense, we can sense both, but if the weaker stimulus is less than 1/20th as intense, we may not be able to sense it.

photo of Thomas Hanna
Thomas Hanna, developer | Hanna somatic education

Thomas Hanna, developer of Hanna somatic education, pointed out that to effectively alter a pattern of function, we must recover awareness and control of that pattern of function by deliberately cause it at a level of intensity at least equal to that of the same pattern, when caused by involuntary habit.  By matching or exceeding the level of voluntary intensity to the intensity of the involuntary habit, control shifts from involuntary habit to voluntary performance.  At that point, change is possible.

However, to make a change, we must reach, or catch, the Controlling Moment, and that requires two things:  that we:

  1. closely match the voluntary pattern of action to the habitual/involuntary pattern.
  2. maintain continuous sensory awareness from full intensity if the action all the way to zero intensity.

In practice, 1. requires that we compare (by feeling) our voluntary action to the habitual action and self-correct until they closely match.

In practice, 2. requires that we either go slowly enough that neighboring (or successive) “takes” of sensory perception are less than 20:1 (“takes” of sensory perception can’t be continuous due to the way our nervous systems function, in which our brains link successive “snapshots” of perception the way movie films and TV images present successive “shapshots” of movement that our brains link together — via memory — into the impression of continuous action).  Since, by tendency, we lack continuous perception of habitual actions, we may need to make numerous repetitions of the action to develop sufficient perception to apprehend the Controlling Moment and to make the change.

For Rolfers

Rolfing, as commonly practiced, is a soft-tissue manipulation process that, as Ida Rolf put it, is an educational practice intended to evolve more efficiently functioning human beings.  As such, it is a form of somatic education, although indirectly so (except for its more direct, but less potent form, “Rolfing Movement-Integration”.

Ida Rolf made a distinction between “Intrinsic Movement” and “Extrinsic Movement.”  She defined “extrinsic movement” as “immature movement” and “intrinsic movement” as “mature movement.”

Now to clarify those meanings.

Intrinsic Movement is movement we originate with awareness of the Controlling Moment — the root of action — intention.

Extrinsic Movement is movement we originate with more concern for how the movement looks or conforms to the expectations of others (or social standards) than by how it feels — and so is immature movement that we may characterized as “obedience”,  “conformity”, “going through the motions”.

She also distinguished two “layers of depth” of the musculature and myofascial web:  intrinsic musculature and extrinsic musculature, or “core” (intrinsic”) and “sleeve” (extrinsic).

The intrinsic muscles are those most immediately responsive to the shift from rest into full activity, which corresponds to the shift from rest (or unreadiness) into readiness for activity. Examples of intrinsic muscles include the finest, deepest muscles of the spine, the tongue, the muscles of focusing, the psoas muscles.

The extrinsic muscles add power to the pattern of organization set by activation of intrinsic muscles.  So, it may be said that visually seeing organizes the body for motion.  Thus, “Look where you’re going,” has an intuitively understandable meaning.

Another distinction she made was of two variations of poor integration:

  1. soft (open or free) core, hard (restrictive or tight) sleeve — conformity — “going through the motions,” “going along to get along”
  2. hard (restrictive or tight) core, soft (open or free) sleeve — outwardly obedient, but internally resistant behavior

She distinguished another pattern, which she defined as the desirable, mature pattern

  • open core, free sleeve

That pattern corresponds to a kind of rest, rather than activity.

I distinguish yet another pattern:

  • freely responsive core and cooperative sleeve

This pattern is neither defined by a rest condition nor by an active condition, but by free modulation between both states, characterized by freedom from entrapment in either state.  In other words, there’s relatively smooth continuity between an “open core, free sleeve” condition and a freely responsive core empowered by a cooperative sleeve.

Paradoxically, it’s impossible to tell by a moment’s observation whether a person is entrapped, since their state of core and sleeve may be a momentary response (or even a frequent one).  Only over the long term can we tell whether an action pattern is free or compulsorily maintained by habit.  We can’t even tell, about ourselves, unless we are aware of our own Controlling Moments and the continuity of those moments with the movement into full rest.

Again, paradoxically, spontaneity shows up when the person moves easily from state to state.  A true “Controlling Moment” arises from the ‘open core, free sleeve” (undefined) condition — Source.

Again, habitual fixation in a pattern at the Controlling Moment or in Powering Up interferes with this free condition, since a person can neither move freely from action to rest, nor does their action, when carried out, reflect their direction, as determined at their Controlling Moments.

Ultimately, an approach from the outside, in (such as passive bodywork) can lead only to immature patterns of function, since we activate our core from the inside, out (intrinsically), and outside-in approaches, even those that contact the intrinsic muscular or depth, are inherently extrinsic (at least at the beginning).  Hence, the absolute necessity, with all kinds of bodywork, Rolfing included, for training in self-mastery to complement the changes of an outside-in approach. That training may start as movement education using the World Continuing Education Alliance, but should mature toward Transcendental Realization and stages of personal (and cultural) evolution. (See Ken Wilber’s AQAL — “All Quadrant, All Level, All Line” Kosmological (yes, spelled correctly) model.  “Kosmos” means, “all that is, subjective and objective, whereas “cosmos” refers only to “astronomical reality”.  “Kosmos” is to “cosmos” as “soma” is to “body”, objectively seen.)

A final quote from Ida Rolf:

Comprehensive recognition of human structure includes not only the physical body, but also the psychological personality — behavior, attitudes, capacities.

That description places The Rolf Method of Structural Integration squarely in the field of somatic education, even though its primary method harkens back to an earlier approach to human development.

MORE READING
An Advance of Somatic Education Technique — The Diamond Penetration Pandiculation Technique
The Integration Process
The Incarnation Taboo
Psychotherapy and Integral Somatic Education
The Big Pandiculation

VIDEO about SOMATIC EDUCATION

 

[social_essentials]


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Back Spasms — The Inside Story | Stress Muscularly Expressed



the moment before a back spasm - daVinci
Outside View of Back

Back spasms catch us “unawares”,

so to speak.

But here’s the odd thing:  when a back spasm happens, it’s most often been coming for a long time.

The Back Story of Most Back Pain

Back during a period of prolonged high stress — maybe during an employment crisis or facing deadline after deadline after deadline — you got yourself used to driving yourself hard or used to being in a state of urgency.  Maybe you listen to too much news or talk radio and get “wound up”.  Maybe you stayed too long in a situation you really wanted to get out of, or maybe you put and kept yourself in uncomfortable positions, by sense of necessity, that you would rather have gotten out of, and got part-way used to that, while keeping going.  Or maybe you just “trained” badly or trained on top of old injuries.  You’re musclebound, whatever the story, and ended up having a back spasm.

It’s been coming for a long time, your back spasm — you’ve been getting closer to the edge of cramp or spasm for a long time.  You got so used to being tense and stiff that, one day, you pulled on that tenseness and stiffness and it pulled you right back, something like an internally generated whiplash action.

What If It Was a Whiplash Incident?

Maybe you were involved in an accident that yanked or jerked or jolted you a bit too much.

Then, you tightened up suddenly, experienced a sudden yank-back, and you knew you were caught.  What started as a protective stiffening became a back spasm.

Back Spasms Come from and Are Maintained by Muscle/Movement Memory

“Caught in your own conditioning”– thinking about that — your back spasms come from your conditioning — how you remember your back muscles’ “normal” (habituated) condition.

We all caught in our conditioning, our memories of how things are, to varying degrees and in different ways.  Had you noticed?

However, sometimes, it’s just too much, and with just one more challenge we suddenly go hard-line, uptight, tense, caught in the grip of our own conditioning, in spasm, body and mind (two aspects of the same thing).  Think about it:  didn’t your back spasm stop you in your tracks? mid-step?  It wasn’t just “a back spasm“; it was a “you spasm“.

The Problem with a “You Spasm”

Not enough capacity, not enough tolerance for additional demand.  On edge, trying to be nice, perhaps.  Not much more capacity for stress, however.  Used up, or close to it, in the grip.

The solution?

Recover much of that reserve capacity by dispeling obsolete tension patterns.  Lose the excess tension.  Get back to normal.  Recover your reserve capacity.  Feel like a human being.  You may have forgotten what that feels like and you may not have known that you can do it, yourself.

Common Back Spasms are Simple

“Simple When You Know How”

Common Back Pain is a fairly simple condition to master.  It’s just a primitive “go” reaction (“Landau Reaction“) turned on too hard and too long.  You’re overheated; you’re idling too high.  You can learn to turn this reflex (Landau Reaction) down and up again, temper it, recover a bunch of reserve capacity, flexibility and freedom of movement.  No more spasm, no more back pain, more reserve capacity, more movability.

Back Spasms from Injury are More Complex, Take More Doing to Clear Up

Back pain from injury may consist of a number of overlying contraction patterns.  However, bending over or twisting and getting a spasm isn’t an injury; it’s a malfunction that falls under “Common Back Pain”.  Recovering from a complicated injury isn’t more difficult, particularly; it just takes more steps, some sorting out, and more doing, of course.

The same principle applies, either way.

Recover voluntary (deliberate) control of the muscular grip and let it relax, then deliberately use it freely and so reclaim it.  Strength, reserve capacity, free control.  Security.

One Right Reason

That’s one very good purpose of somatic education — to get people out of pain.  It’s effective, it’s faster than more well-known or popularized methods, and it brings durable benefits under all life conditions.

Different — and More Like Yourself

A larger effect of somatic education is to train people to free themselves from the excessive grip of their conditioning; to re-acquaint people with what it feels like to feel fine;  so people feel different and more like themselves.

Relief comes primarily from what the person does, secondarily from what someone else did with the person.  If you do sessions of this process, you contribute at least 50% to the change, moving between effort and non-effort (in clinical sessions), or more like 90% if you’re working at a distance from me (Lawrence Gold) following recorded instructional material and taking distance-coaching, as needed.

Because the person is contributing energy, intention, and intelligence to the process, and because they’re changing from within (if guided from out), the change is theirs — theirs to maintain or theirs to re-create, if necessary.  More than that, it’s faster than by externally operating methods, whether scalpel, laser, or stretching device (“spinal decompression”), longer-lasting than manipulations or interventions of many kinds.  It’s longer-lasting because it covers more of the bases and from the internal control center, the self, oneself, and faster because it works from the inside, out.

MORE ON BACK SPASMS, DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES

 

 


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TMJ Syndrome-TMD-Bruxism Treatments

This entry is for you if you have bruxism, orofacial pain, earaches, TMJ headaches, or clench your teeth at night.

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TMJ Syndrome | Clinical Somatic Education session
Oscar W. in Session for TMJ Dysfunction

Once again, I am drawn to address common practices used to alleviate common health conditions.  In this case, it’s TMJ Dysfunction (or “TMD” or “TMJ Syndrome”), a condition that people commonly expect to take months or years to clear up, but which can be cleared up in weeks by oneself or faster with clinical somatic education sessions.

The Essence of TMJ Dysfunction

Common dental practices overlook the root of the condition:  neuromuscular conditioning caused by trauma (injury, previous dental work) or long-term emotional stress (particularly, anger).  Even “neuromuscular dentistry” approaches the situation indirectly, by changing such things as a person’s bite pattern; the “neuromuscular” part exists in their minds, but not in their way of approaching the situation.

“Neuromuscular conditioning” means the way the brain has learned to control (or regulate) a certain function — in this case, the tension and movements of the jaws.  It’s a function of what is colloquially called, “muscle memory or movement memory.

An article posted here gives the details.

Here are topics that give reasoning and details.

The common therapeutic means for addressing the condition address symptoms, rather than causes.

As a clinical somatic education practitioner, I’ve developed an effective and reliable self-relief program, which addresses exactly the underlying cause of TMJ Syndrome:  the reflexive muscular action in the muscles of biting a chewing that causes the complex array of symptoms associated with TMJ Syndrome.

INTRODUCTION TO THIS TMJ SELF-TREATMENT PROGRAM

TMJ Dysfunction (TMD) Corrected
with Hanna Somatic Education

MORE:

Common Causes of TMJ Syndrome/TMD/Bruxism

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Common Causes of TMJ Syndrome, Nocturnal Bruxism

TMJ Syndrome (also known as “TMD” and “TMJD”) includes diverse symptoms caused by reflexive actions of the muscles of biting and chewing. It comes from brain-muscle conditioning (“muscle/movement memory”) caused by trauma and/or stress.  The term, “TMJ”, refers to the Temporo-Mandibular Joints — the jaw joints.

photo | Somatic Education for TMJ Dysfunction
Muscle/movement memory retraining technique of the muscles of biting and chewing.

As with all conditioning, proper training techniques can alter the conditioning that controls the muscles of biting and chewing. An accelerated training process, clinical somatic education), dramatically reduces the time needed to correct TMD/TMJ Dysfunction by retraining the muscle/movement memory that controls biting and chewing.

Dentists commonly categorize TMD/TMJ Dysfunction into different types: joint arthritis at the temporo-mandibular joint (TMJ), muscular soreness (myalgia), articular disc displacement, and bite deviation.

All of these conditions reduce down to the same cause: muscle/movement memory that keeps the muscles of biting and chewing tight.  The same approach can resolve them all (except for “disc displacement without reduction”, which is a surgical situation).

Let’s see how.

Degenerative Arthritis
Degenerative arthritis of the TMJ does not just “happen by itself”, nor does it result from outside influences, like an infection.

It results from excessive compression forces upon the TMJ, imposed by chronically tight muscles of biting and chewing. The joint breaks down under pressure.

Treatment must therefore retrain those muscles to a normal, low tension state, to be effective.

Muscular Soreness (Pain)
Chronically tight muscles develop muscle fatigue — the common “burn” that people go for in athletic training.  People with TMJ Dysfunction experience pain in the ear or on one side of the jaw, from this condition.

Symptoms disappear nearly instantly, once muscles relax. For a lasting reduction of muscle tension and burn, a training process is needed. Faster and slower training processes exist. 

Articular Disc Displacement
The articular disc of the TMJ is a pad that rides between the lower jaw (mandible) and the underside of the cheek bone (zygomatic bone), which goes from below the eyes, in front, to just before the ears on both sides. The TMJ, itself, is located just in front of the ears, and although the TMJ is the “home” position for the lower jaw, the TMJ is a very free joint. The cheek bone acts as a kind of rail along which the lower jaw rides forward and back during jaw movements, out of and back into the temporo-mandibular joint. The articular disc pads the contact between the lower and upper contact surfaces, connected to the lower jaw by a ligament with some elasticity.

When jaw muscles are chronically tight, the articular disc gets squeezed between the two surfaces, upper and lower, and may get dragged out of place by jaw movements (displacement) — a very painful condition.

If the displaced position of the disc is within the rebound capacity of the attaching ligament, the disc can return to its home position (“disc displacement with reduction”), once excessive compression forces ease. If the ligament gets stretched past its rebound capacity, the disc stays out of place (“disc displacement without reduction”).

Bite Deviations
Bite deviations do not, in themselves, cause of TMJ Dysfunction, but they are a manifestation of it.  However, when combined with excessive tension in the muscles of biting and chewing, the sensation of bite deviations get magnified, experienced as the sensation of “misfit”; grinding motions (bruxism) are actually a seeking for the comfort of a fit in a rest position, which is unavailable due to the feeling of upper and lower jaw misfit that bite deviations create.

While something radical like surgery may seem to be a necessary option, it is usually sufficient (and necessary) is to bring the jaw muscles to rest. To do so increases the tolerance (i.e., comfort) of the mismatched situation to the point where it is not disturbing.

The means to do this involves retraining muscle/movement memory of the muscles of biting and chewing.

Trauma
The underlying condition for the others, trauma (a blow to the lower jaw or dental work) triggers the muscles of biting to tighten (“trauma reflex”).

Gum chewing is not a cause, in itself, of TMJ Dysfunction.

I say more about trauma, below.

Conditioning Influences
The jaw muscles, like all the the muscles of the body, are subject to control by conditioned postural reflexes (muscle/movement memory), which affect chewing and biting movements. The reason people don’t go around slack-jawed and drooling, for example, is that a conditioned postural reflex causes the muscles of biting and chewing always to remain slightly tensed, keeping jaws closed. People’s jaw muscles are always more or less tense, even when they are asleep — but the norm is very mildly tense — just enough to keep the mouth closed and lips together.

The degree of tension people hold is a matter of conditioning.

For brevity, I’ll discuss only conditions that lead to TMJ/bruxism and not the normal development of muscle tone in the muscles of biting and chewing.
These influences fall into two categories:

  • Emotional Stress
  • Physical Trauma

I don’t know of empirical studies that prove which of these two causes is the more prevalent, but from my clinical experience, I would say that physical trauma (and tooth and jaw pain — which induces people to change their biting and chewing actions, and which becomes habitual) is the more common causes of TMJ Syndrome, and also dental surgery, itself. (Consider the jaw soreness that commonly follows dental fillings, crowns, root canals, etc. — soreness that may last for days.)

Emotional Stress
Ever heard the expressions, “Bite your tongue”? “Grit Your Teeth”? “Bite the Bullet”? “Hold your tongue”? “Bite the Big One”? They all have something in common, don’t they? What is that? To someone who regularly represses emotion or the urge to say something, these expressions have literal meaning.

Such repression, over time, manifests as tension held in the muscles of speech — in the jaws, mouth, neck, face, and back — the same as the muscles of biting and chewing.

Physical Trauma
Although people experience trauma to the jaws through falls, blows, and motor vehicle accidents, the most common form of physical trauma (other than dental disease) is dentistry, itself, and it’s unavoidable. Dental surgery is traumatic. The relevant term is “iatrogenic” — which means “caused as a side-effect of treatment”. Every dental procedure (and every surgical procedure) should be followed by a process for dispeling the reflexive guarding triggered by the procedure. (See the video.)

No doubt, this assertion will cause much distress among dentists, and I regret that, but how can we escape that conclusion?

Consider the experience of dentistry, both during and after dental surgery (fillings, root canal work, implants, cosmetic dentistry, crown installation, injections of anaesthetic, even routine cleanings and examinations). Consider the response we have to that pain or even the expectation of pain: we cringe.

We may think such cringing to be momentary, but consider the intensity of dental surgery; it leaves intense memory impressions on the nervous system evident as patterns of tension. (Who’s relaxed going to the dentist? — or coming out of the dentist’s office?) The physical after-effects show up as tension in the jaws and neck, and often in the spinal musculature, as well — and as a host of other symptoms.

Let’s go back to our fond memories of dentistry.

If you’ve observed your physical reactions in the dentist’s surgery station, you may have noticed that during probing of a tooth for decay (with that sharp, hooked probe they use), you tighten not just your jaw (can you feel it?) and your neck muscles, but also the muscles of breathing, your hands, and even your legs. It’s an effort to remain lying down in the surgery station when, bodily, you want to get up and get away from those instruments and the dentist or hygienist wielding them.

With procedures such as fillings, root canal surgery, implants and crown installations, the muscular responses are more specific and more intense. It’s important to ask your dentist about the best way to whiten teeth has never been more popular, even amongst the 50+. For teeth near the back of the jaws, we tense the muscles nearer the back of our neck; for teeth near the front of the jaws, we tense the muscles closer the front of the throat, floor of the mouth and tongue.

This reflexive response has a name: Trauma Reflex.

Trauma Reflex is the universal, involuntary response to pain and to expectation of pain.

It centers at the location of the pain at the time of trauma and is linked to our position at the time of pain. Muscular tensions form as an action of withdrawing, avoiding, or escaping the source of pain:  tensions of the jaw muscles, neck, and shoulders, with muscular involvement all the way into the legs.

In dentistry, with the head commonly turned to one side, in addition to the simple trauma reflex associated with pain, we have the involvement of our sense of position, and not just the muscles of the jaws are involved, but also those of the neck, shoulders, spine.

All of these conditions combine into an experience that goes into memory with such intensity that it modifies or entirely displaces our sense of normal movement and position. We forget free movement and instead become habituated or adapted to the memory of the trauma (whether of dental work or of some other trauma involving teeth or jaws). Our neuro-muscular system acts as if the trauma is still happening, even though, to our conscious minds, it is long past, and the way it acts as if the trauma is still happening is by tightening the muscles that close the jaws.

Since accidents and surgeries address teeth at one side of the jaws or the other, the tensions occur on one side of the jaws or the other. Thus, the symptoms of such tension — jaw pain, bite deviations, and earaches — tend to be one-sided or to exist on one side more than on the other.

The proof of the role of trauma reflex? — the permanent changes of bite and tension of the muscles of biting that have behind them a history of dental trauma — and the changes you see in the video that occur as this man is relieved of those conditioned postural reflexes.

AN OFFERING:   See how”The Whole-body Yawn” reconditions the muscles of biting and chewing to normal levels — ending all symptoms of TMJ Syndrome / TMD. CLICK HERE

RELATED ARTICLE:  Symptoms of TMJ Syndrome
DIRECTORY OF ARTICLES:  click here.

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How to Free Tight Hamstrings

This entry discusses healthy hamstring movement, exercises to free tight hamstrings, and some of the consequences of tight hamstrings. Resources to a hamstring stretch substitute that produces superior results by retraining muscle/movement memory and to programs to improve agility appear at the end.

To free tight hamstrings, it’s important to understand their four movement functions and then to get free control of those movement functions.

  1. leg extension at the hip joint
  2. leg flexion at the knee
  3. rotation of the lower leg at the knee joint
  4. stabilization of the pelvis when bending forward

We must free them (gain control of tension and relaxation) in all four movement functions.

If we do not gain (or improve) control in all four movement functions, one or more of those movement habits will dominate control of the other movement(s).

In addition, the hamstrings of one leg work alternately with those of the other — as in walking; when the hamstrings of one leg are bending or stabilizing the knee, the hamstrings of the other leg are extending or stabilizing the other leg at the hip.   In those movements, the hamstrings coordinate with the hip flexors and psoas muscles.  (Co-contraction of hamstrings and hip flexors/psoas muscles leads to hip joint and ilio-sacral (SI) joint compression.)  So our approach (being movement-based) must take those relationships into account.  Otherwise, we never develop the feeling of free hamstrings in their familiar movements and return habitually to their tight state which, because it feels familiar, feels “normal”.

The Four Movements of Hamstrings

LEG EXTENSION AT THE HIP JOINT
That’s the “leg backward” movement of walking.  The hamstrings are aided by the gluteal (butt) muscles, but only in a stabilizing capacity.  The major work is done by the hamstrings.  In this movement, the hamstrings, inner and outer, work together in tandem.

LEG FLEXION AT THE KNEE JOINT
That’s the “getting ready to kick” movement and also the “pawing the ground” movement.  In these movements, the hamstrings, inner and outer, also work together in tandem (same movement).

To the anatomist and kinesiologist, it may seem incomprehensible (“paradoxical”) that the hamstrings are involved in both movements — leg forward and leg backward — but that’s how it is.   Though the hamstrings are involved in both cases, different movements cause a different feel.

LOWER LEG ROTATION AT THE KNEE
That’s the turning movement used in skating and in turning a corner.  In this movement, the inner hamstrings (semi-membranosis and semi-tendinosis) relax and lengthen as the outer hamstring (biceps femoris) tighten to turn toes-out and the inner hamstrings tighten to turn toes-in as the outer hamstring relaxes and lengthens.

STABILIZATION OF THE PELVIS WHEN BENDING FORWARD
The hamstrings anchor the pelvis at the sitbones (ischial tuberosities) deep to the ‘smile’ creases beneath the buttocks (not the crack), so one can bend forward in a controlled way, instead of flopping forward at the hips like a marionette.  In this movement, the hamstrings coordinate with the front belly muscles (rectus abdominis).

In most people, either the rectus abdominis or hamstrings dominates the other in a chronic state of excessive tension, so freeing and coordinating the hamstrings involves coordinating and matching the efforts of the two muscle groups.  When the hamstrings dominate, we see swayback; when the rectus muscles dominate, we see flat ribs.

Training Control of Tight Hamstrings

the opposite of tight hamstrings | photo
See how easily she bends forward.

When training control of tight hamstrings (to free them), it’s convenient to start with the less complicated movement, first.  That’s the anchoring movement that stabilizes bowing in a standing position.  To see an exercise that cultivates hamstring control this way, click here.

After we cultivate control of “in tandem” hamstring movements (movement in which the hamstrings are doing the same action — lengthening, shortening or turning the lower leg), we cultivate control of “alternating” hamstring movements.  To see an exercise that cultivates hamstring control this way, click here.  (That link opens an email window to request a preview of The Magic of Somatics, an instructional book of somatic exercises.  The preview contains the somatic exercise we are discussing.)

By cultivating control of “in tandem” and “alternating” movements, we fulfill the requirements of functions (1.), (2.), and (4.).  The exercise linked in the paragraph above indirectly addresses function (3.) (lower leg rotation at the knee).

Merely to develop this kind of control is sufficient to free tight hamstrings.  It’s lack of free control of the movements I have described, in which automatic postural reflexes cause tight hamstrings, that lead to many common knee injuries (including meniscal tears and chondromalacia patelli) and common hamstring pulls or tears experienced even by athletes who stretch.

One more thing:  tight hamstrings go with tight back muscles.  They’re reflexively connected.  So if you have tight back muscles, back pain, or even back spasms, you may need to address both your hamstrings and your back muscles.  As a runner, you’ll find that to do so improves your stamina, breathing, and time.

Two programs that provide those benefits appear below.  Free previews are available and you’re invited to take advantage of them.

Programs That Have Somatic Exercises that Free Tight Hamstrings

Other exercises that have this effect exist in the somatic exercise programs, “Disproving the Myth of Aging” and “Free Your Psoas”, for which previews exist through the links, above.

MORE:

 

How Tight Hamstrings
Cause Knee Damage

and a better way to free them

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Changing Muscle Memory — Manual Manipulation vs. Neuromuscular Training/Somatic Education

A basic understanding of muscle tone recognizes that the seat of control of muscles and movement is not muscles, but the brain, not “muscle memory” but “movement memory”, not “posture” but habitual or learned movement patterns (of which posture is an expression, a moment of held movement).

Lasting changes in muscle tone require movement training at the neurological (i.e., brain) level, something that manual manipulation of muscles accomplishes, at best, slowly, but which can be achieve quickly by somatic education, a discipline that rapidly alters habitual posture, movement, and muscle tone through an internal learning process that involves the brain function of memory, find more at Nixest.

More at http://somatics.com/movement.htm and http://somatics.com/stretch.htm along with clinical applications.

Image of Thomas Hanna developed a rapid way to alter muscle memor
Thomas Hanna, Ph.D.

See also, Clinical Somatic Education — A New Discipline in the Field of Health Care, by Thomas Hanna, Ph.D. — describing the dynamics of muscle memory and its dysfunction, sensory-motor amnesia (“S-MA”)

in reference to: What is Neuromuscular Therapy? (view on Google Sidewiki)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Stress, Sleep, and Somatics

Get Out of The Big Squeeze of Thinking and Restlessness

Sleep and wakefulness — two contrasting states that exist on a continuum — meaning that we drift between the two depending on our state of arousal.

Sleep and stress (or distress) — two overlapping states — meaning that stress permeates the continuum between sleep and wakefulness.  High levels of stress prevent the “drift” between the two states — or contaminate the sleep state, leading to unsatisfactory, or unrestful, sleep. For the body to rest well, it needs to have regular and normal levels on the body, from the stress levels, to other hormones levels, like testosterone for men, so for keeping a good level of testosterone you should try some testmax nutrition that help regulates and increase those levels.

Hanna somatic education identifies three reflexes of stress

  1. Landau Reaction (“Green Light Reflex”) — the “go” state of involvement, heightened alertness, arousal
  2. Trauma Reflex (“Yellow Light Reflex”) — the “caution” state triggered by pain, injury or emotional trauma
  3. Startle Reflex (“Red Light Reflex”) — the “stop” state of fear, anxiety, withdrawal

Perhaps it’s obvious how these reflexes of stress interfere with sleep.  What may not be so obvious is how to down-regulate these reflexes of stress to allow for restful sleep caused by anxiety, some people will ask me where to buy kratom because it helps with anxiety.  (By “down-regulate”, I mean, “decrease their intensity toward the rest condition”.)

All three of these states have both a subjective (inner or psychic) component and an objective (outer or directly observable, material) component.  To affect one is to affect the other.

In general, the reflexes of stress are triggered by external events, but maintained by internal conditioning.

How to down-regulate them?

… by means of The Whole-Body Yawn (pandiculation)

The Whole-Body Yawn
Yawning involves a movement into muscular contraction, generally of the muscles of the jaws, face, neck, middle ear (that regulate sound transmission), shoulders, and of breathing — followed by a leisurely relaxation of those muscles.

Yawning refreshes the body-image (which is why people commonly yawn and stretch upon arising from sleep) and it refreshes muscular control.  Involuntary yawning, as in sleepiness (makes you want to yawn, doesn’t it?), relaxes accumulated muscular tension.  It quiets the nervous system, preparing us for sleep; insomnia can be relieved with a traditional medicinal herb called kratom.

That’s an important clue.

People who can’t sleep are stuck with a noisy nervous system (chronic thinking, chronic muscular tension) — noise generally caused by the accumulated memory imprints of the day’s experience, or of the week’s experience, or of years of accumulated experience, including that of traumatic events.

The mind never shuts off.  The body never quiets down.  The person never deeply rests.

The patterns of chronic muscular tension and mental activity correspond exactly to those memories.  The memory of kicking a soccer ball involves the movements, muscular actions, and sensations of kicking.  The memory of an unpleasant (or pleasant) event involves the tensions of whatever response the person had.  Sometimes, people can’t sleep because they are too excited by the day they have just had.

These examples set the stage for this:  If you want to sleep, you had better be able to release these states of excitation imprinted on your memory.

In general, the most common state of excitation is that of Landau Reaction (“Green Light Reflex”).  It’s the one associated with tight back muscles, tight shoulders, and tight hamstrings.  The other reflexes of stress have different muscular patterns of involvement.

If you want to recover your ability to drift from wakefulness to sleep, try something extra with something like I did with mine from MyEtizolam.com, you can do so by disarming (or quieting, or down-regulating) your excitation in the three reflexes of stress.  To do so quiets your nervous system, your breathing, your mind and your emotions.

The Whole-Body Yawn can down-regulate (or dispel) all three patterns of stress.  However, as Trauma Reflex involves unique patterns of tension and pain, it requires forms of the Whole-Body Yawn tailored to those stress-and-tension patterns.  The Green Light and Red Light Reflexes, however, can be dealt with by means of standard forms of The Whole-Body Yawn, as found in the somatic education program, Get to Sleep.

Get to Sleep consists of guiding instruction in a somatic exercise that quiets (or down-regulates) Landau (“Green Light”) Reaction, one that frees breathing, and one that quiets Startle (“Red Light”) Reflex.  Two additional tracks consist of sound works that, like lullabies, help you drift into The Deep of Sleep, so that you’re asleep before you know it.

Now, you know the rationale for the program.  What’s left, if you are among the insomniacs of the world, is to test it, and having tested it, to use it.

Here are the tracks on the Get to Sleep CD.

1. Introduction                                 (2:04)
2. Spine Wave(training)                (26:54)
3. The Square Breathing                 (6:56)
4. Freeing Breathing for Sleep        (2:11)
5. Dream Zone with Maui Rain    (12:01)
6. The Mystery of Creation          (20:15)

For the first week or so, you use Track 2. (Spine Waves); after that, you use tracks 3. and 4. (The Square Breathing and Freeing Breathing for Sleep).  Tracks 5. and 6. (“Dream Zone with Maui Rain” and “The Mystery of Creation”) are lullabies.
Click here for access to Get to Sleep.

related entry:  Back Spasms, The Inside Story


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Understanding SacroIliac Joint Pain, Stopping the Pain and Weird Symptoms

This article is about sacroiliac joint dysfunction, also called, sacroileitis, sacral torsion, turned sacrum, sprained S-I joint, sacroiliac joint syndrome, and sacroiliac (S-I) joint pain.

It explains what you need to correct it and it contrasts the correction-approach presented, here, with other forms of treatment in a way that I expect will make sense of them, to you.

It also lists symptoms and contains a link to an article with a more complete list of symptoms and explanations of their causes (that trace back to a turned sacrum).

You can read a more technically complete article, here.

images of pelvis and sacroiliac joints

It may see odd, to you, that many of the symptoms you have — pain in places seemingly unrelated to your sacroiliac joints — come from a turned sacrum.

At the same time, many of these pains are medically un-diagnosable — meaning, no medical explanation can be given for many of them — or the explanations given were educated guesses and the therapy didn’t work. If you’ve had extended therapy for those pains, and therapy for those mysterious pains didn’t help, or didn’t help enough, or didn’t produce lasting relief (common), they weren’t understood or approached, correctly, by the methods used.

WHO IS THIS ARTICLE FOR? 
This article is for you if . . .

  • you have found the information provided on sacroiliac joint pain, both by medical practitioners and “alternative” medical practitioners, to be “thin soup” that doesn’t make you feel particularly optimistic about your recovery from sacroiliac joint dysfunction and doesn’t increase your understanding, much, but only leaves you feeling faintly hopeful — hope perhaps tinged with desperation or despair.
  • you have found pain medications inadequate to deal with the pain.
  • you have tried therapies and/or surgery and are still in pain.
  • you won’t settle for less than lasting relief and are willing to do the work to get it.

WHAT’S IN THIS ARTICLE?

  • symptoms of sacroiliac joint dysfunction
  • explanation of what healthy sacroiliac joints do
  • what happens to your sacrum that causes sacroiliac joint dysfunction
  • a comparison of not-so-successful and highly-successful ways of clearing up sacroiliac joint dysfunction
  • a detailed explanation of how clinical somatic education clears up sacroiliac joint dysfunction
  • a way to get started correcting the condition and ending the pain (CLICK, HERE)

The Simple Explanation of Sacroiliac Joint Syndrome (Dysfunction)

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it.”
Richard P. Feynman


Sacroiliac joint dysfunction (SIJD) comes from displacement (misalignment) of the bones of the pelvis and strain at the ligaments that bind the joints together.  

Of the symptoms of SIJD, pain at a sacroiliac joint (at waistline level, in back, two to three inches to one side) combined with groin pain is the most common. I list other frequent symptoms, below.

SYMPTOMS OF S-I JOINT PAIN SYNDROME
Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction

Following are the most common symptoms of sacroiliac joint dysfunction. Many more exist that vary from individual to individual.

  • pain at the groin and waistline, in back, same side – in combination
  • pain around the top rim of the pelvis
  • deep buttock pain, one side
  • reduced ability either to bend forward or to stand up straight

On another page, I list more symptoms grouped by:

  • SENSATIONS
  • SKELETAL ALIGNMENT CHANGES
  • MUSCLE/MOVEMENT MEMORY CHANGES
  • EMOTIONAL EFFECTS
CLICK HERE TO VIEW OTHER SYMPTOMS.

There are a lot more symptoms listed on the VIEW OTHER SYMPTOMS page

If you have two or more of the symptoms listed on this page, you likely have sacroiliac joint dysfunction.

But don’t assume that, from the symptoms. Other conditions can cause many of the same symptoms. Symptoms only suggest where to look for the cause. The way to tell if you have SIJD is by manual examination of your sacroiliac joints — something you can do, by yourself, as instructed in the video, below, SELF-ASSESSMENT OF SACRAL POSITION. If you find one side deeper, that’s it: a twisted sacrum and S-I joint strain.

Follow the instructions. Self-examination involves a simple movement with your hands to feel the region of your S-I joints. Pay close attention to the spoken instructions so you know what you’re feeling for. Don’t guess. Either you can feel it, or you can’t. 

SELF-ASSESSMENT OF SACRAL POSITION
https://youtu.be/5zB1T6fYPLA

By feeling the region of your back described in the video, you can feel ridges on both sides with your fingertips. These are not the S-I joints, but the edges of the neighboring hip bones. Toward the midline (the spinal line), next to those ridges, you feel, and others may see, dimples. Your S-I joints are there. The dimples are easier to find in some
people than in others, but the S-I joints are there, deep to the dimples.

If you can’t tell, you may visit a chiropractor or osteopath to get a diagnosis and to get trained how to examine yourself. If you’re going to use the program of exercises to correct your own SIJD, you’ll need to be able to examine yourself before each exercise practice session to know which side to do.

If you’ve found one side sacroiliac joint deeper(“jammed”), you know what’s going on with you. Good for you. Now, you know what you need: a way to straighten out your sacrum so it stays straightened out. That’s on this page, at bottom.

If neither side S-I joint seems deeper, your symptoms may come from other
injuries — which is good news for you because other injuries are much
easier to clear up than SIJD. Visit the Consultation page to get a free Functional Assessment form. Complete it and return it to me by email for a recommendation.

Causes of a Turned Sacrum

THE SACRO-ILIAC (S-I) JOINT LIGAMENTS ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF S-I JOINT DYSFUNCTION, BUT THE VICTIM OF IT — and the side that hurts is the non-jammed side (contrary to what one might expect).

This Mayo Clinic entry describes recognized causes of a twisted sacrum.

Sacroileitis — Comprehensive overview covers symptoms, causes, diagnosis, treatment of inflammation of the sacroiliac joints. 

ref: Overview – Sacroiliitis – Mayo Clinic

Causes for sacroiliac joint dysfunction include:

  • Traumatic injury. A sudden impact, such as a motor vehicle accident or a fall, can damage your sacroiliac joints.
  • Arthritis.
    Wear-and-tear arthritis (osteoarthritis) can occur in sacroiliac
    joints, as can ankylosing spondylitis — a type of inflammatory arthritis
    that affects the spine.
  • Pregnancy. The
    sacroiliac joints must loosen and stretch to accommodate childbirth. The
    added weight and altered gait during pregnancy can cause additional
    stress on these joints and can lead to abnormal wear.
  • Infection. In rare cases, the sacroiliac joint can become infected.

In my clients’ experience, nearly all cases come from an injury, with far fewer from pregnancy or other causes. Injuries include falls (bicycle, horse, rooftop, skating, ladder, etc.) and motor vehicle accidents with one foot on the brake at the moment of impact jamming the leg into the hip on one side.

Unsuccessful and Successful Ways to Extinguish S-I Joint Pain

Not-So-Successful Approaches

You may be familiar with these approaches.

Two surgical measures used to stop S-I joint pain are radio frequency nerve ablation (“RFA” – cooking the nerve ending) and Sacro-Iliac Joint Fusion.

  • Nerve ablation costs about $2,100 and lasts 9-12 months before the nerve regenerates — making repetition necessary.
  • Sacro-Iliac Joint Fusion surgery costs about $22,000 and has the side effects detailed in the article just below. Neither corrects the problem, but only minimizes symptoms.

Click the image, below, to read the article by Dr. Centeno.

Click for this article by Dr. Centeno.


Skeletal manipulation is another approach. However, because of the muscle spasms triggered by a twisted sacrum, adjustments to the sacrum don’t “take”. Distorted muscular pulls distort the weight-bearing forces that go through the pelvis and distort its shape. Symptoms return or never  go away.

https://youtu.be/K7urk1N5hPU
https://youtu.be/K7urk1N5hPU
The Three Biggest Mistakes Made by People
Trying to Get Out of Pain


Two other approaches have to do with the ligaments that bind the S-I joints — and they’re opposites.

  1. Loosen the ligaments by direct massaging or manipulation. 
  2. Tighten the ligaments by prolotherapy.

If it strikes you as odd that practitioners use two opposite approaches (and not together), it suggests to me that their approaches are “shot in the dark” efforts in terms of something they know about. Certainly, if they were consistently effective, SIJD would not be considered so difficult to clear up.

But the ligaments are not the cause, but the victims of the twisted sacrum, and I’ve quoted the Mayo Clinic article as to causes. Any successful approach should somehow address the condition in terms of its cause, don’t you think?

Another approach, the approach I took and advocate, has no negative side effects, consistently provides lasting relief, and restores full function. I explain it, next.

Clinical Somatic Education

Because the field of clinical somatic education is relatively new and not well-known, I’ll briefly explain it, to you. You may see this page, for more explanation.

Clinical somatic education is a health discipline used to extinguish pain and improve movement. Muscles relax, nerve pain ends, and joints come loose. Instead of stretching, we use a completely different technique that causes a long-lasting relaxation of tight muscles by changing muscular control at the brain-level. It’s called, pandiculation.

Pandiculation: “The Whole-Body Yawn”

Pandiculation is an action pattern related to yawning that has far-reaching effects on muscular control and physical comfort. It’s ideally suited for retraining
muscle/movement memory. Pandiculation is a completely different technique from stretching or manipulation.

DOES STRETCHING “ONE BETTER”

Everyone has experienced pandiculation. The “morning yawn and
stretch” is a pandiculation (but the athletic, warm-up stretch is not, by the way).

Pandiculation is what cats, dogs, and every animal with a backbone does, upon arising
from rest. People call it, “stretching”, but it isn’t stretching; it’s tightening muscles and then slowly relaxing and moving or even shaking (you’ve seen a dog do this movement). Pandiculation can be done in more ways than just yawning or the morning “waking up” stretch.

Pandiculation is essential to reprogram muscles and movement. You need to unlock
something before you can adjust it. Pandiculation unlocks muscle/movement memory, so it can be changed.

My earlier description of the causes of SIJD cites muscular involvement and distortion of pelvic shape. The two go together, as I have explained — but, to put it more succinctly, “Bones go where muscles pull them.” Clinical somatic education addresses the muscular involvement and skeletal alignment.

The system of somatic education exercises I developed to correct my own SIJD uses patterned movements to retrain muscle/movement memory. Changes of muscular pulls cause the pelvis to reshape. These changes can clearly be felt. Again, “bones go where muscles pull them.”

Click on the image, below, to see the entire comment.

screen shot of testimonal by Michelle Knight
 

TO SUMMARIZE:

Compression and twisting forces that converge at the S-I joints cause compression of the S-I joints, strain the S-I ligaments, trigger reflexive muscular contractions throughout the trunk and legs that cause muscle and cause radiating nerve pain (that may be mistaken for spasm) — symptoms that never let up, day or night.

S-I Joint Dysfunction or Sacroiliac Pain Syndrome (the word, “syndrome ” meaning a recognizable cluster of symptoms) comprise a complex collection of symptoms that doesn’t respond to therapy, when addressed directly. The key to stopping the pain is to get the position of the sacrum to straighten.

ACTIONABLE UNDERSTANDING

By now, we can see how the forces of an injury initially distorted the pelvis and how muscular contractions, maintained by muscle/movement memory, have kept the problem in place

That means that we can’t correct the problem in any lasting way by addressing the ligaments. (To tighten the ligaments, as in prolotherapy, misses the point and to stretch or loosen the ligaments may reduce their strain, but doesn’t correct pelvic shape or habituated muscular tension patterns).

It also means that we can’t massage away the problem (have you noticed?). It means that we have to free the person from the grip of cringe response and develop balanced, well-coordinated movement that supports the sacrum properly and induces the pelvis to become symmetrical (“mirror-image the same shape”, right-and-left).

Clinical Somatic Education to Correct Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction:
The Role of Movement (“muscle”) Memory

The medical model, which uses drugs, surgery, and electrical or mechanical devices, generally targets a specific symptom or location of pain, but does not, typically, address muscle/movement memory — even if it does address skeletal alignment, as in chiropractic or osteopathy. Moreover, the medical specialty, “pain management”, is a branch of anaesthesiology; it’s primary approach is to mask or hide pain, not to eliminate its cause.

Unlike the medical model and standard therapeutics, clinical somatic education uses action (movement) patterns not to stretch, but to free — and then re-pattern — the muscular tensions that cause the pain of S-I joint dysfunction and keep the condition in place.

The key term, here, is, “patterns”. Thomas Hanna, in his book, Somatics | ReAwakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility and Health (available at many public libraries and via amazon.com), talks about how those tension patterns form with an injury and the process of ending them and their symptoms.

These changes of muscular tension pattern influence pelvic shape over the long term. It’s an entirely new, brain-muscle-based approach that works without need for stretching, strengthening, or soft-tissue manipulation. Instead, it corrects muscle/movement memory, and thereby gets all of the effects of strengthening, stretching, and soft-tissue manipulation — but in a lasting way.

Somatic education causes no undesirable side-effects, other than occasional, short-term soreness immediately after a practice session and lasting 1-2 hours, or 24-36 hours after a practice session, lasting about as long.


ComfortingYour S-I Joints.

With clinical somatic education, we correct S-I Joint Dysfunction in three stages.

  1. Unlock the Situation. We reduce the tension levels of the involved muscles, sufficiently to unjam the jammed S-I joint to permit repatterning of the forces that keep the pelvis distorted. 
  2. Reshape muscular tension and movement patterns through practice of movement patterns consistent with a sound, symmetrical pelvis and healthy S-I joint function. 
  3. Reinforce healthy, free, balanced patterns of movement — not by strengthening, but by developing better integrated movement habits. These movement habits become second nature and do not require special attention in daily life.
screen shot of testimonal comment from YouTube video

 

Click on the image, above, to see entire comment.

See the section, below, to get started with Comforting Your S-I Joints, for free. It’s free because I expect you to find it effective and to purchase the rest of the program.

 

Comforting Your S-I Joints | A RECIPE for RELIEF

This self-renewal program been well-tested — starting with myself as the first “guinea pig”.  (Remember, I am a trained practitioner of a health discipline to eliminate pain and rehabilitate movement.)  I had most of the symptoms listed. Once I found the exercises worked in me, I published them as preliminary instructional videos and then started teaching them to clients.

I understand why someone might be very cautious about taking an alternate approach to clearing up the problem — and I suspect that you may already have “been the route” with both medical and “complementary medicine” practitioners, to little avail. What I can say is that no one has gotten worse, from this approach, and an overwhelming percentage have gotten better. Everyone I have worked with, personally (I’m a clinical somatic educator practicing since 1990), has been satisfied with the result.

The program consists of a series of somatic education exercises that retrain movement (muscle) memory, done in a specific order.

As in a cake recipe, no one ingredient constitutes the entire recipe, and there are steps of preparation; a somatic education exercise may be viewed as an ingredient and the whole program is the recipe.

Who is This Program For?


The “Gentle Spine Waves exercise” in Unit 1 of the program is such an ingredient and a step of preparation. It’s not expected to relieve your S-I symptoms, by itself (although it works for simple back pain); it’s a necessary step to unlock the situation. What it does is relax the back muscles; this step is one of preparation, not of “cure”.

 

https://youtu.be/-JMk0ANH7c8

HOW TO UNLOCK THE SITUATION:

Unit 1 of Comforting Your S-I Joints is the foundation of the program. Called, “Unlocking the Situation”, it decompresses a jammed S-I joint so that the sacrum can be caused to move by the exercises in Unit 2. You do Unit 1 before every practice session of Unit 2 exercises. Scroll to the bottom to send for instructions to get started for free.

By getting started with Unit 1, you can develop the confidence that you actually can succeed at this program and, as improbable as it may seem, do for yourself what medical professionals and therapists have been unable to do, for you. Structured exercises that retrain muscle/movement memory can do for you what manipulation, drugs, TENS (“transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation” — nerve stimulation through the skin), or surgery, cannot.

After the unlocking, exercises that use pandiculation accelerate changes of muscular (postural) habits. The pelvis starts to reshape and the sacrum, to migrate to a new, comfortable position. With practice, improvements accumulate.

Once the changes have occurred, pandiculation exercises reinforce the new pattern. Job done.

If you’re used to exercises or therapies that produce such small changes that you can hardly tell if anything is different, this isn’t that. With somatic education exercises, you can feel changes rather quickly (obvious after two practice sessions). As, your movement and posture change, the symptoms of SIJD fade out.

TO GET STARTED, at no charge

To get started with Comforting Your S-I Joints click, here.

You will land on the Getting Started at No Charge page, which contains practice instructions and a link to purchase the entire program.
A quick-response email message will come to your email address requesting permission to mail to you. Once you give permission, “Getting Started for Free” emails will come to you with bite-size steps for Unit 1 of Comforting Your S-I Joints.Comforting Your S-I Joints is a system of movement-based action patterns that reprograms muscle/movement memory in a lasting way. You’ll feel changes for the better with each practice session; changes accumulate over time. The entire system extinguishes the pain and restores mobility.

Final words: These exercises are refreshing, not tiring. If you’re feeling too tired to practice the exercises, practice them and get refreshed.

Comforting Your S-I Joints screen image

 
CLICK THE IMAGE, AT RIGHT
OR GET STARTED, FOR FREE,
BY ENTERING YOUR INFORMATION, ABOVE.
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with me, Lawrence Gold.

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copyright 2014-2018 Lawrence Gold
This writing may be reproduced only in its entirety,
with accurate attribution of its authorship
and contact information.

 

Lawrence Gold is a clinical somatic educator trained in Hanna somatic education, a clinical modality for relief of pain, with two years experience on-staff at a community hospital rehabilitation center in California and with a world-wide clientele for his private practice. If you have chronic pain for a lingering injury, he invites you to contact him for a preliminary consultation, here. Learn more about Lawrence Gold’s background, articles published, and speaking engagements, here.
This article is republished from Full-Spectrum Somatics:
http://lawrencegoldsomatics.blogspot.com/2011/04/understanding-sacro-iliac-joints.html
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