Somatic Education Exercises | potent combinations

In this entry, I present some combinations of somatic exercises that have special potency in changing tension-and-movement patterns — preceded by a bit of explanation.


EXPLANATION

Anyone practicing somatic education should be familiar with — and use — the power of synergy.

“Synergy” isn’t some New Age froo-froo concept; it’s the way “a whole is more than the sum of its parts” — it’s organization.  It’s what makes a system a ‘system’ and not just a collection of unassembled parts.  It’s coordination.  It’s integration.  For more on Thomas Hanna’s take on coordination, read his book, The Body of  Life.  He also referred to synergy in his published Wave 1 lectures; whether you are a student-in-training or a certified practitioner, if you don’t have those lectures or haven’t listened to them, get them and listen to them.  They are a major part of his functional legacy and will boost your effectiveness.

Synergy is part of what makes the standard lessons of Hanna somatic education so powerful.  In those lessons, multiple movement elements, e.g., the steps of Lesson 1 / the Green Light Reflex lesson, combine into an overall action pattern. Those movement elements are “the parts”; the action pattern you are addressing — Landau Reaction, Startle Reflex, or Trauma Reflex in its multifarious forms (see The Handbook of Assisted Pandiculation) — is the ‘whole’.

Piecework — going straight for the painful location to “get at the problem” right away, is never as effective as dealing with whole patterns, in the long run and often in the short run.  Sometimes, when a client is insistent that we work in the painful region immediately, I’ll do it.  I call this form of client placation, “Kiss boo-boo.”  But then I get straight away to the overall pattern and I explain to the client, why, if necessary to his or her wholehearted participation in the way I want to proceed with sessions.

By the same token, combining somatic exercises to address a single location is more potent than addressing it with one somatic exercise, only.  Thomas Hanna’s comment on afternoon, leading us in somatic kinesiology — that using more than one somatic exercise to reach a problem region is more potent than using only one exercise (because learning the same thing multiple ways is more potent) — may have slipped by unnoticed by many, but it’s worth noting — and acting upon.

So here are some collections of somatic exercises that are synergistic in this way.  You’ll notice two things.  That I:

  1. start with gentler somatic exercise and progress to more demanding ones
  2. combine somatic exercises published in different sources

A certain class of somatic educators continually explores for ways to improve his/her own functioning and well-being.  Such people have an advantage over those who go only with the basic material conveyed during training:  they can understand more forms of Sensory-Motor Amnesia (from the inside) and deal effectively with them, unlike those with less-developed somatic competency.

If, in yourself, you can find new and effective somatic exercise patterns, that’s best; if not so much, various programs exist that can give you a leg-up.

 

SOMATIC EXERCISE COMBINATIONS

FREEING SIDEBENDING

  1. Myth of Aging Lesson 3
  2. Quadratus Lumborum pandiculation (YouTube video / End Your Own Sacro-iliac Pain)
  3. Yoga of the Reclining Buddha (Free Yourself from Back Pain)
FREEING UPPER ARM ROTATION with SHOULDER MOVEMENTS
  1. “Dishrag” / 4-Way Twist (Myth of Aging Lesson 4)
  2. Startle Reflex somatic exercise (YouTube video)
  3. Hokey-Pokey Hidey Ho (YouTube Video)
WALKING
  1. Myth of Aging Lesson 8
  2. The Gyroscopic Walk (YouTube video)
  3. The Scottish Geezer’s Walk (YouTube video)
POSTERIOR TENSION / PAIN / RESTRICTION | FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT/COORDINATION
  1. Hamstrings somatic exercise (video)
  2. The Athletes’ Prayer for Loose Calves (YouTube video / Free Your Psoas, lesson 9)
  3. Spine Waves (The Five-Pointed Star / Quick Help for Back Pain) | arm reach addition
  4. The Dolphin
  5.  Freeing the Neck and Shoulders (from The Magic of Somatics, section 2)
SACRAL PAIN
  1. Myth of Aging lesson 1
  2. Myth of Aging lesson 2
  3. Lazy 8s (Free Yourself from Back Pain, module 1B)
  4. Centering the Sacrum (End Your Own Sacro-iliac Pain)

This is a fairly “minimum” collection of exercises — enough for you to test to feel their synergy.  People with sacro-iliac pain almost certainly need more — and I’ve published an entry that explains why and gives access to a complete regimen here.

NECK ISSUES
  1. Myth of Aging, lesson 6
  2. Freeing Tight Neck and Shoulders (The Magic of Somatics)
  3. Getting Kinks out of Your Neck (The Magic of Somatics)
  4. The Yoga of the Reclining Buddha (Free Yourself from Back Pain, module 2B)
  5. Spine Waves with Arm Reach (The Five-Pointed Star plus YouTube video)
  6. The Folding See-saw with Head-turn (Free Yourself from Back Pain, module 1C)
  7. Myth of Aging, lesson 4 with modification for neck (YouTube video)

COMPLEMENTARY EXERCISES

  1. Myth of Aging, Lesson 2
  2. The Dolphin
  3. Spine Waves

You notice that this collection of movements is fairly large.  That’s because our necks are mobile (and can become restricted) in so many directions. Gotta do it. Neck issues are a big deal (and often involve TMJ issues); a person with pain in the spine, low back or pelvis that doesn’t resolve as expected is likely to be tight in the neck, with the distant pains reflexively caused.

That’s quite enough to get you started.  If you have the ambition, it’s an eye-opener.

Lawrence Gold is a certified clinical somatic educator who has been in practice since 1990. His clients are typically people in pain who have not gotten help from standard therapies. Contact Lawrence Gold, here. Read about his background, here.

This article was reprinted from Full-Spectrum Somatics with permission from the author.

 

 

 

 

 

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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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More on The Pair of Complementary Walking Patterns

I have written elsewhere about The Magnetic Walk, a rhythmic movement pattern that recycles, gathers, and conserves kinetic energy; and about The Old Scotch Geezer’s Walk (or The Scotsman’s Walk), which sets up a rhythm that oscillates right and left, and thereby dispels and disperses the conserved energy.

By alternating The Magnetic Walk, as a walking regimen, with The Scotsman’s (or Old Scotch Geezer’s) Walk, we set up an oscillation between gathering energy (or momentum) and dispelling and dispersing it.  It’s a pulsation set in motion by alternating between the two patterns of movement.

That pulsation is the pulsation of our organizing ourselves for one walk and then organizing ourselves for the other.  The feeling is of a gathering of everything together around a center, then of letting go of the center and feeling sensation get more and more two-sided, then of gathering everything together again, and letting go, again.  That’s a pulsation.

That pulsation is like a radar wave going through us, that we sense, showing us where we are creased, jammed, or broken.  The movement and breathing that go along with the pulsation seem to fuel a reorganization that solves some chronic problems.

Now, those who know The Magnetic Walk and The Scotsman’s (or Old Scotch Geezer’s) Walk can do as I have described.

And if you don’t,
you gonna have to Get on the Train!

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