BodymindResources.com
Class 1 Theory
Click here to read a short note on chronic pain injuries
After reading about the Posterior Chain, Click on the Scientist to move to
the Lab portion of Class 1
I'd like to begin by telling you that your body is highly alterable. There is no condition in your body that cannot change. This series is designed to put the tools and education in your hands to affect change in your body in a big way. We are going to do this by healing your dysfunctional relationship with gravity. We will literally teach you how to control the weight of gravity within your body by teaching you how to reorganize your physical structure. It sounds complicated, but it isn't. It is both simple and logical. We will be affecting three major bodily systems to achieve these results: the skeletal system, the muscular system, and the connective tissue system. These three systems work together as one determining the structure of our body and therefore our relationship with gravity. In order to understand how these systems work together let's first take a look at each one separately.
The Skeletal System
Your skeletal system is a series of long and short bones in your body connected together by joints. One major misconception people have regarding the living skeletal system is they assume it is no different than the rigid dead calcified bone you see on a classroom skeleton. Nothing could be further from the truth. Living bones are buoyant and somewhat flexible. In some ways they are almost rubbery. More importantly, they are constantly remodeling themselves! Your bones are nothing more than a combination of living cells like everything else in your body. They are changing their shape and structure over and over again as you find new ways of using your body. Even people who were born with deformed bones as in structural scoliosis (a dysfunctional curvature of the spine) can work to change and improve the shape of their bones. A bone shapes itself according to what kind of external stresses is placed on it. In other words, they way in which you use your body is a main determining factor in how your bones shape and reshape themselves. How muscular tensions and gravity tugs on the bones actually determine their shape. Therefore if you change your relationship with gravity through how you use your musculature, your bones will necessarily have to begin to change their shape. Can you see how dysfunction even in this the densest of tissue can be healed? Your bones will be remodeling themselves until the day you die. Now the older you get, the slower the remodeling process becomes so the time to fix your body is always NOW!
The Muscular System
The second major bodily system
we will be affecting is your muscular system. To understand the
purpose of musculature we have to understand the purpose of joints. A
joint is the location where two different bones come together. A muscle
is a collection of tissue that crosses the joints of the body, connecting
one bone to another for the purpose of facilitating movement. A muscle
is a contractile tissue, meaning it has the ability to become shorter and
thicker; to contract. As a muscle contracts, it moves the joint in such a
way that it brings it's attachment site on one bone closer to it's other
attachment site on another bone. Through contracting, it shortens the
distance between the two. In this way the musculature affects the
structure of your bones.
Every muscle in your body is in constant communication with your brain. In fact every single muscle has tiny computer-like systems in them called proprioceptors. These proprioceptors decide how short or long a muscle should be when it is resting. For example, I have many clients who complain of back pain. I will take them out of vertical gravity by lying them flat on their stomachs and I will feel their backs. What I almost invariably notice is that even though they are out of gravity and have no need to be really using much of the musculature of their backs, their backs are tight as a rock nonetheless. What has happened is the computer-like proprioceptors have been receiving information from the brain saying that their natural resting length when not in use should be one of great tension. My goal then is to reeducate these computers.
How do I do that?
Well these computer impulses of information are built on past experience. If a person carries habitual tension and never releases it, the computer just assumes that that is what should be. It actually forgets what it is like to be relaxed. So to reeducate the computer, I have to give it a new experience. I place the muscle in a lengthened position and show the client how to work with it from that new position. In order to work with this on yourself, you will have to understand a few of the laws of musculature
The Law of Contract/Relax
One such law is the Law of Contract/Relax. The law of contract/relax says that whenever a muscle contracts, directly afterwards, there is a split second of timing where it has to be completely relaxed. It is a neurological fact! Knowing this, we can contract a muscle and expertly use that split second after the muscle releases to stretch it out further. Every time you contract a muscle, you are educating it. If you contract a muscle in a lengthened position it is like showing the brain/computer that your muscle can actually be that long without causing injury to the body.
The Law of Reciprocal Inhibition
Another way to get a muscle to relax is to understand the Law of Reciprocal Inhibition. Say you have a grouping of muscles that are responsible for bending your arm up at the elbow joint and you have a completely opposite grouping of musculature that bends the arm back down to its original position. Well that opposite grouping of musculature that brings the arm back down are said to be antagonistic to the muscles that would pull the arm up. And it goes both ways. The muscles that would pull the arm up are antagonistic to the muscles that would bring the arm back down. An antagonist is any muscle that performs the opposite action of the muscle in question. Well the law of reciprocal inhibition says that while the antagonists of the muscle in question are contracting, the muscle in question necessarily has to relax. For example, if I use my biceps to flex my arm at the elbow joint, my triceps (which perform the opposite action of keeping the arm straight) have to relax to allow me to bend at the elbow.
These two laws are tools for giving new information to the computers that are in each muscle. As the brain accepts this new information you have begun to change the resting length of your musculature. In changing that, you've changed not only the way in which you use your body, but your very relationship to gravity! Mastering the release of your musculature means having complete control over your bodily structure; complete control over the weight of your body within gravity! Do not be overwhelmed with all this information. I promise you this will all make sense as you work your way through the series. Give it time.
The Connective Tissue System
The third major bodily system
we will be affecting is the Connective Tissue System. Connective
tissue covers every single inch of your body. It covers every organ, every
muscle, every individual fiber within each muscle, every bone, and is
underneath every single inch of your skin. It truly allows the body to
function as a whole connecting everything to everything. There is nothing
I could do to the connective tissue at the top of your head that wouldn't
in some way affect the connective tissue at the bottoms of your feet. Now
connective tissue comes in many forms in the body. Some forms of
connective tissue are very dense. For example, your bones are a dense form
of connective tissue. Some forms are very fluid. An example of fluid
connective tissue would be your blood. The connective tissue we are
talking about lies somewhere in between. It is called fascia. Fascia is
what covers everything and holds it together. After your muscles and bones
have determined the habitual structure of your body, it is the fascia that
holds it all in place. Even if your were to remove everything in the body
except the fascia, the fascia alone would maintain the shape of the body.
The good news about fascia is it is highly malleable. We can change it's
structure quite easily. To understand how, we'll have to look at the
components that make up fascia.
The Components of Fascia
Fascia (connective tissue) is comprised of three main components. It contains collagen fibers (which are long thick strands of tissue layering on top of each other like a thick webbed matting), elastin fibers (which give the tissue a very minimal ability to stretch), and ground substance (which is the glue-like goop that holds it all together). Now this ground substance has a very special ability about it. It is capable of turning from solid, to gel, and back to solid based on the demands put upon it. When we have chronically contracted muscle tissue, the ground substance hardens and shrinks around the contracted musculature to help brace the area. This also happens in the form of scar tissue whenever there is an injury. It is the body's attempt to brace and support a weakened area. The trouble, however, is that this cements our problems in place. If you have been holding onto your musculature and walking incorrectly and such, the connective tissue will harden to freeze your body into this dysfunctional position. This would be necessary were you planning to continue these dysfunctional behaviors, but if you are a student of the Heal Thyself Series, our goal is to change these behaviors so we will have to alter the structure of your fascia in order to change. We will have to melt the ground substance and allow it to harden again, but this time when it hardens, it will support our bodies in the new and improved movement patterns and muscular tensions. In order to release the fascia, we will need to know some of the rules under which it operates.
Whereas musculature operates under the laws of contract/relax and reciprocal inhibition, connective tissue operates a little differently. The collagen fibers are being held in tension by the ground substance and must be set free so they can return to their natural resting position. In order to do this we must melt the ground substance. This is done through a couple of methods. When we apply direct pressure with our fingers to the ground substance, it will slowly begin to melt and move. Another way to melt it is to place the tensed area into a stretch and hold the stretch for about five minutes. It takes about four minutes in a stretch to really begin releasing fascia, so we stay in our stretches for five minutes when possible to make that last minute really productive. During that last minute, the ground substance begins to melt and the web-like collagen fibers it had been holding in place are finally allowed to go back to their original resting position of less tension.
The Three Inseparable
Now we talk about these three bodily systems as if they are three systems separate from each other, but we only do this to better understand what we are dealing with. In reality they are not separate from each other at all. When we say a muscle attaches to a bone or that connective tissue covers other tissue, that's not exactly accurate. Like I said before, connective tissue covers not only every muscle, but also covers every single muscle fiber within the muscle. So it is more accurate to say that muscle tissue is a functional part of connective tissue and vice versa. Connective tissue is both inside and out side of every muscle. You will never find one without the other because they are really not separate. Your bones are not separate either. To read about how a muscle works within the skeletal system you would hear that a muscle attaches to the bone via a tendon which is just a dense form of connective tissue. If you really look at it, however, that tendon of connective tissue does not just attach to the bone. It actually merges, actually becomes the outer layer of the bone! So you see these three systems of bone, muscle, and connective tissue are not three separate things, but one large functioning unit.
Now why do I tell you this?
I show this to you so that you can grasp the simplicity of the bigger picture of your body. The way these systems work is really quite simple. They communicate with each other through movement. For instance, when you have a chronic spasm (chronic contraction) in a muscle, that muscle is screaming out ( a chemical communication). The cells responsible for making connective tissue hear this and begin to work to brace the area with fascia and scar tissue. The connective tissue thickens and ground substance hardens. The musculature and the connective tissue begin to pull harder on the bone tugging the limb in a certain direction. As the bone feels the tug of the muscle/connective tissue tendon, it is prompted to make more bone in that area. This is how a bone spur is formed. It is an attempt by the bone to respond to the nagging pull of the muscle/connective tissue matrix. Bone spurs aren't usually fun. In order to get rid of the bone spur, you would have to release the connective tissue and the pull of the muscle. You would literally be stepping in and interrupting their conversation to add your two cents.
Conclusion
This is what we are to do in the Heal Thyself Series. We will learn the tools necessary to decipher what communications are already happening in our body. We will bring the unconscious communications to our own conscious awareness and we will interrupt them with a more beneficial communication. In the end, this is YOUR body. There is no reason for it to do anything you don't want it to do. You are going to come to understand how your aches and pains have put themselves together and what it's going to take to put a stop to it. The only reason auto mechanics can charge so much is because you don't know how to fix your own car. OK fine, but you will have your body for the rest of your life and it's just not that hard. After you read the Posterior Chain article, you may proceed to Class 1 Lab. Don't be discouraged if you aren't clear on all the concepts right away. If your question is not answered on the "Ask Me" page, I encourage you to send me an email. I am here to help you.
Liam Keever LMT, Structural Bodyworker