experimenting with the malleability of attention

Sometimes an understanding of neurophysiology really comes in handy when you come upon an unexpected situation. I wanted to share with you an experience I had with an interesting road block that required some thinking outside the box.

I've been working with this particular client pretty steadily for a few months now, helping her resolve a chronic vertigo and migraine problem. The focus for the first month or so was on simply unwinding steady tension around the torso. If you are rigid and tense all over then the shocks and jolts of the modern world will violently shake you with every step you take and bump you drive over. A relaxed, responsive Soma can easily absorb and diffuse tension throughout their system keeping them from getting jostled too much. So this was our focus in the beginning and she had been making slow and steady improvement with the home exercises and hands-on sessions.

A few weeks ago I tried to bring in more twisting to our sessions. Twisting of any sort had been quite uncomfortable for her and would trigger flair-ups in the migraines and naseau. Twisting; such an integral part to comfortable, relaxed walking, is something that needs to be comfortable.

So we began to do some very gentle twisting movements, differentiating the movement of the neck and eyes from the movement of the torso and shoulders. We moved slowly, finding comfort in every step of the way so that she could feel that twisting could be a positive experience. *Contact me for the specific technique of this movement*
And as she began to find ease and comfort through this twist she became acutely aware of a very deep tension around her esophagus, almost as if something was choking her. This is something that happens quite frequently, when you start unraveling layers of tension. In particular, this is something I've come across with trained ballet dancers. Although they are quite flexible and don't seem to have a great deal of superficial tension, there is often a a lot of deep stabilizing tension. And so at this point I asked the client if she had been trained as a dancer and indeed, as a child she had.

So what do you do with these deep muscles that don't seem to bend the joint in one particular direction but instead seem to lock around the joint, stabilizing it in all directions? You have to get a bit inventive. And so I thought back to a story I heard once of famed Neurologist V S Ramachandra helping patients with phantom pain in amputated limbs. The limb was clearly inaccessible, but through a creative use of a mirror box and the still attached limb, patients are able to release the phantom spasm and subsequent pain. Go here for a great video of him talking about this and other neurological stories http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html

The reason for this is that all sensations of the soma occur in the sensory motor cortex, an area of amazing malleability. So to activate this part of her Soma, I had her concentrate on the tension surrounding her esophagus, and imagine it as a fist that was gripping around her throat. I've found imagery to be incredibly useful for turning something intangible into reality. So then, to attach the imagery to something useful, I had her clench her own fist on the right side; her dominant and more contracted side. So there was now a simultaneous contraction around the throat and in her hand. Through imagery these two contractions were linked together. As her fist tightened, the grip on her throat tightened and then, as the tension in her fist lessened, the tensions around the throat lessened. With the tension around her throat lessened, we could proceed to more freedom of movement and ease in twisting.

The gripper muscles of the hand just happened to be a very appropriate connection to make 1 because their action is quite similar to what was happening to her throat and 2 Because it was a very easy image to visualize, that of a hand gripping the throat. For sure, not a pleasant image, but then again there is nothing pleasant about tension around the esophagus.


I'll update you as our work together continues if anything else of note comes up. And please, if you have any commments, thoughts or suggestions, I would love to hear it.