releasing more than muscles

What if I told you that Hanna Somatics was as good for addressing anxiety as it is for releasing a tight neck muscles? Or that it could resolve nervous breakdowns as quickly as a back cramp? Would you call bullsh#t on me? I’m nervous to make such comments and in fact as the words stumble off my fingers I feel my internal monologue laughing a bit at the absurdity. But maybe it’s not so absurd…

This is where all the theory comes face to face with reality. The theory is that as somas, we are integrated; meaning what happens to one part of us happens to all parts of us. An injury is not just to your hand. It’s to your whole self. Although the pain may be localized on one of your fingers it travels to your spine and brain, and the response from your nervous system travels from your center out to draw your arm into your center. So the whole body experiences and reacts to it. Similarly, the theory is that there is no separation between the emotional and physical. Events in our lives are sensed and responded to and then we tag them with corresponding emotions.

Thomas Hanna, in the developing of clinical somatic techniques, focused around three innate movement patterns and they’re corresponding emotional experience. The red light "withdrawal" reflex corresponds to negative fear, anxiety and grief with a powerful contraction of the anterior muscles of the body. The green light "landau" reflex, alternately, typified by a contraction of the paravertebrals and corresponding posterior muscles to joy, excitement, and effort. The trauma response, a side cringing away from pain corresponds with trauma and aversion to pain by tightening everything on that side of the body.

For example, when something scary or sad happens, we instinctively curl a bit contracting our stomachs and chest muscles, bringing the head forward, tucking the pelvis and turning the legs and arms inwards. If we are continually confronted with fear and sadness we will begin to become “permanently” frozen in this position and people will say “stand up, straight, cheer up!” to no avail. On the other hand, if we actively and continually bring ourselves into this position, we will begin to feel the same emotions of fear or grief. Try it! Go ahead and walk around for three minutes with your head hanging, shoulders rounded forward, spine slumped and feet turned in and try saying “it’s a beautiful day and I feel great!” You’ll probably find that the exclamation at the end of that sentence doesn’t feel all that honest.

In the western medical world of divide, isolate and treat, we curiously already see lots of correlations between emotional and physical challenges. True Story I used to have pretty severe IBS, irritable bowel syndrome. I went through all sorts of tests, ultrasounds and the like and was recommended various things, including… Anti-anxiety medication! To my 16 year old mind, this made no sense, Why would they be giving me medication for a emotional problem to deal with what was clearly a physical issue?

Well, it’s clear to me now that they did this because relieving anxiety tends to ease IBS. I no longer take anything for my IBS and in fact have fairly normal bowels now, thank you very much, largely to the introduction of somatic movements into my life.  The anxiety medication never helped much anyway and I was getting tired of taking Imodium every day. I also no longer use my asthma inhaler as the wheezing and chronic inablitiy to breathe deeply has disappeared. These two largely stress related conditions have been simultaneously taken care of primarily by learning how to control and relax the muscles in the center of my body; strong powerful muscles that flex the spine and bring the ribs and pelvis closer together. This strong and persistent contraction makes deep inhales difficult, impedes the peristaltic movement of the digestive system and triggers a sympathetic stress response similar to what might happen if a pterodactyl flew in my apartment window right now. Robert Sapolsky wrote a great book called, “why Zebras don’t Get Ulcers” catalogs all the effects of a chronic stress response so I will abstain from going into too much here, but suffice it to say, IBS and Asthma were likely the least of my troubles had the chronic tension and stress response continued.

As I began practicing somatics, feeling the relief of my asthma and digestive issues, I came to understand how all of this had happened. I started to regret the sucking in of my gut that I’d picked up as a teenager. This innocent attempt to strengthen my abs and self-consciously hide my belly had inadvertently created a perfect storm for IBS, Chronic Asthma and an undiagnosed Anxiety disorder. Through this discovery process, I was also able to really consider the effect of losing my father at a young age; a strong experience of grief during my major developmental years.

 So although I initially got into this work to deal with “physical” pain in my arms, neck and shoulders, I’ve been greatly surprised by how much benefit I’ve gotten for the emotional problems I didn’t even realize that I had! And while in my practice I primarily see people for physical pain, I hear all the time about the changes they feel emotionally, the subtlety people begin to experience, the old traumas that rear up and finally move on, how much more easily they breath, sleep, and deal with the spontaneous dips and curves that life brings.

It makes me wonder, a lot of things. If we are treating emotional problems, what exactly do they look and feel like? If someone has a back spasm, is there a common emotional experience around that? If someone in in the midst of a psychotic break, has schizophrenia, agoraphobia, bi-polar disease, how does that manifest in terms of their muscles and functional organization? Maybe instead of asking someone how their neck is feeling, I should ask them how their social anxiety is doing? It also forces me to consider, to what extent are there really genetic triggers that “cause” anxiety and how can one maximize most effectively the work they do with a psychologist or psychiatrist to heal all aspects of their troubles. I certainly think that integrating multiple approaches is a really helpful way to address these problems and by no means want to insinuate that there aren’t other things involved. It’s just that, as a somatic educator, I think people should be free from dependance on drugs, therapy and any other outside remedy, including me! I'd also like to know just how much can be avoided and resolved simply through movement and awareness.

As I progress with my practice and with this blog I imagine I'll be exploring this more, so please feel free to message me with any thoughts or feedback you have on the matter.

May we all get better together ☺

go man go, but not like a yo yo fooool boy

I'd like to describe today one of the major advancements Hanna Somatic Education offers the field of medicine and offers to all who suffer from back pain. It is called the greenlight reflex and through mastery of it, back pain can be understood for what it truly is; a completely avoidable learned response to stress. In some parts here I am paraphrasing Thomas Hanna and for a clearer sense of what this is, I suggest you check out the book Somatics.

The green light reflex, often called Landau’s reflex begins occurring at three months of age and is typically fully developed at 6 months. The green light reflex is what initiates forward movement. It starts slowly, a minor movement of lifting the chin to begin looking up. From a psychological viewpoint this can be seen as a joy response; a desire to seek out. For this reason, we call it the green light reflex. It compels the young child to “go” “explore”. Although we may be trained later to run away from pain, in these early years, within the safety of our parents love, we run curiously towards pleasure. And so we see that as the child develops, the response to go and seek out quickly gets them into a crawl and then clumsy standing and walking. The green light reflex allows us to balance on two legs and from there to explore the world with the benefit of free arms and hands. Other organisms come out of the womb already programmed for forward mobility and therefor spend less time learning and exploring. Humans, on the other hand are born knowing only how to do one thing which is flex and grasp, clinging to their mother and suckling. For humans standing and walking require years of exploration and learning to master. Interestingly, it seems that the ability to stand on two legs is one of the few, clear, defining features of human beings.

I will argue that two legged movement is actually a more complex posture than staying on four legs and is what initially demanded the large development of our cortex. To be able to balance your weight over two legs in varied terrain; jumping, running, dancing. Skiing while playing football(not recommended)! The enlarged cortex is what then allowed us to use our arms and hands for the purpose of building, creating, and exploring in ways that other species have not done. Ever seen a turtle use a Keyboard? It’s quite embarrassing.

But, as they say, curiosity killed the cat. As the human soma develops in industrialized nations, the greenlight reflex shifts from a joy response to a more general call to action. As a child, it responds to the recess bell ringing, the sound of a friend’s voice calling you to come play, a curious noise in the backyard. Soon though the less joyful calls begin to happen more and more. The telephone begins to ring now with other demands, demands for project completion and calls from business associates and creditors. The alarm clock rings each morning impelling us into action. Keep going it says!!! Get up and Go Go Go!!!! And each time we are called into action that little reflex that started way back at three months of age gets triggered.

By now we are in are twenties and have had many years of practicing this slight arching of the back. We have gotten so good at it that we don’t need to even think about it, it is in fact unconscious and involuntary. And for those of us who are real go-getters and have accomplished a great deal in those decades, we start to feel the effects. We go to bed with an aching back and sleep restlessly because, although mentally, we know that the day is over and tomorrow will have to wait, the green light reflex is still going. Nothing has been done to turn off the response and so while all day we ride our back like the trusty horse we know it to be, at night that horse is still running and running and running right into the ground. We may even feel mentally fatigued, unable to put aside the worries of yesterday; the as-yet-uncompleted task lingers on the mind. The now constantly engaged back muscles telling us that we should not be resting.

It is no surprise that well over 50% of people in industrialized nations suffer from back pain every year. In fact, it is inevitable. These back muscles are so strong by now that the intervertebral discs even start to be crushed by their grip and as the back becomes more arched, the disks slip out, buldging through the front of the spine. Also, the muscles in the lower back have now become quite overtired from continual contraction and ache constantly. Think about the last time you went to the gym and lifted weights. Remember that burning sensation you felt as you pushed through the last few reps reaching muscle fatigue. That was just after a few minutes. For many of us who have spent years tirelessly efforting, our backs have been continually tightening for hours, days, months, and even years.

But as I said, this contraction has been involuntary. And that which is involuntary is unconscious and is not felt. So our ability to even sense what is happening in these muscle becomes diminished until one day we bend over to pick something up or we reach to grab something off the top shelf and our back just ‘goes out’. We say, “how could this happen? I’ve never had any back problems before.”

The truth is the back problem has been developing for years. Back pain is as American as apple pie, as French as a croissant and as Chinese as a dumpling. The same drive that allows us to build skyscrapers and commands us into battle to dominate and exploit leads to our eventual structural collapse.

Okay, so excuse the theatrics, but it’s necessary that people get a clear idea of what is actually happening in their bodies because currently the medical profession is clueless. When you look at an xray all that is visible is the curved spine, leaving most doctors to assume that the spine has simply collapsed. Sometimes they will even prescribe physical therapy to strengthen the back muscles, leading only to increased tension on the disks. A huge percentage of emergency room visits every day are the natural result of just what I’m talking about and what the medical world fails to acknowledge is that it is all the result of a natural, unconscious action of the motor system.

And for that reason, there is cause to celebrate. We should celebrate because muscular problems are all learned problems and therefore can be unlearned. Every single person who suffers in this way can get better and they can get better through a very simple retraining and releasing of the greenlight reflex. This is done through activating of the cortex and the sensory motor system. And this is the major addition that Hanna Somatics offers the medical field.

To feel the action of this reflex try this simple exercise.

Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet about hips distance apart. I want you to do is something very simple, namely, press your pelvis down into the ground. Not your back, but your pelvis. If you put your hands on your hips they are resting on the top of your pelvis. So just press your pelvis down into the ground. And release. The releasing is critical. Do this a few times, pressing your pelvis down and then release. See if now you can press a bit lower down your pelvis until your tailbone starts to roll down into the floor. The further down your spine you press the more your back will start to contract and arch. Relax and notice what you feel. Is your back lieing a bit flatter on the floor?

Now, do the opposite. What I mean is, as you exhale press your back down into the floor so that your tailbone and pelvis start to tip up towards the ceiling. And relax. Do this again, feeling that if you keep your legs and feet relaxed, your stomach has to initiate this movement. The more you press your back down, the higher your tailbone will tilt and as your stomach muscles tighten your back further releases.

What you can then do is alternate. As you inhale, press your pelvis down, rolling your tailbone into the ground to lengthen the front of your body and gently arch your back. As you exhale press your back down to flatten and further turn off this greenlight reflex, lengthening and then rounding your back as your stomach contracts.

Done daily this way you will discover something which until recently has been thought of as impossible without painful surgery or other types of 'corrective' treatments(treatments that are proving to be ineffective). That is you will be fixing the problem of an over arched, hyper contracted back. This is effective not only in stopping the advancement of back pain but will actually reverse it. At any age.

Please, if you have any difficulties doing this or find that it is causing you pain give me a call or come in for a session. 415 385 0798. And if you find this interesting and useful, please share this link with others.

Much love, Gabriel