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 ☺

Awareness is Action, a practice in the occupied

What I love about what I do is that it is a laboratory of sorts for testing theories of who we are and how we work. One theory I've been exploring is that awareness is an action unto itself. I find this repeatedly to be true. This is as the buddha taught. The process of non reaction is the process of simply noticing what is happening to you and just breathing. When I learned that technique at a vipassana meditation course it was about sitting, breathing and not moving no matter what happens. Inevitably, things happen. The aches and pains of accumulated hurts and tensions rise up to the surface. But the theory says if I just watch it and pay it no more attention than watching a leaf fall from a tree then it will continue to move. In practice this is true. To move and shift would be to blow that leaf back up towards the sky, delaying its passage. Sitting, breathing, watching whatever is happening in my soma moves through and the pain dissipates.

This experience fundamentally shifted my thinking and the way i approached massage and somatic work. This helped me to understand the mechanism behind why people feel better after a massage because what bodywork does is create awareness. If it's swedish, that awareness is at a somewhat superficial level. If it's deep tissue, that awareness can happen at a deeper level of muscle. If it's through Hanna Somatic work, that awareness can happen at any point, depending on how you position the client and how you direct their action and attention.

But the effect is happening not through the pushing and rubbing of tissue but through the awaking of awareness and the directing of attention. Or to put it in a different way, the awakening of awareness and directing of attention triggers the slew of mechanisms that allow change in the body. As Human Somas we are innately self healing and self regulating. That self regulation and healing happens quickly and effectively in an environment that is connected and aware.

I have seen this effectively happen again and again with myself and my clients. Pressing on a sore point, that point loses it's soreness. Breathing into a tight muscle, that muscle unwinds. Moving an area of disconnected/lack of sensation, that area becomes aware and connected followed by relaxed and free. The theory is confirmed again and again. It is not even neccessary that I know what is going to happen. I just trust that my client's system will work itself out.

So why should it be any different at the social level? I've been thinking about this a lot with regards to the current Occupy Wall Street and it's related Occupied movements. At it's simple level, it is an organizing of various peoples coming together to draw awareness to the dysfunctions in our society, dysfunctions that are leading to large rates of unemployment and larger rates of employed but struggling. For example median income fell 2.3% to $49,455 in 2010 according to the us census bureau and the amount of people living at or below the poverty line increased 17%. You might say then that the poverty line is getting closer and closer to the median income... That's a problem, perhaps one of the fundamental problems.

For the most part, there has been general support for the Occupy movements and although there have been various interactions with police, the protesters have been allowed to camp and have been growing in numbers and in area as solidarity protests spring up all over the U.S. and the World. The opposition comes in the form of frustration and questioning of the protester's intent. What do that want? What are they protesting specifically about? What do they suggest we do to fix it.

If the theory of "Awareness is Action" is correct, then the protesters need not do anything other than exactly what they are doing. Simply by being there, there are putting into action mechanisms of change and that change is already beginning to unwind the dysfunctional system. More over, by not acting violently and demanding that change happens, they are creating an environment where the very large living organism that is our collective society can find it's easiest way towards balance. Balance is not achieved overnight and potentially may never be reached. It is the process towards balance that is important.

What do we need to do? we need to do nothing more than pay attention and watch the shifts happen. What will the shifts look like? That will be the interesting part and I'm very thankful that so far the movement has not tried to dictate that.

What I have seen is that there has been media shifts. Not only has there been a large amount of coverage of the actual occupations but there has also been more discussion in the media about the things the occupied are protesting. Articles about poverty rates, about bankers and hedge fund managers being indicted for wrong doing. General strikes and people moving their money to credit unions and smaller banks are hot topics these days. Every day as I check my facebook feed, there are not only messages of solidarity, anger and hope but people are talking and thinking about this in a larger way than they were two months ago. In a capitalist society, even the media is under the sway of supply and demand and what the people are talking about and thinking about, the media will cover.

This thing we are going through is just that, something to be gone through. Something to watch and observe as it bubbles, permeates, shifts and takes us a along for a ride. The changes that our society will make and the changes that we as individuals will make are already happening. Assuming the theory is correct...

How Sensory Motor Awareness Can Change the World.

In my last post, I talked about Sensory Motor Amnesia, a forgetfulness of how to move and feel an area of your soma. When Amnesia sets in, that area of your soma become unconscious and inaccessible to you. The word Soma refers to the Human Body experienced from within. In another sense, it refers to the universe experienced from your specific location. And so if there is a disconnection and loss of awareness within yourself then there is also a diminished ability to sense and move through the world around you. For this reason, SMA often leads to stiffness, inflexibility, discoordination and clumsiness navigating through the universe and through life. And not just in terms of the physical. From a somatic viewpoint we see that the whole person, including spiritual, ideological and personality development will become stiff, rigid, clumsy and inefficient. The person will become afraid of change because their ability to adapt is diminished. This is reflected in how as people age in modern society, their worldview often becomes more focused/limited and they lose the capacity to see other points of view, ways of doing things. The old adage you can't teach a dog new tricks is indicative of an "old dog" who has acumulated a great deal of Sensory Motor Amnesia. So much of what that "old dog" does is unconscious, involuntary and lost to them.

But you CAN teach an "old dog" new tricks. More importantly, you can teach a human Soma to overcome Sensory Motor Amnesia and turn it into Sensory Motor Awareness. And Because this Amnesia, this forgetfulness of how to sense and move is a Sensory Motor event, it can be addressed quite quickly through sensory motor activity, namely, slow conscious movement. Every event not just in human activity but in the universe is a sensory motor event; feedback loop between information and response. The push and pull between masses of energy, the swaying of a tree branch, the coordinated attack of an alligator, the leaping of a kangaroo, and the walking and talking of human somas. What's unique about human somas is our ability to be conscious of this sensory motor feedback and influence it.

It's this ability that got us into this mess. We have taught ourselves inadvertently, and sometimes quite actively, patterns that have led to disease, pain, and have set a path of destruction to nature and other species. These patterns have been in place for centuries, are in the very foundation of our society and, just like the back tension that we don't feel until it "goes out" with a painful spasm, we don't sense the destructiveness of these patterns until species start disappearing, economies collapse and people start getting sick on mass levels(notice the elevated rates of drug dependency, chronic illness, cancer, obesity). In a sense, society itself is a product of and an instigator of Sensory Motor Amnesia. We must now use this conscious ability to deconstruct those old patterns, reverse the damage we've done and start building more sustainable patterns within our own life and within the larger universe that we share.

As I said before, this must be a conscious process, creating Sensory Motor Awareness individually and globally. Individually, by moving slowly and gently, you force the conscious part of your brain to spring into action, finding the connections between body parts and coordinating movement through space. As your movement becomes more coordinated, all of a sudden your sensation throughout your Soma starts to improve. In this process of Sensory Motor Awareness; pain, imbalance and disease begin to disappear. As you become much more sensitive to what is happening throughout your system, your internal mechanisms of homeostasis take over, returning you to health and balance. Similarly as more of your soma becomes incorporated with movement; circulation, lymphatic drainage, blood pressure, and your immune system starts working better because all parts of you are now receiving adequate blood flow and nutrients. Your posture and temperament become more flexible, more dynamic. Your emotional range, capacity for joy, sadness and everything in between, increases dramatically.

Not only that, but as you become more sensitive internally and coordinated, you also will become more aware of your position in the world and your relations with other people. Your movement through space will become graceful, efficient, and responsive. You will have less injury and be less afraid of change because you will have faith in your innate powers of adaptability and healing. On a larger level, you will start to feel more your relationship with nature and other species. In my estimation, a populace that is engaged, aware and connected will automatically stop poisoning and destroying our planet. people that are pain/disease free will be more compassionate and joyful towards other Somas. The mass Sensory Motor Amnesia of Somas in a society is an inability to change the path of destruction we're on. And as the pains of what we're doing to the world are reflected in our own disease and suffering, so too are the joys and changes we make. What society would you live in if you felt you could do anything, and were unafraid of change? It's not that awareness in itself will be that change but mass awareness opens the door to proactivity, sustainability and successful cohabitation between all Somas; human, animal, plant, and other.

The point is to be aware, to be sensitive, to enjoy your Soma for all that it can offer you and all that you can offer the world. This is our place of control and reflection, this is our place of change. I welcome you to come and explore this with me in my regular Tuesday evening class, 6:00 at 3380 20th street or come in for a one-on-one session. That's all for now, feel free to comment and respond or share this in anyway you see fit.