Well, its show time here on Planet Earth! do we remain under the influence of the banksters who somehow got the evil gene, or do we mov forward with one for all and all for one. Its odd isn’t it that we are the only species that have to pay to be on the planet. It wasn’t always that way for all the tribes. someone invented central banking and decided they have the fingerer on the cration of wealth. if you have it you live well, if you don’t you work for those who do. there is something very diseased about this. 

Talking about disease, how did Monsanto get where they are today? Suing farmers whose fields have been impregnated by the wind carrying their evil ideas about better agriculture. Its Gollum and the ring. You buy from us or starve MF”s. Now that sounds to me like a battle cry. They are so smart that they figure they deserve to say who lives and who dies. Now, if we really take a close look at the wars that this country has been involved in over the last 50 plus years…who are the perpetuators? Who left there shores to “battle” others in their countries who are halfway around the world. And why do they leave without winning. Maybe its not about winning but about transferring wealth by destroying.

Why is it now that in order to survive you can only manage if the uber wealthy support your services and all the rest can afford it. I can now smell the smoke form the smoke signals and the fires have been lit around the world. Now, all that is left is to see how greedy those in power can really be. I for one would like to be very close to my food service and be willing to perish if some jack boot from my own country were to tell me growing my own food was now illegal! don’t laugh, it has already begun.

Wow…a 9 month hiatus from blogging as I watch everything around me spin downwards. The banksters have been at work and their devious undertakings have chipped furiously away at both my teaching and my practice. Thank goodness for my home study DVD courses. Up until 2008 I was humming along both with a good practice schedule and 5 or 6 cranial sacral classes and the occasional Rolfing class on pain management. I was doing so well, I took my daughter on a 3 week skiing vacation to Argentina. But, on my return in August of 2008, the floor fell in on me like the proverbial SWHTF or TEOTWAWKI. Now as I watch I see the world spinning out of control, I wonder what place I will have when the dust settles after an economic collapse. What will people do when they can’t afford to go to doctors because they no longer can get health care? It appears as if most of Europe is about to default and the repercussions could be startling. Few of those in the massage/pain management trade want to talk about it, but the economic situation isn’t looking so rosy for the those who depend on disposal income for their support. After 22 years in the industry I have been experiencing the most arid conditions for my practice.  Based on what I am looking at with unemployment (real unemployment) over 20% and one in 5 americans living under the poverty level, I would say its time to switch gears.

I am offering families the opportunity to learn in the comfort of their homes two powerful healing modalities to deal with the painful conditions that arise and usually necessitated a visit to the doctor and then to the pharmacy to alleviate the pain. Hopefully people will understand that that scenario might change and it will necessitate other avenues and skills to deal with the challenges that are heading our way. The DVD courses on massage/Cranial Sacral therapy and Rolfing give the average person the ability to handle a lot of the debilitating issues that arise in our human machine. 

Other than that, I am spending a lot of time growing my own food. Unfortunately, I see a time in the not too distant future where our ability to grow our own food and deal with the physical and emotional challenges that arise when a society that allows its government to spend trillions on unjust wars and then cuts health care and infrastructure repair to its citizens. We got some karma to pay.

In the last post I talked about the latices of highly organized repeating systems of collagen tissue that vibrate with great gusto when the frequency is high enough and emit large coherent energy fields. And as the tissue becomes more organized and coherent when the tissue is worked, and becomes more coherent (in my cased Rolfed) the practitioner’s system is more easily coupled with the client’s and vice versa. So, when the collagen becomes more coherent and organized, its ability to be influenced and to influence is enhanced. Its not much of a stretch to realize that as the tissue fields (structure) becomes more organized through thoughtfully applied techniques that seek to balance the structure in a more integrated fashion, that it is easier for us to obtain more information from the system. That information is not always auditory in fashion. It is a system that has been developed Divinely to continue to improve as a species. An inherent feedback system that continually allows us to improve as a species.

So what we have essentially, is coherent vibratory communication in the contiguous tensegrous living matrix, which constitutes a form of rapid communications and information processing. Cells communicate with each other whether in close proximity or at a great distance. Nervous systems and circulatory systems communicate with each other and we as massage therapist communicate with these systems and see marvelous changes not only physically but emotionally as well from our touch. We as an energetic liquid crystalline matrix are a domain of miraculous potential.

The founders of HeartMath understand the above principles well. Emotional states change the electrical energy of our bodies, especially the heart. DNA acts like an antenna to receive the electrical output of our heart’s coherence, or lack of it, through the entire body and effects the DNA molecule itself. What am I leading to you might ask? We are a living molecular matrix. The rhythmic coherence arises due to the piezoelectric and other properties of the liquid crystalline matrix. Piezoelectric is based on pressure electricity and is reversible in the sense that mechanical waves generate electrical waves, and vice versa. The cranial sacral system, which is a mechanical wave, the heart’s pumping, or the lungs functioning, all create an electrical wave. Every cell is aware of these waves and the information they carry. As a cranial sacral therapist, one tunes into the cranial wave and becomes entrained to the Primary Respiration system, or as some might say the divine Ordering Principle. Through that reflection, the system can respond and tune to a higher frequency of wellness. Homeostasis in action.

As I have mentioned in some of my other musings, Rolfing/Structural Integration is more than just physical work that some practitioners use to illicit strong responses from their clients. There is a very powerful, often unheralded energetic part that that is equally as important as the intense sensations that are often elicited from the practitioner’s touch. Structure and energy are entwined. Just ask anyone who practices a Yin Yang approach to massage therapy. Massage therapist who utilize both Rolfing and Cranial sacral therapy know exactly what I am talking about. We understand through practical application the energetics of structural phenomenon how they are entwined and compliment each other.

You will very often hear these days about different forms of energy work in the bodywork field. When one conjures up that image it  is naturally associated with very light pressure, or no pressure at all. Naturally, if a therapist talks about a discipline where there is from time to time enough pressure elicited to cause a wince or two…we have automatically left the realm of energy work and moved into massage. I have mentioned Buckminster Fuller before in some of my articles about massage continuing education, because I believe his model of tensegrity does a great job of illustrating how the human body works for students and practitioner’s of our art. He links clearly the concepts of structural patterns and energy movement. The body consists of tensegrity systems all the well down to the interior of cells.. The continuous network is comprised of tensile elements called tendons and a discontinuous system of compression members called struts. So, if an energy vector enters the system it will flow away from the site of impact through the tensegrous network. The more balanced and flexible the structure the more able it’s ability to absorb the impact. Athletes who use Rolfing as a staple in their training diet, know exactrly what I am talking about.
Any shortening or imbalance  in one part of the system will impact the structure and movement in other parts. The system is both structural/mechanical and energetic. So, again any imbalance in the system will effect both the mechanical and energetic aspects of the system. Simply said, one cannot influence  the structural system without having an impact on the energetic system, and vice versa.
So the tensegrous aspect of the  tissues are literally pathways from which energy flows. The connective tissue which we interface with as massage therapists, extends throughout the entire body down to the most simple forms within the cell and nucleus. The entire matrix is composed of semiconductors. Research has proven that all parts of the living matrix respond to the stimuli in specific ways to every form of energy that enters into the biosphere which surrounds the body.

There has been research that focuses on the amount of energy that is emitted from our hands consciously and as a factor of the therapist’s gifts or acumen. The lattice work of of highly organized systems like fascia, tendons, ligaments and cartilage have shown that these lattices
vibrate powerfully, emitting coherent energy fields. We know that living tissue is extremely
responsive to coherent energy. One needn’t look any further than the famous chi gung healers of China who ply their trade in hospitals hardly touching their patients.

So, the more balanced the structure becomes through conscious effort with systems such as yoga, tai chi or bodywork like Rolfing, whose aim it is to bring coherence to the fascial network, the system becomes more energetically coherent as well. I will leave this discussion for now with the concept that as your client’s system becomes more coherent, they will become more responsive to your system’s energy field. Conversely, as you are able to tune into their body, you can project more aptly, order and function into their bodies. We see that not only with Rolfing, but with Craniosacral therapy as well, where we talk about the client’s resources being able to hold the information that is reflected into the field. More to come on this subject.

In the vast scope of practice in which every manual therapy is lumped under the massage therapy genre, it is interesting to note how the logical mind often times gets in the way of healing. Its prevalent these days to hear the axiom, “Where your mind goes, your body follows.” Or, “so as you think shall it be.” Essentially, the wisdom that has been passed down over the ages, is the importance of the mind and how you focus on its ability to assist in the healing process. If you think when you journey through the door of an “alternative” therapist that “this shit couldn’t possibly be working”, its my belief it probably won’t work at the level needed to expedite the healing process. You have had to have your head stuck in the sand of the 13th century to have not heard of the placebo effect! Who cares how the outcome is reached, all we care about as massage therapists is getting our clients on the road to wellness, which in most instances, is a pain free condition. The mind can be a dangerous thing. When was the last time a student in a massage continuing education class was taught the importance of using words to encourage the healing process and correct a client if their story revolved too much about their condition, as if the condition was an old friend whose companionship gave them a story to share about their journey. 

Conditioning plays a huge role in how we view the healing process. I know of a client whose pain originated in the attachment area of the rectus femoris and caused a constantly nagging pain that wasn’t responding to pharmaceuticals or classical physical therapy. Trigger point injections were unsuccessful in dealing with the pain as well. When she finally arrived at the massage therapist’s office who was versed in Rolfing/Structural Integration, she was desperate for relief since the pain was interfering with her sleep. Her husband was a well respected surgeon who asked her after her first visit to the rolfer’s office, if she was cured? And that my friends is God’s honest truth. CURED! So you can see how what we are exposed to, forms our viewpoints concerning the viability or lack of when it comes to different forms of massage therapy techniques.
 

Have you ever been asked in a massage continuing education class how you approach the client with their expectations? Have you ever set boundaries so that the client is well aware of the reality concerning their challenge? Dr. Rolf left a 10 session series for her practitioners that some idiotically accused her of creating nothing more than a marketing ploy. What fools. Imagine this, if you have been on the planet 30 years (adjust the math accordingly for your age) you have been moving in gravitational forces for 250,000 hours. Needless to say the physical, emotional and environmental vectors that have entered your system over that period of time have probably had an influence on the condition that your clients have presented to you. Its worth taking the time to educate them that what they are presenting didn’t happen over night, even though it may have appeared to “just happened” and it probably ain’t going away in one hour, Hallelujah!  The ten session series of Rolfing allowed for 10-15 hours of work to change the structure in gravity and hopefully eliminate the painful condition presented to the therapist, by balancing the structure. Once someone commits to the series of 10 or more sessions their is a realistic understanding of what it will take to accomplish their goals and a willingness to accept that massage technique as one that has validity for them in surmounting their challenge. They have enrolled their minds and focused positively on the potential outcome.. That’s what I call getting out of the way of the logical mind and using the power of clear intention. It works, just ask Mr. Placebo!

About 20 years ago there was a movement to create”legitimacy” in the massage industry due to the public misconception that anyone who practiced the ancient health technique of massage was undoubtedly, engaged in prostitution. There are some men in our society even today, that associate loving, healing touch with sexual activity. So, it is my belief that large organizations popped up in the landscape to  dispel that myth and create legitimacy to a vast scope of valuable health techniques, to a touch starved society. Massage continuing education was born with the hope, I believe, of being included in our gigantic bumbling health care industry, that is imploding under the enormous weight of its ponderous bureaucracy. 

Alas, in almost all of the entire 50 states, massage therapy is still not a therapy where the insured can apply their benefits to deal with their chronic issues! Regardless of how much education some of us have acquired over many years, still we are not considered legitimate in the eyes of the medical profession, the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance companies which are the engines for our medical system. So, why is it necessary to be state licensed, nationally certified, and city licensed if we gain no legitimacy, and economic viability in the eyes of the “authorities” that create the legal requirements to practice. Why does a doctor who can only write a prescription for pain medication score high on the legitimacy scale, and the practitioner who has the education and the manual skills to potentially create a long term pain free condition, not considered legitimate? These are questions that would elicit lengthy and lively debate, but at this time fall on deaf ears.

When was the last time that a professional in the massage continuing education business actually experienced the technique that they purportedly teach? How many businesses have sprung up on the internet hawking goods that are considered valuable and legitimate and confer massage continuing education credits, but never observe or feel the work of those that they award with the credits? They just include a test in the materials that supposedly confirms the therapist’s knowledge of the course they “finished”. How many of those “students” who are motivated to “earn” those credits, are actually studying those disciplines because they have a long term interest in actually learning that discipline and putting the time into that is necessary. Remember the term journeymen (sorry ladies) where you apprenticed with a master for 7 years in your trade before you were allowed the wages that were awarded to you by the union for the amount of time you put into it with sweat equity? Now a typical student of massage continuing education spend 4 days, is awarded a certification diploma, places in on his office wall and pretends to have accomplished anything of value and is substantiated by the vast organizations that have lobbied for state support in setting certain standards. Hogwash!

Now we have home study/distance learning continuing education credits and we have people bickering about standards of value. Again, how can anyone know what anyone has learned from a home study course unless they actually get on a table and feel the work of those who have studied their work? They can’t. They can only assume that there is some template that students value when they learn at home. Like books and dvd’s and some esoteric approach that has been ”proven” for adult education. Again, there is only one way to know and that is to observe and feel the work that you as a teacher has presented or by the results that the student has gained from their massage continuing education course. Results! But, like our ponderous bumbling governmental agencies that  slosh around attempting to create models of efficiency, most of what transpires is more complicated, expensive and essentially useless.

Regardless of what form of healing that you practice, we aim for enhancing function and health in our clients. Every discipline that is lumped into the wellness industry has a set point that tells them their job has been accomplished. Hopefully what we have accomplished at some level has effected the entire human being and not just the “problem” that was presented to us when the client walked through the door of our offices. Enhancing the total functioning of our clients requires us to be open and presence beyond the physical body..the reflective state of Presence. Presence is the ability to respond to another with our entire being and oftentimes the silent space of the Witnessing Presence creates powerful changes that can’t be explained…yet! But, it can transform our client’s lives beyond what could be attributed to a normal session. Many of us who have been practicing bodywork for awhile, have experienced the power of this quality of attention in our work and the repercussions that go well beyond what one might expect in attempting to restore function. 

Massage therapists and other practitioners of bodywork go well beyond manual therapies, we are in many ways educators. Education means to bring forth or to draw something out. We have all experienced great teachers on our journeys. They were able to elicit a quality that went well beyond the average technique. They were able to inspire with their enthusiasm, with their presence. We are actually somatic educators. We draw out and inspire potential, the possibilities, by creating an energetic exchange which has the potential to create an ignition of presence within the body that we are working in, not on. I have witnessed what could be called miraculous results with an ordinary contact, but the state of being between us, the field resonance was so powerfully palatable, that  an incredible change in function pursued. 

As a side note,I have always thought the term massage therapist, or body worker, rolfer, Traeger practitioner, neuromuscular therapist, cranial sacral therapist, polarity therapist and on and on, in many was was an injustice to those who traveled our journey wearing the healer’s robes. I love the Greek word Soma which means living body. If someone ask you what you did and you replied Soma therapist or practitioner of somatic arts, it would illicit a question that would allow you to truly market alternative therapies and get to the core concepts of what we do when we touch another human. Being a Somatic Therapist we convey the total living presence which we attempt to elicit when we touch another being. The late great somatic educator, Thomas Hanna a “disciple” of Moshe Feldenkrais, believed his discipline should be more aptly named, somatic education. Many of us who attended the Rolf Institute were more comfortable calling ourselves somatic educators because we dealt with the entire body/being. Alas, unfortunately we are all licensed under the massage umbrella.Which has kept us from enjoying full expression within our country’s healthcare system. Really terms like massage continuing education, and massage therapy do an injustice to us as practitioners. And the term rolfing oftentimes sends people running for the hills in fear of being assaulted. So from now on, try calling yourself a Somatic Practitioner when someone asks you what you do, I think you will enjoy the time to market yourself and elicit a connection at a somatic level by being present with your new potential client.

Hip Replacements Continued

Now let’s turn to the ligaments of the hip joint as the wind around the neck of the femur resembling a twisted towel. The ligaments unwind as we flex the joint and tighten as we extend. Back bends are limited by these powerful muscles. And in full extension the ligaments also inhibit lateral rotation which subsequently keeps the hip joint from popping out. Although we have these very powerful ligaments in place for the stability of the joint, it has a remarkable range of motion due the ball and joint architecture and the slick articular capsule and synovial fluid acting as a lubricant. When you look at the anatomy it is absolutely fascinating to see all the directional flows of the muscles, which are necessary to balance and provided stability and the necessary control which is imperative for all the upper body movements as well as the necessary precision of the joint itself.

If you look closely at the muscular arrangement around the joint there are muscle groups which have a fan like appearance. Each group performs a particular function of either flexion,abduction, rotation, etc. So, let’s return to the question of why so many hips going south these days. Well, those series of fan like muscles and ligaments are working together to create both mobility and stability, therefor any imbalances in any of these attachments can create abnormal function. Imagine a ball joint on an automobile that is out of whack (balance) eventually your mechanic gives you the unfortunate news of the necessity of a replacement for proper front end alignment, without which your entire front end will ot steer properly. Which would then cause shocks tires, tie rods etc. to malfunction. Well, its a wee bit easier to replace that then hips these days. Although, I should retract that last statement. I have a client that had his hip done recently and the operation took and hour and a half and he was walking a mile in a week. Three cheers for the body carpenters! Replacing the ball joint in my Benz took longer than that! I regress, forgive me.

There are approximately 20 muscles involved in hip function, so needless to say its important to implement a great stretching program to keep the ball and joint functioning smoothly. So, if you are interested in keeping the hip joint you were born with…I highly recommend to implement an aggressive stretching program.

I have been asked recently in a massage continuing education class if I have many clients who have had hip replacements. I answered I have a few clients in my practice who have had the surgery. Some the older approach where the muscles are cut, and the newest approach that have been performed at John Hopkins where they are not cutting the muscles and the recovery times and range of motion are incredible!

The illio-femoral joint is a deeply cupped ball and socket joint with very strong muscles attached to it. Consequently many of the impacts and pulls that it experiences creates pain and dysfunction distally from it or superiorly in the lower back. Dr. Ida Rolf believed that the hip joint was the greatest determining factor in postural symmetry. 

For any massage therapist who is pursuing insights into the hip and lower back pain in a massage continuing education course, should explore methodologies and approaches that bring balance into the joint because of the long term wear and tear that usually leads to the necessity of a replacement. Often times when I ask my clients if there was anything that precipitated their painful condition that necessitated the surgery, there was no determining factor that could be addressed that was responsible for the replacement…only conjecture. So, its extremely important for the massage therapist to begin to educate their clients to the necessity of focused work in the hip as a preventative measure.

How did we end up in our society with so many hip replacements in individuals that might be considered elderly or athletes who participated in violent sports that accelerated the demise of their hip joint? The problem in diagnosis of the situation of hip replacement is that there isn’t always a correlation between overuse and those that have been overly sedentary.

 There are about 30 muscles that are responsible for the hips symmetry and if we want our clients to have  a long life with the biological equipment in tack, its important to keep the muscles balanced. So, I can’t tell you how important it is to attend the hip and keep it balanced for its longevity. You should throw in sessions where only the hip is attended to for that hour or hour and a half in your sessions.
 

 If you opened your anatomy books to look at the joint, it isn’t always easy to visualize the three dimensional aspects of the joint. Get in front of a skeleton to really grasp the concepts of balancing the “figure eight twisted” hip joint. When you look down at the hip the iliac crest is angled at 45 degrees moving out from the spine and widening at the front. The ramus is wide at the back, moving medially as it comes forward until it meets its opposite at the pubic symphysis which is a fibrocartilage disc. Each hip is also joined to the sacrum at the sacroiliac joint.  TO BE CONTINUED.

Sometimes I think the generally public has been duped into the viewpoint that the bony framework is no more than the home for. The spine is the central theme, so to speak. Well, in my massage continuing education classes, Structural Integration classes to be specific, I plant the seed of the non-Newtonian concept where tissue/muscle is omnidirectional, extremely mobile and flexibly hinged. Buckminster fuller again. The tension elements of the body are the connective tissues made up of all the soft tissue. Everyone has this notion that they are much like an engine in a car. Thought fires the engine and the structure moves…like scratching your nose. These trusses which consist of fascia, muscles, ligaments and connective tissue  are an integral part of the entire system and not secondary to the spine and its function. Its the tissue that keeps the spine in place. Anyone who has looked at anatomy pictures of cadavers can view the multi directional aspects of our “strut” system. Again I call into play the work of Buckminster fuller in my massage continuing education courses, because if the student can grasp the concept of structural integrity all the way down to the smallest aspects of our biological systems, the sub cellular structures. Fuller described the truss we can envision to fit this model, as an icosahedral structure. In this structure the outer aspects is always under a tensional force and the vertices are held apart by constant internal tensional struts that are floating within this tensional network.

Back in the late 1940’s, Kenneth Snelson a sculptor, who in many ways gave Buckminster fuller his ideas about the tensegrity model, created large scale models that I use in my massage continuing education classes. If the student grasps Snelson’s concept of how compression members provide a structural rigidity, yet maintain separate and not touching each other, then their bodywork changes forever as the begin to access layers as well as the origin and insertion concept of massage therapy. Snelson’s multi-story “sculptures” give a clearly illustrated example of how tension and compression work synergistically.

Using Snelson’s model for our spine the tension icosahedron space truss with the bones acting as the compression aspect and the soft tissue as tension elements, our bodies can shape shift as one aspect shortens and another lengthens and movement occurs through a stable shape that is omnidirectional.