CT Fascia again

[amacs]

I came across the above here. I thought Schliep was quite reserved and willing to consider alternative explanations although not maybe all the obvious ones.

1. Do you propose that a typical 'tissue release' (which is often experienced by practitioners in response to their myofascial release treatment techniques, such as in osteopathy or in Rolfing Structural integration) is due to a decrease of active fascial contraction?

Since we haven't been able to observe any tissue contracton or relaxation changes happening within seconds in our own in vitro contraction experiments, we tend to doubt such an explanatory model. While the potential forces of active fascial contractitlity could be strong enough - based on our measurements and related hypothetical calculations - to result in palpable tissue changes, it seems like the common duration of individual treatment techniques of below 2 minutes would be too short for such a tissue response. Yet we cannot rule out the opposite, as our organ bath experiments may not be reflecting the complete spectrum of fascial contractility in vitro.
Several other body processes appear as more appealing explanations to us:

• Changes in matrix hydration, induced by the technique
• Possibly changes in resting tone (Gamma tone?) of skeletal muscle fibers which are capable of transmitting their tension force to the respective fascial tissue
• Ideomotor dynamics (Carpenter effect): Associated with an unconsconscious expentency bias in the practitioner, the palpating hand/body of the practitoner may change their resting tone in an involuntary and subtle manner, thereby creating a palpatory illusion.

I thought Barrett you would find the last point of passing interest given its provenance,
regards
ANdy

[Barrett Dorko]

ANdy,

Thanks for this. I do find it fascinating.

He's suggesting that the therapist is imagining an effect? That it's their own hand muscles relaxing and not the patient?

I think this explanation is absurd and it doesn't say much for Schleip's understanding of instinctive, sequential response to painful signals. If he doesn't like this idea he needs to argue with Patrick Wall, though it is too late for that.

I'd like to have him explain what he meant when he said (paraphrased), "When I handle another I feel as if I'm communicating with the nervous system and it is communicating with me."

That's at the end of a Ginger Campbell interview with him. Maybe someone here can find it.

[EvolvePerformance]

Found some of Schlep's work:

[Jon Newman]

Originally Posted by Barrett Dorko

He's suggesting that the therapist is imagining an effect? That it's their own hand muscles relaxing and not the patient?

I think it's at least possible that this sort of thing can happen. I remember Nic Lucas, in an old NOI discussion, how he got quite good at feeling cranial rhythms but then realized he could feel the same thing when he put his hands on a tree. An "palpatory illusion" seems like a reasonable explanation in this particular case.

[Diane]

I do think there are palpatory illusions. However, I think there is also softening of the patient's body. Through peripheral (possible) and central (for sure) neural mechanisms.

I'm pretty sure when I treat, some of what I'm doing is completely ideomotor. I do not know if vascular and fluid and softening changes in the patient can be termed "ideo"-motor, though, as they seem to be absolutely outside their "ideation" capacity.

[Barrett Dorko]

The patient tells me their softening - I don't tell them.

Of course I know illusions are possible.

[amacs]

Originally Posted by Barrett Dorko

The patient tells me their softening - I don't tell them.

Of course I know illusions are possible.

that would seem to me to be a very important difference, possibly critically so within the above context.

At the risk of stating the obvious - he is drawing on the Minasny paper when he refers to palpatory illusion which I seem to recall has come under discussion here before.

ANdy