Doing the splits III

[Barrett Dorko]

Evolutionary or ultimate reasoning is pretty well explained here, and I’d recommend you read it if you intend to practice in a way that embraces modern day neuroscience. I’ve always felt that our patients needed this and were waiting for us to learn it. Still, it seems that fact doesn’t move many of my colleagues.

Bottom line: If you always view isometric activity in a muscle (which many erroneously call “increased muscle ‘tone,’ a meaningless term) as a defect, you’re always going to skip a step (see Patrick Wall) and try to relax something that needs expression. This is like telling your friend to shut up when they need to speak.

When isometric activity is interpreted as a defense, ideomotion will emerge with ease, and that’s a good thing.

How important is it to interpret muscular activity in this way?

It’s huge.

[Jon Newman]

Originally Posted by Barrett Dorko

How important is it to interpret muscular activity in this way?

Barrett,

Is the interpreter here the therapist or the patient? Or both?

[Barrett Dorko]

Good question Jon.

It's the therapist's interpretation but they now face the daunting task of making it the patient's too. They do this in opposition to a cultural meme to the contrary, to say the least.

This is why I wrote Body Counseling years ago.

It contains this passage:

A primary attribute of the muscle quality found in chronic pain is excessive, seemingly non-productive activity. It is not consciously bidden, often present beyond the patient's awareness, and is thought to produce pain because of its constancy. Therapists do all they can to ablate it with manipulative technique and exhortations to relax.

But if your friend came to you with a tight throat, would you manipulate the muscles that drive speech? Would you tell them to relax? Wouldn't that be like telling him or her to shut up?

I'm suggesting here that we reinterpret unconsciously bidden muscular activity wherever it might occur, and that we stop trying to make it stop contracting by manipulative technique or overt disapproval of its presence.

Radical, I know. But this idea is reasonable, and there’s plenty of literature to support that reasoning.

I still use this "verbal analogy" regularly.

[Jon Newman]

Thanks Barrett. I remember that essay and still enjoy it. Sometimes I remember that essay without remembering that I'm remembering it.

[Barrett Dorko]

Cory has linked this thread to Diane’s Facebook page and she in turn had linked his page which contained a slideshow by Moseley talking about the brain’s question, “How dangerous is this, really?”

Given all these connections, I figure we’re unstoppable.

[Diane]

We are anyway, even without all the connections.