Archive for the ‘Body’ Category

Fascial Work and Pregnancy

Monday, October 24th, 2011

Are there contraindications with fascia work and pregnancy?

Of course, and very interesting ones. Briefly though and worst case first:

1) If there were a miscarriage in the first trimester (often happens around 10 weeks) or a premature delivery in the last trimester, and it was ascribed to the bodywork you did, you would feel badly even though it is highly unlikely your work would have had anything to do with it. Best to work on women who want and feel good about their pregnancy, and in the middle trimester by preference. If the pregnancy is not wanted or in any way physiologically difficult, I proceed much more cautiously.

2) In the final trimester, the hormone relaxin is beginning to loosen the connective tissue net in the body, so that the ligaments of the pelvis can relent to let the baby through – but it acts on tissues all over the body. This is a two-edged sword – it is a great time to get unusually good change because the fascia is pre-softened, but not a great time for heavy work as you can unbalance their system.

3) If you know what you are doing, you can help prepare the adductors, bottom of the pelvis, sacrum, diaphragm, and belly for the work of delivery. Those with visceral skills can help reduce any adhesions that would interfere with labor. Again: careful because of the softened tissue – do not put a lot of strain on the pubic symphysis or SI joint ligaments. The contraindication is against heavy-handed work that could put in imbalance; work slowly and always toward balance.

4) Myofascial work during pregnancy should be limited to preparation for birth or relief of pain. The mother’s body is already undergoing major structural change during the childbirthing year – now is not the time to try to impose a reconfigured posture or do a general course of myofascial work – save that for the post-partum months.

Ode to Peter from Big Sur

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

Peter Melchior

Peter Melchior

Peter Melchior’s spirit and this world–class setting are inextricably entwined in my mind, though I never met him here. Never met Ida Rolf here either, but for me she is forever associated with New York via her accent and world-view, even though it was the tendrils from her sojourn at Esalen that reached out and ensnared me for a lifetime’s work.

But for me Peter’s ‘home’ was always Big Sur, no matter how many more years he domiciled in Boulder. When I first came to Big Sur in 1974, Peter was already gone, waiting in my future for our intersection in Boulder, the new home of the Rolf Institute. I was newly-Rolfed then, and an enthusiastic neophyte of the Human Potential Movement. After a day of teaching / assisting in the spiritual boot-camp of an Arica training up the road in Ventana, we would come into the famous Esalen baths after midnight. It was allowed, but it felt like sneaking in – a glimpse into the cradle of all this new work: Rolfing’s deep journeys into the body, the radical cracking open of Gestalt, the promise of peace in Alan Watts’ full-catastrophe approach to Zen meditation. It was all new and exciting.

Big Sur

It wasn’t just Esalen, it was all of Big Sur- the redwood glens reeked of good pot and the grassy tan shoulders of the hills thrummed to the sound of congas. I got to meet Jack Downing and stay at Fort Sufi perched above Pfeiffer Beach, met the illuminated Richard Price and his yet more illuminated wife Christine, and tasted the remnants the indomitable (but already gone) Fritz Perls It was heady stuff for a 25-yr old.

One night in the old cement baths, I met John Lilly up close and personal, stoned on ketamine and soft of body, hip, hair, voice, and eyes with the female hormone he was reportedly injecting. We had a long and silent conversation. (I met him many years later in London, not long before his death, still strung out on K, but very male, very thin, crew cut white hair, like nothing so much as an old oak with a masterful voice – “You a wrestler?” he boomed, as soon as he saw me. Of course he had no memory of our previous encounter, as I did.)

Ida I had met the previous spring at the ratty conference room of the Dawn Dee Motel on Santa Monica Boulevard, where Jan Sultan ‘Rolfed’ me twice a week after her class finished. I met Peter in my fraught admissions interview at 200 Abbey Place, where he gently but firmly told me to wait – but he ended up being both my auditing and practitioning teacher. For my final phase in ’76. We were with Ida for the morning lecture and demos in her advanced class, and then with Peter for the afternoon. His childlike innocence in front of Ida, working under her watchful and abrupt tutelage (now up on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJxajGLepyQ) belied his shamanic calm in the afternoon, when he had the six of us, including the physiatrist Dr Frank Wenger, well in hand – a steel hand in a velvet glove.

I was square in the middle of the hippie era, but I had done my homework on the beats, reading Dharma Bums and Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me. Richard Farina held a special place in Peter’s musician rebel heart, as did Joan Baez. For some reason, I guess ‘cause I played music, he told me many stories of the early days in Big Sur – like folkie ‘Joanie’ Baez rockin’ out with ‘Dancin’ in the Streets’ up in Monterey.

Peter was one of the few living members of the ‘West on One’ Club. Highway 1 swoops around the ridges and into the canyons from Carmel to Morro Bay with a cliff on its western edge for most of the way, so the driver losing attention through fatigue or intoxication generally got into the West on One Club only by way of being a posthumous member. Peter fell asleep at the wheel one night, and went over the edge toward the sea, but luckily hit a tree and lived to climb back up, have 5 children, and a long and influential career.

When I got back to Esalen in the 90’s to teach a workshop, a landslide had taken the famous old baths down the hillside to the sea, and the new ones were much ‘nicer’, higher on the hill with new plumbing and a bigger view, but it was a disappointment to me, because of the treasury of memories the old tubs had. The workshops too, at that time, seemed prosaic, the consciousness deflated, the energy moribund. It seemed an era had disappeared.

Now I am back, with the ‘uh-ohs’ decade over and the twenteens begun. The baths have been restored in their old spot over the ocean. The update still leaves the feel and sense of the original baths that Michael Murphy parlayed from a family inheritance to a world-affecting center, and son Mac shows every sign of continuing.

Peter – I want to tell my old friend – they’ve done a good job. The crazies and iconoclasts are still here trying to awaken the world, as well as the smelly and beautiful youths with outlandish hair, startling body art, and charming accents, whose world is just unrolling before them. Some are hangers-on, some are cleaning up the kitchen, some are working the expanded gardens, a few still tending to the Gazebo School. Yes, they all have iPads, and the jargon has changed, but I see my ’74 self very clearly reflected in their starry eyes. Even though the Hollywood types in their shiny cars abound and there are a few new galleries for questionable art along Route 1, the Big Sur Inn is still here, and Nepenthe. Like Bali or Greece, it is still easy to shed the tourists by going just a bit off the beaten track.

Esalen itself has a bit of a new feel – that’s the nature of a change agency – but the essence of exploration and opening up is back, while the names – Rolf, Maslow, Porter’s Yurt, Gazebo school – echo back from your time here. The fog has lifted for today, and I am looking out among the sparkles for a spout or the tell-tale back of a gray whale. But my mind’s eye is looking back on your silent wisdom, when you were leviathan in my life, where the things you didn’t say had more influence on me than even the minimal maxims you did utter with that little laugh to (and at) yourself. Such a force for good, in my life and so many others, your inner silence has been my ‘Umbrella for a Hard Rain’.

That was his book of poems, the one Allen Ginsburg threw over his shoulder – Peter reported, with his same little laugh – with the brief critical review: ‘Archaic drivel!’ – but I liked them. He gave me a copy, lost in my many moves since, sad to say. Poet, raconteur, teacher, friend – Peter, you embodied the Esalen spirit. Even though you have left that body behind, the spirit endures.

The skeleton is a political statement

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

The classroom skeleton is a political statement – join my ‘Equal Rights for Cartilage! movement.

I am fond of making this observation – made it this weekend in San Francisco. Of course it’s a bit of a ploy, but here’s why I say so:

1) The main point is that ‘the skeleton’ doesn’t exist as a framework in the real body. Absent the soft-tissue, the skeleton would clatter to the floor in irretrievable pieces – even the cranial bones would scatter and the pelvis fall apart without the ‘grout’ of the sutural fascia. The ‘shingles’ of the facet joints lock over each other, but without the ligaments and the discs, this would not be enough to hold them together.

Add the ligamentsA dressed skeleton and the bones would mostly hold in a general relationship, but of course the whole thing would sag and fall. The muscles would drip off without the restraining (tensegrity) of the superficial and attaching fasciae. The body is a tensegrity (or at least ‘tension dependent’) dance between the myofascialature and the skeleton. The classroom skeleton makes it seem a steady frame on which the muscles can be hung, on-by-one, till it can move. Not so. Bones float in the soft-tissue, pushing out against it; soft-tissue pulls in, holding it together and holding it up in a tough but delicate tension-compression balance.

2) The hardware on a skeleton gives many false impressions – the bones of the feet wired together with no movement at the sub-talar joint, giving the casual observer a false idea about the ankle in eversion and inversion. The fibula would fall without wire ties, etc. And then there’s that metal rod up its bum from sacrum to skull. Modern skeletons seem to have given up wiring the ribs to the neck (which at least imitated the scalenes) for an entirely unrealistic rod between the front of the throacic spine and the back of the sternum – talk about a spear through the heart!

The scapula is usually nailed to the rib cage, giving the impression that the arm appendage starts at the gleno-humeral joint, instead of the sterno-clavicular joint.

Most cheap skeletons have U-joint hardware at the shoulder and hip, which works well enough for most demonstration purposes, but spoils our sense of the biomechanics of the rotator cuff and the psoas complex. More expensive models have gone to flexible spines and bungee cord joint connectors, which, though they give up the ghost sooner than the metal hardware, are much more accurate in ball and socket mechanics.

3) But the worst of all is the choice of which cartilage to include and which to ignore. Most include the pubic symphysis, the intervertebral discs, and the costal cartilages between the ends of the ribs and the sternum. Some plastic skeletons include the knee menisci.

Most skeletons wire the hyoid bone to the front of the neck vertebrae, which is accurate positioning, but inaccurate in function. None to my knowledge include the laryngeal crichoid, or tracheal cartilages under the hyoid, which extend down into the bronchae and bronchioles before terminating in the (epithelial) alveoli. Neither are the ear nor nose cartilages or the linings of the eustachian tubes included.

Of course most bones start as cartilage and are progressively ossified, so the decision of which cartilages to include is a matter of convenience and production costs, which I appreciate. But nevertheless, it is a political statement of inclusion and exclusion. An inclusive skeleton would have these cartilages of the throat and chest, and would suggest a ‘visceral’ skeleton (an idea I lifted from Jon Zahourek) to add to the axial and the two parts of appendicular skeleton. This visceral skeleton would include the ‘breastplate’ of the sternum and costal cartilages, the pulmonary cartilages mentioned – the entire upside-down tree of the respiratory and vocal superstructure, plus the hyoid, mandible, maxillary, palatine, zygomatic, nasal, and lacrimal bones – mostly derived from the proto-gill arches of the embryo. The head scratcher in this would be the vomer: firmly in the nose, it seems part of this visceral skeleton, but it could also be seen as the ‘spinous process of the sphenoid ‘vertebra’.

A Short Bibliography

Monday, September 19th, 2011

To follow my line of thought in the bodywork / movement field:

  • Body and Mature Behaviour, Feldenkrais (and anything else he’s written, but this is the 1949 masterwork, never been equaled)
    The Thinking Body, Mabel Todd
    Rolfing, Ida Rolf
    Amazing Babies (DVD), Beverly Stokes
    Fascia and Membrane Technique, Schwind
    Trail Guide to the Body (no profundity here, but a very useful book)
    The Heart of Listening, Milne
    Sensing, Feeling and Action, Bainbridge-Cohen
    Embryogenesis, Grossinger
    How Life Moves, McHose and Frank
    Primal Health, Odent
    Touching, Montague
  • And, selfishly, Anatomy Trains and the Kinesthetic Dystonia set.

    Take the Anatomiken and Equiniken course(s) from Jon Kahourek

    General

  • The Magus, John Fowles (1st edition if possible)
    Operating Manual for SpaceShip Earth (or Critical Path, or Utopia or Oblivion), Buckminster Fuller
    Ida Rolf Talks, Feitis (ed.)
    Picture Palace, Paul Theroux
    Einstein’s Dreams, Lightmen
    Journey to Ixtlan, Castaneda
    Meetings with Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff
    Boyhood with G
  • urdjieff, Peters

    Right now:

  • The Root of Thought, Kopp
    The Evolution of the Head, Leidler
    The Brain That Changes Itself, Doidge
    Muscles and Meridians, Beech
  • The False God of Symmetry

    Friday, September 16th, 2011

    Recently I met a young personal trainer and bodybuilder, clearly bright and very much into his art and its contemporary science. In his attempts to bring his body to the peak of balance, he told me how careful he was to work equally with his right and left, exercising both sides the same, one for one. He had extended this to his daily life, alternating the hands with which he brushed his teeth, which leg he put into his trousers first, and even – forgive me, but it shows the depth of his dedication – wiping his ass alternately.

    I wonder how this is going to work out for him. For one thing, is it possible to so equalize one’s life? Does he, for instance, have an English car that he drives on alternate days, so that his shifting alternates with his steering? And even English cars have the accelerator under your right foot with the brake to the left, as with American cars. Like it or not, the world is made for right handed and right-footed people, and equality is probably as elusive in the somatic world as it is in the cultural. Though this guy is making a good stab at it.

    I suspect that for this young man, it is his ‘Year of the…’, as I call it. For bodyworkers, it often manifests as a particular area of the body. “Tom, it’s the feet, it’s all in the feet, if only we got the feet right, everything would fall in the place, you should just teach the feet.” I smile indulgently down at them from the great height of my age: been there. I had my year of the feet, my year of the neck, my year of breathing (actually, that was at least three years, each a number of years apart, as I got into breathing at greater and greater depth).

    But we all have these temporary but valuable enthusiasms. I too had my year of trying to balance right and left, or at least a long Engllish summer. My Rolfer® colleague and I went out on Primrose Hill looking over the London Zoo each evening after work for the endless twilight, throwing a Frisbee for hours exclusively with our left hand (we are both right handed). I certainly got better at throwing and catching with my non-dominant hand, but it was always a relief to return to the immediate skill and connection I have with my right hand.

    I am strongly right handed, even though I am left-eyed. Likely there are native differences in the degree of such lateralization, my daughter is much more ambidextrous than either of her parents.

    But lateralization is interesting in itself. If we look at the three major whole-body systems, our fibrous body (the musculo-skeletal system if you must, but that term is fascia-dissing) is actually the most anatomically symmetrical, each muscle and bone pattern is repeated right and left. The neural body – the nervous system taken as a whole – is anatomically symmetrical, but functionally lateralized, such that 10% or so are left-handed, south-pawed (and gauche and sinister as well). Set against the 90% of us who are right handed. The brain is clearly lateralized as the split-brain experiments and the reports of Oliver Sachs have so clearly shown us.

    But the third whole body system – the vascular – is the most lateralized anatomically, in other words, the organ system. Nearly everyone has his stomach, heart and aorta on the left, and the liver, a larger lung and the ascending colon on the right. There are people who are reversed, a mirror image, all the same organs but right and left reversed – it is called situs inversus. Because not everyone is autopsied, we don’t really know how prevalent this is – estimates range from 1:10,000 to 1:25000. But either of these figures is far lower than the 90-10 ratio of lateralization in the nervous system alluded to above.

    Early embryological twisting throws a lasso loop in the large intestine and swerves the liver right and the stomach and heart left, putting one half of the vagus nerve in front and the other half into the rear. This is a… – nay, this is the underlying asymmetry of the body, unavoidable, even desirable. You have to hang 27 feet of gut tube from 3 feet of spine, so some asymmetry is inevitable.

    This organic asymmetry definitely accounts for the difference between the two domes of the diaphragm, and may account for the right hip anterior / left hip posterior anomaly seen in so many of our clients, and as yet unexplained (at least, to my satisfaction).

    Often what I am going for in my clients who are unbalanced is not visual symmetry but a good functional marriage between their left and right sides.

    So go, my friend, balance that neuro-muscular system for all you’re worth; it certainly looks good on you. But please understand that from the point of view of the ancient organic system beneath the muscles, your entire neuro-muscular chassis is just a convenient vehicle – a jet pack, so to speak – designed to get better food and better sex for this very asymmetrical tube who invented both your hands – whichever one is next – to wipe its nether end.

    Working with Older Clients

    Thursday, July 7th, 2011

    Susan Carbin Hardee, one of our recent graduates, wrote this short essay about working with senior citizen clients:

    A question I ask is, “What can we offer our older clients?” Though their connective tissues are often less hydrated and less malleable, (and changes harder to see in a photograph) they can nevertheless experience great depth of change within themselves. My class model “Wilma” was a friend of Tom’s who is 70 years old. Her comments ran to: “I have so much more energy, I feel taller, I feel wonderful and better than I have in ages, my balance is improved, my breathing is so much better and my anxiety has diminished significantly.”

    Wilma’s new love is “Harold,” 76 years old. Harold also went through the twelve series during our training. They were in the clinic room at the same time, and it was sweet that they have this budding relationship and were approaching something so bold and different together. He has a Ph.D. in applied math or something, and has followed unusual growth paths through his life. Tom imagines Wilma would not have agreed to the 12 series without his encouragement. This can be a time for older people to begin new directions and settle old issues somatically. It was a positive experience for both of them, I believe that put a spring in their step. The phrase I used when writing to Tom was “a new kind of after-12 photo”. Usually people are in their underwear and it may be hard to see their glow coming through!

    Harold was the classroom model of Eduardo Colon, another student in the class. He wrote, “I’ve done traditional physical therapy work with many older clients but I wasn’t sure what to expect before I went through the 12 series with Harold. Postural problems can be developed over a lifetime and with age, become more resistant to change. While we achieved modest improvement with his posture and overall range of motion, I found the results of the work to be profound when working with postural issues due to medical problems.

    “I kept in mind that I’d be working with less hydrated tissue, heightened sensitivities and sometimes a larger list of pathologies to consider when approaching the work. I’d be stimulating physical and mental sensory to a level he was most likely unfamiliar with. With age, we can become conditioned mentally and physically, becoming less susceptible to change, and we develop more defined comfort zones, so I’d need to be very aware of his response and communicate the process consistently.

    “Harold’s structural imperfections of note included excessive forward head posture, a left shoulder prone to dislocation, and lateral rotation in the right leg. I made a few modifications to the work due to a recent surgery, using a lighter touch in the affected area. This modification was even more so for his own sense of well being and comfort than it was to prevent any type of injury.

    Harold was hesitant to receive the work at first, and reported slight discomfort. It was difficult to gain his trust and open his mind to the experience, but as we experienced results, the collaboration between us strengthened. After session 4 (spiral line session) we began to notice dramatic improvements in his leg. This shocked me because Harold has a rod in his tibia and screws in his ankle, and I was unsure how it would effect the treatment. By the end of the 12 series, the difference was night and day, the lateral rotation in his leg was gone.

    “I was unsure if Structural Integration could make such a significant change with an older client, but surely enough the results are there. It was very reaffirming to me, and reassured me that SI can bring results no matter who you are or who you are working with.”

    Expansion and Contraction

    Monday, June 6th, 2011

    A student recently asked me to discuss prenatal and postpartum fascial changes in terms of “normal” tension, moving to expansion and contraction. So, I’d like to talk about this in three ways:

    1) Movement function: You can see the body as seven hinged ‘masses’ (meaning heavy bits: the head, chest, pelvis, arms and legs) with six rotational ‘spaces’ or swivels in between (the neck, waist, shoulders, and hips). In pregnancy, you add a large incompressible mass into the waist section. In early pregnancy, this makes little difference, but by the last months, and the last two weeks in particular, the weight of the baby and the amniotic fluid tend to lock together the rib cage and the pelvis masses into on big mass. This puts special movement requirements on the woman in late pregnancy (not to mention difficulty breathing – ever tried running upstairs in the ninth month?).

    Clinically, I find many women need restoration of the rotational aspect of the waist, and that exercises and awarenesses that go in this direction are very helpful.

    2) Tissue stretching: Without doubt, the growth of a baby stretches tissue, a day at a time, and of course the pelvic floor tissues in a hell of a hurry. Linea alba diastasis, stretch marks in the dermal layer, and a less-than-adequate pelvic floor tone are all common sequelae from pregnancy and delivery. Inevitably, the uterus sits more forward than backward, because of the lumbar spine behind. All the abdominal muscles and fasciae are stretched, and despite the well-toned mother’s best efforts, the baby tends to stick out over the pubic bone in late pregnancy. This position puts great strain on many organ and ligament attachments – too many to predict, as it depends on the mother’s posture and the baby’s position.

    Assisted restoration can use bodywork, exercise, and such devices as sacral belts when necessary. Natural restoration varies due to the mother’s inherent fascial elasticity, muscle tone, and nutrition – and whether they are nursing or not.

    3) Birth hormones: A cousin of oxytocin called relaxin is secreted in the mother’s body starting a bit before birth (it varies) and some time after birth (longer with nursing), and this causes fascia all over the body to relent a little – making the mother a bit like someone with ligamentous laxity or hypermobility. It’s a good idea to release the ligaments around the pelvis to make the birth easier, but it makes restoration harder.

    Oxytocin is also the love drug, and fixates the mother on the child, to the detriment, sometimes, of herself. Good bodywork soon after delivery can be vital in restoring proper span to the pelvic floor and proper joint relations, but often the mother is ignoring her own feelings in favor of the baby’s well-being. It is up to us, members of her community, to make sure she gets the proper post-natal care. I have a very baby-friendly practice – on the breast, on your stomach, beside you on the table, beside the table in a basket – whatever the mom wants. But get in here and get the pelvis re-aligned before the relaxin disappears (certainly by about 6 months in most) and restoration gets harder.

    In general, fascial tissues restore slower than muscular ones, though muscular effort can aid the fascial restoration. Fascial tears or adhesions will slow or distort muscle action. Malalignment in the SI joints or pubic symphysis affects both. All these are most easily adjusted and combed out in the first couple of months after birth.

    In a proper society, we will make sure that all mothers have sustained pre- and post-partum structural care that will ease the birth process and speed the restoration to full function afterward.

    Multinucleated muscle cells

    Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

    A teacher writes:
    My question is about the “onion bag” you used to show the configuration of locked long vs locked short. My understanding was that when the diamonds are eccentrically shortened (the width of the onion bag) we want create shearing-like motions with the roller or cross fiber friction while when the diamonds are shortened concentrically we want to lengthen them from origin to Insertion. I remember reading about the beehive like structures of the Multinucleated muscle cell — is this where the image of the onion bag comes from?

    My reply:
    The diamond bag thing is a bit of a metaphor, but only a bit, if you look at Purslow’s pic of endomysium, its fibers are oriented at the requisite onion bag (60 degrees).

    Multinucleated muscle cells – sausages – lie within this honeycomb. Imagine it being stretched or loaded eccentrically – the white collagen fibers (the GAG’s are invisible but Guimbertovianly present ) would line up from left to right, and the bonding would be from top to bottom in the picture, and hence the cross-fiber work.

    Concentrically contract and the fibers would lie more vertical in this orientation, and thus when stuck that way would bond more left-to-right — and therefore we open-break-melt the bonding by going along the muscle.

    Fascia

    Monday, February 7th, 2011

    Question: where in the human body there is no fascia? My friend recently asked me that question.do You know the answer??

    Tom Myers replies…
    Inside the gut, and inside the air passages are the only places. There is less (but still some) in the cheeks, breast, and pancreas. There is no fascial fiber in the blood, but fibrinogen dissolved in the blood will turn into fibrin when exposed to air (forming a scab) or turbulence (forming an arterial block).

    Body Language

    Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

    It has been a great lift for my heart that the Anatomy Trains info and map has been so widely accepted into various forms of movement education like PIlates, yoga, and personal training. But being grounded in manual therapy, we have had to scramble to meet the demand – on both a practical and an intellectual level – for more training for these movement masters. The old saw – but like most clichés it has some truth – is that ‘Bodyworkers cannot move and movement teachers cannot touch’. The Body Language course is designed as an initial bridge between the two, and also as a grounding in ‘real’ biomechanics, since standard Western anatomy and the biomechanics of movement only intersect randomly.

    So here we go into the second iteration of Body Language. We learned a lot the first time, and our second crew promises to teach us just as much – such a talented and varied group. If God lets me keep working for a while yet, I want to see more and more cross-pollination between the land of body rollers, hands-on therapists, movement training, and flat out performance ‘arts’ – be they athletic or artistic or martial or all three.

    The start of this course coincides with a major storm. Bad luck for getting everybody in one place at one time, but a good omen overall, say I, just back from the land of Olympus, where the gods interfere with so many human activities. Blow, ye winds, we shall fly in the face of you, somatic alienation, scientific isolation, and the ‘lore’ that keeps us enthralled. We are moving.