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June 14, 2005

Tension Is Not An Isolated Phenomenon

I like to use stories to illustrate why I create protocols on clients that seemingly do not focus on the problem they came to me with. Everything in the body is connected via a continuous "body stocking" of connective tissue that wraps everything in it, including nerves, blood vessels and bones. Ida Roth talks about this continuous sheath when she refers to the tensegrity model, the underlying theory of structural integration.

So, when a client comes to me with low back pain on the right side, and I work on the left side too, I'm doing so because of Ida Roth's theories using the tensegrity model.

Yesterday, I worked on my husband at lunch. He slept wrong and woke up with a crick in his shoulder. I used a deep tissue technique to stretch the fascia in affected muscles. This greatly relieved his discomfort. By the time we had finished lunch, however, he commented that his opposite shoulder was bothering him.

This illustrates perfectly how just because the most painful area of tension is loosened, doesn't mean the primary tension is loosened. Nor does it loosen all the associated tension areas. With patience and a good knowledge of Anatomy Trains, enough fascial tensions can be loosened for the body's natural healing process to take over and finish the job.

Posted by linda at June 14, 2005 9:35 AM