The Enlightened Body Blog

Massage and the Nervous System: Part Three

Part three of Massage and the Nervous System. (See parts two and one.)

As massage therapists we know how to get our hands on muscles and connective tissues. But now we see somehow we have to get our hands on the nervous system because otherwise it’s a bit like flipping light switches with no electricity – some action but no deeper change.

So how do we get our hands on the nervous system?

Autonomic Nervous System

The diencephalon houses among other amazing objects, the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the primary orienter in our lives toward pleasure and away from pain. A pea-sized structure, it nonetheless is in charge of the endocrine system and the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is a full spectrum system which goes to glands, smooth and cardiac muscles, and other organs. It is largely responsible for our most profound reactions to the world. Its experiential spectrum inclines us to the deepest relaxations, to everyday balance, and at its most extreme, to emergency reactions.

A high level of massage therapy can affect the autonomic system in dramatic ways: 

•  Change the set point – most people are too highly strung and under stress. Massage, especially repeated applications, will change the “set point” of the autonomic nervous system. We slowly begin to feel that more relaxed is more our normal and preferred state rather than being more tense.
• Inhabit the full spectrum – some people have difficulty relaxing; others fully experiencing their excitement. By relieving tension from the muscles and the nervous system, massage facilitates the autonomic “range of motion” so that the person can more fluidly move from one energy state to another.
• Cultivate the fertile mid-ground – “Between living and dreaming there is a third thing.” the poet Machado wrote. Edison used to go to sleep with a rock in his hand. When he fell asleep it would drop and wake him up. He persisted until he could be almost asleep and yet not drop the rock. Why? That was the state, he found, out of which all his inventions flowed. When our unconscious and conscious minds are in communication with each other in this fertile midground of awareness, we are at our most creative.

Massage, inducing more balanced states of mind, emotion and body, allows for the creative utilization of the fertile mid-ground in problem-solving and growth.

Some Controversy

Lately, there has been some controversy over whether the energy-based approach has the same legitimacy as the orthopedic approach to massage.

“Energy” is a commonsense word we all use to describe, among other things, the nervous system and the role of emotion, mind, and electrical intelligence in our lives. We could reduce our understanding of energy to chemistry, but who would rather for example want to give up the term “love”, preferring to tell those you care about that you have a predominance of phenylethylamines in their presence? The language of energy comes closer to capturing and understanding experience, than does that of chemistry.

When we consider the critical role of energy and the nervous system, we see that the myofascial system constitutes just one part of what we need to affect as therapists. To fully support health we need to address both energy and structure.

Let us honor both of these wondrous human worlds. Let us see their unity; affirm that good science takes the whole into account, not just the part; and that good art - and massage is undoubtedly an art as well as a science – empowers peace and promotes harmony in our whole being. That touch which knows how to contact our deepest energy and structure bears the promise of a better life for one and all.

Anatomy Review: Basics of the Back

This article was originally published as Back to the Basics: Basics of the Back in Heartland Journal in the summer of 1984.

Our culture over-emphasizes image, appearances, "fronts." The cosmetics and the clothes we wear, even some of the psycho-spiritual trainings around are oriented especially toward the fronts we present. However, the more we focus on the front, the more we neglect backs. The more we ignore our backs, the more  thoughtlessness may translate into back pain and/or cowardice, i.e. spinelessness.

Tipping the Scales Backward

The back is a little like chickens crossing roads. It's not that the chicken needs to get to the other side - it is the other side. The chicken is Side B to the front's Side A. Or is it?

Usually, we identify the back with the "backbone," the vertebral column. I once watched a dissection of a man's abdomen and was amazed - slit open the skin of the gut, remove a bit of intestine and what you see there, not deep at all below the surface of the abdomen - the front of the lumbar vertebrae! The spine runs up through the middle of the body. This is an incredibly important corrective to the usual misconception - we ordinarily then the backbone is located at the surface of the back. The reason for this is that the rational mind, naive for all its hight-powered reason, sing those little protrusions running down the middle of the back, concludes those must be the backbone. Actually, they are just the tips of bony tails extending back a considerable distance from the cylindrical bodies of the vertebrae. If the main weight-bearing parts of the spine were all the way in the back, we would be imbalanced, under constant strain not to fall over backward. Now, if you think about it, it's obvious - the backbone's gotta be running up through the center of the body just as the centrality of the main pole in circus tent assures the symmetry, grace and lift of the whole structure. 

Leonardo's famous sketch underscores this point. For me it is fascination lies in his depiction of the human as a five-limbed creature, each limb radiating out from the center ("hara" or "tan tein" in the East). Each limb, in it turn, is a long series of bones ending with a structure used at varying stages of evolution for grasping and/or expression. The leg bones end with feet, the arm bones with hands, and the back bones with the head. With this in mind, begin to feel the evolved gesture of the spine - it's really our fifth limb thrusting up through the center of our being, elevating the head so that we may survey the distance from the highest possible vantage point.

The skeletal structure of the back consists of the spinal column and the ribcage. The rear of the ribcage obviously underlies most of the back's surface, but that too seldom is recognized as people identify ribs and notice their movement in the front of the body, but rarely think about or feel the back of the ribcage and its graceful response to breathing. 

Five Divisions of the Spine

1. The coccyx or tailbone.
   
2. The sacrum, five fused vertebrae lying between the rear wings or ilia of the pelvis.
   
3. The five lumbar vertebrae, running through the center of the waist.
   
4. The 12 thorasic vertebrae, each of which has joints with a rib to either side.
   
5. The seven cervical vertebrae or neck ones. 

Although our cervical as well as lumbar vertebrae have no ribs attaching to them now they did at the fishy point of evolution. Therefore these areas are the most free, but by the same token, the most open to distortion. Through injury, postural ignorance or chronic muscle tension, the cervical and/or lumbar vertebrae will often become compressed excessively curved or twisted. 

Owning Your Back

To re-own the freedom of your back, remember to appreciate with your self-image and in your movement:

1. Your rear ribcage rising and falling, expanding and contracting with each inhale and exhale:
2. The beautiful open span of the waist between the ribcage and the pelvis:
3. Your neck as a continuation of the back bone gently rising up through he body and up through the middle of your head.

Truly, nature displays her genius in the way our backs work if we will move from malignant neglect to benign appreciation, the back will become a source of beauty, pleasure and strength in our lives.

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Get back to your back: Randy Cummins will be teaching a massage continuing education class Thai-Shiatsu Techniques for the Low Back and Hip in February 2010.

Zero Balancing with David Lauterstein

An interview of David Lauterstein by Karen Barth, therapist and certified Zero Balancer from Kentucky.

KB: What is Zero Balancing and what are its strongest applications?

DL: Zero Balancing is the art and skill of balancing body energy and body structure. It could be called structural and energetic integration. As such it has a fascinating variety of effects. Zero Balancing dramatically enhances one’s posture because it focuses on balancing the skeletal armature deep within us. It is also spiritually profound because it consciously contacts the deepest energy flowing through us - what we call the “universal life flow”, which flows through the bones. It is also deeply calming because underneath the turbulence of our lives, as under the sometimes-turbulent surface of the ocean, there is actually a calm and uncomplicated experience of oneself which we can access. Zero Balancing is deeply relieving of chronic pain because oftentimes-chronic pain is related to energy issues, as well as structural ones. Because Zero Balancing creates balance in the very foundations of our being-- the bones, joints, and deep soft tissues associated with them -- it is an ideal health amplification modality.

KB: One of the unique things about your work is your focus on its artistic aspect. Please talk about Zero Balancing as an art.

DL: The human body is a masterpiece - greater in its evolved wisdom of body, mind and spirit than the Taj Mahal, the Beethoven 9th, or a Leonardo painting. We forget this - we think the miracles, the masterpieces of our world are “out there”, not “in here”. Actually, there are miracles equally “in here” - in the miracle of human biology, psyche and spirit.

A therapist who really knows this will awaken the client’s awareness of their own miraculous nature. This is the task of great art -- to evoke in us experiences of such wonder that we transform as a result. Great art puts us in touch with the miracle that each one of us is. Bodywork, because it is performed not via the “distal” senses of hearing or sight but through the very sinews of our bodies, is a far more direct and viscerally experienced art form. And Zero Balancing is an embodied art form and health modality which enlightens our innermost nature by working with the innermost core of our bodies’ structure and energy - the bones and deepest layer of our connective tissues.

KB: Is ZERO BALANCING energy work? How does it differ from other forms of energy work?

DL: Zero Balancing is not primarily energy work. It is primarily work which focuses simultaneously and consciously on both the physical structure and on one’s energy. This is an enormously important point. As most of us in alternative health know, a merely structural approach to problems is too one-sided. People are more than just their physical bodies, they have minds, feelings, sensations, and spirit. Any healthcare modality that ignores that is simply unscientific. However, exclusively energy work, on the other hand, often doesn’t address the very real and complex challenges which arise within our anatomy.

Zero Balancing, by having a theory and practice which emphasizes the simultaneous and conscious contact of both energy and structure, has an incredible therapeutic leverage.

KB: What is your approach to teaching in general, and more specifically to teaching Zero Balancing?

DL: The philosopher Martin Buber said, “It is not the educational intention, but it is the meeting which is educationally fruitful.” I believe the most important things as a teacher are not what I know; they are what you know already in your body, as well as in your mind and spirit. And it’s my job to evoke your highest knowing and being through fully meeting. This is basically identical to my work as a therapist and Zero Balancer. My hope in teaching and in practicing Zero Balancing is to help you wake up to your highest dreams and to facilitate as much as possible those dreams coming true.

And isn’t this coming together one of the greatest dreams for us as individuals and a society -- can we get to the place where we all meet in harmony? To the place where we can accept and meet all that is within us and all that is around us? This is true “kind-ness” -- to meet and know that, however different any thing may be, there is a kinship to all life.

It reminds me of words from a poem, “Love after Love,” by Derek Walcott

The Time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Now that, beautifully put, is very much what Zero Balancing is -- with elation greeting yourself at your own door.

The only basic Zero Balancing class to be taught in Texas in 2010 will be in Austin January 28-31.

Ezekiel on Bodywork!

Below I've printed a famous passage from the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. It is the one that gave rise to the gospel song, "Dem Bones", which goes through the body, ending with "neck bone connected to the head bone; Now hear the words of the Lord!"

To me it evokes the deepening experience of life.

When humans, through self-exploration and perhaps through bodywork or conscious bodmind practices such as yoga, discover how we have been disconnected, we begin to seek ways to reconnect within ourselves and with the world around us.

So our dry life, our dry bones can become reinvigorated; our movements become more fluid. Breath enters us and enlivens us. We feel our sinews, our sinuous ability to move and be strong, and our miraculous skin, sensing the world like an eardrum feeling the wind, touch, heat, cold, water, sun, and shape.

Then in Ezekiel the many dry bones arise together and formed an "exceedingly great host".

This says to me that the bones of humanity are not just those of isolated beings. The spirit that breathes life into each of us, is the oxygen/carbon dioxide/spirit that pervade all the spaces between us. We are all connected by the miracle of plantetary gas exchange, the "tissue" of breath between all beings, just as the connective tissues and fluid in joints connect the bones in the body. Each person is thus a bone in the vast skeletal system of terrestrial life.

In the song the words, "neck bone, connected to the head bone; now hear the words of the Lord" mean bring your awareness up through your inner connection, through each bone.  When you get to the head, the next connection is with the vast world beyond yourself. 

On a related note, Emily Dickinson said, "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

Finally, "breathe upon these slain, that they may live", lets me know that we should not allow people to die in vain (on the battlefield or otherwise). We redeem the dreams of our ancestors when we genuinely work for world peace and harmony.

Ezekiel 37

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me round among them; and behold, there were very many upon the valley; and lo, they were very dry. and he said to me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" and I answered, " O Lord God, thou knowest." Again he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord."

So I prophesied as i was commanded; and as I prophesied there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And as I looked there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was not breath in them. Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O Breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live."

So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great host."

7 Reasons: Deep Massage vs. Deep Tissue

 By David Lauterstein

1. Massage therapists performing Deep Massage generally work without lubricant (unless there is a painful feeling of stretching the skin). Using lubricant causes the therapist to slip over the tension and, to compensate, they have to use tremendous pressure not to slip. This often causes overwork syndromes for the therapist and sometimes excessive pain or bruising for the client. 
   
2. Deep Massage recognizes the scientific fact that muscles don’t relax! It is the nervous system that relaxes the muscles! So the Deep Massage therapist learns how to contact the nervous system through extremely high touch quality. Deep tissue works from outside in and is therefore more temporary in its effect. Deep Massage works from insideout, stimulating the client’s nervous system’s ability to relax. Therefore it results in more thoroughand longer-lasting relaxation as well as deeper postural benefit. 
   
3. Deep Massage treats the whole person. We recognize that some of our body’s tension is a reflection of stress in our everyday life. So in Deep Massage we look not only at the physical sources of tension but at the “energetic” sources of tension andstress in our anatomy and physiology. Deep Massage teaches a way to contact and benefit energy and structure simultaneously.
   
4. Deep Massage also involves the therapist being educated to make optimal pressure and contact.  Students of deep massage learn to recognize specific signs to indicate how deep to go, when it’s too much, how long to hold a certain trigger point, etc.  These involve training in paying closer attention to the client’s breath, eyes, facial expression, and other important indicators. 
   
5. Deep Massage classes include training on how to be more balanced in one’s body and mind in thetherapy setting. Because deep massage training helps the therapist avoid unnecessarily stressing their body and mind, the therapy not only works betterfor the client, it also greatly enhances the longevity of the therapist!
   
6. Deep Massage involves training in customizing the session uniquely for each individual client, rather than being an approach applied similarly to all clients. Students are trained to individually assess the client’s posture, movement, stress sources, expressed health goals and to come up with a unique plan for each individual session.
   
7. Deep Massage feels better!  Because it is more individualized, by a therapist educated with respect to body mechanics and self-care, who is trained to observe and refine the touch to be optimal, who addresses tension in nervous system as well as in the muscles, and who knows just how best to contact the actual places of tension - it just feels better!

Beyond the Immune System: Making History with Massage Part 1

A Talk Presented by David Lauterstein at the first National Conference for Teachers of Massage and Bodywork,  July 1993

 

To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it "the way it really was".  It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.

                                                Walter Benjamin - Illuminations

The above quotation may serve to remind us - we are living in a potentially dangerous time.  Not to be a spoil sport, but we know that it is reasonable, given the unresolved psychological and ecological issues of humankind, to wonder how and whether we will be around 50-100 years from now.  In addition to possible future global dangers, massage therapists and educators are themselves at a great crossroads defining, as we become more accepted and accessible, whether we are really to become part of the medical-industrial establishment or to retain our maverick, holistic feet-in-both camps- status.  Frankly, I'm staunchly in the latter camp, believing in the precious natural and spiritual healing legacy of Pehr Henrik Ling, Andrew Taylor Still, Ida Rolf and other great teacher/therapists throughout history.  I am firmly convinced, to paraphrase Walter Benjamin, that even the dead will not be safe if the reductive medical model is victorious.

Years ago there was a famous issue of National Geographic magazine containing a lengthy article on the immune system.  It aroused in me some sneaking suspicions.  It depicted the immune system as an intense and formidable military apparatus with T-cells as tanks and B-cells as anti-personnel weapons, the good solider lymphocytes, the valiant white blood cells all amassed in do-or-die battle against the dreaded pathogens, the NON-SELF substances, the foreign invaders threatening our very boundaries!  I thought - just wait a minute!   This is b.s.  Is health really to be defined as an organism's success at defending itself against foreign invaders?

At that time I postulated in jest and in hope a much more interesting system, one based on nourishment and love, not on division, conquest or repulsion.  This is a complementary system with its own specialized cells, molecular dynamism and organs which splendidly welcomes "outsiders".  I imagined the foreign visitors being offered refreshment.  "Some DNA or maybe you would like a phosphate?  Or a massage in the interstitial baths or would you like to experience the sublimity of being rocked in the cerebrospinal fluid?"

These thoughts acted as seeds for years of questioning and reflection.  Where and how might be this opposite of the immune system?  It is still a question which is very much with me.

Sam Keen, the philosopher, said something like anything you can accomplish in one lifetime is probably not worth doing.  The most important questions are those in fact which are posed by evolution itself, those which are taking generations of humans and perhaps the evolved spectrum of life millennia to survive, let alone answer.  These are truly great questions!

Anyhow, a few years ago, a chiropractor somewhat patronizingly claimed to me that chiropractors were more effective than massage therapists because with their adjustments they worked faster than the stretch reflex could kick in.  Somewhat defensively I countered that our work was at least as powerful because we worked slower than the stretch reflex could kick in.

Years later this conversation lit up a big light bulb for me.  I was searching for an explanation as to the nature and efficacy of the main touch tool of Zero Balancing, called the "fulcrum".  This is similar to what I and others teach as "melting" or myofascial release in which the therapist presses into the body until he/she feels the beginning of resistance, then waits attentively for a further opening, then adds, as feels appropriate, two or more additional gentle vectors of force.  Explained anatomically, I thought, one might say the therapist enters until just the beginning of the stretch reflex, waits for it to fatigue, then softens and lengthens the connective tissue in some relevant directions.

Then suddenly I began to see the stretch reflex as primarily a response to entry into the body, not only as a mechanism designed to prevent the overstretching of joint.  A whole new world opened up.

Seen from this perspective, the stretch reflex is a way for the body to repel from its surface things that bump against it too hard or too fast.  It serves, in other words, to repel non-self substances.  But isn't that an immune function?  Exactly.

The stretch reflex is an immune mechanism repelling non-self input but on such a grand scale that we may want to consider it as part of what I call the "macro-immune system".

Anatomy Review: Back of the Future, Future of the Back

By David Lauterstein, LMT, Cert. ZB

Most people don’t know much about their bodies.  As a result, we live with suffering individually and as a society suffer from the symptoms of “psycho-physical illiteracy”.

Most of the physical suffering happens in the back.  Lower, middle, and upper back problems account for most worker absentee-ism in the U.S. - as well as most client complaints when people come for massage therapy or chiropractic. 

Knowledge First

To begin creating a new, healthier future for your back and those of your clients, let us start building your self-knowledge of the most prominent back muscles.  These are the “erector spinae”.  The erector spinae muscles are actually like three long muscular vines climbing up the trellis of your ribs and spine.  The outermost is called the “iliocostalis” which indicates it runs up from the pelvis (“ilium”) to the ribs (“costae”) about 2 or so inches out from your center.  Iliocostalis feels like a nylon string of a guitar running all the way up to the second neck vertebra.  The thickest strand of the erector spinae is the “longissimus” meaning “the longest”.  It runs all the way from your sacrum up to the back of your skull right behind your ear (“mastoid process of the temporal bone”).  Finally the innermost strand of the erectors is “spinalis” which runs right from the bottom of your ribcage just alongside the centrally located “spinous” processes of your spine (the bumps you see in the center) finally ending up at the back of your skull.  Spinalis, like iliocostalis, is rather thin except in the back of the neck where it unites with a deeper muscle layer actually becoming the thickest muscle of the neck. 

The erector spinae, from the standpoint of Oriental medicine, are pathways for the “bladder meridian”.  The bladder meridian begins at the inside orbit of the eye, comes back over the top of the head, follows the erectors down the back and then travels down the center of the back of the pelvis, legs, and to the little toe.  This is part of the “water” element, according to this structural/energetic model.  Interestingly, an emotion that may be associated with the bladder meridian is fear.  It is not uncommon to find a correlation between fearfulness and chronic or acute back pain. It is also said “the bladder channel connects with the brain and helps integrate intelligence with the functions of the nervous system.”

Sitting at a computer, driving or just walking hunched over, we are compromising these muscles.  They get “stuck” in a lengthened position holding onto the torso for dear life.  Under this continuous stress, they become weakened, and when we challenge them even just a little bit more - lifting, twisting suddenly, sleeping awkwardly or taking on more stress than usual - they can go into spasm.  People who hold their emotions back or have learned to stand at “attention” may certainly also experience chronic tension in these muscles.

Solutions - So your Back has Future?

Do exercises to lengthen the front torso and to strengthen the back.  Rolling on an exercise ball can be very helpful.  Pilates and other core-strengthening activities are great - like Hatha Yoga. 

Practice fuller breathing - the back muscles all attach to the ribs and, if the ribs are moved more freely by breath, the back muscles’ tension can be greatly relieved.

Cultivate your awareness of what your sources of stress are and what emotions you may holding onto.  Then decide on better ways to cope with your stress.

As a massage therapist, addressing the erector spinae is one of the most important things you can do.

Helpful Massage Techniques

1. Medium deep effeurage down the sacrum with your palm or both thumbs - to “re-root” the overstretched fascia.
2. “Melting” (sensitively working trigger points) into the side of the erectors between the iliac crest and the 12th rib.
3. Cross-fiber friction especially toward the mid-line - across each strand of the erectors - to bring better circulation and breadth back into these overworked muscles.

Also, both Asian bodywork and chair massage (as we teach it, chair massage brilliantly adapts shiatsu for the back to the seated position) are also quite thorough in their treatment of the erector spinae and the bladder meridian.

The future of the back, if we practice better knowledge and self-care, is to facilitate a buoyant way of living, courageous, free and self-supporting!