Somatics from first and third person perspective

[Diane]

Ok.. I know Servaas will not like me for this, but I am driven from some deep center in the left cortex to write about the first person experience in a third person or detached sort of way. If I don't analyze and describe, I can't share my experience and thoughts, can I? I'll let him deal with me once he comes onto this board, but share I must, so here goes.

This is a revamped and slightly longer version of what I already wrote on another thread (I think Nari's, goodness knows where) somewhere on this site. So here we go again:

Essence of Somatics:
1. It's all about teaching 'first person' production of and experiencing of movement, by the patient. Not a 'third person' production of movement by the therapist. The patient has to learn to deliberately contract through the whole muscle and deliberately relax or lengthen through the full length of a (slightly loaded) muscle.

2. Nothing is done 'to' 'tissue'. It is allowed to be in its natural state, painful or not. Clothing is allowed to be on. Patient lies supine with feet flat/knees up. Practitioner's hands lie under or on top of a large joint or under the scap.

3. Movement is requested by the practitioner.
E.g.: Absolutely basic: arch of low back on full belly inhale (TrA stretches out with the breath in..); reverse arch on exhale, with active contraction of TrA. No pelvic floor or leg adductor contraction is permitted.

4. Movement is practiced by patient until it is done properly, essentially, fully, painlessly, minimalistically and easily by patient, with no other muscles kicking in. No stress. No "correction", no interference by practitioner. Just positive feedback, encouragement, request for repetition and suggestions for another way they might try to do it with less effort from compensatory co-contractions, until they "get it".

5. Hands-on example: practitioner shows patient where to feel their TrA, and how to know that they are using it and not, for example, obliques.

6. Once the breathing and back movement and TrA are all synched, patient and practitioner move on to the next piece, which often will be traps/lats. Patient learns to relax these large sheet muscles which function as agonist/antagonist, both vertically and in crosspattern.
E.g: Latissimus: With hand placed behind scapula, fingers around bottom edge, slight traction on blade, practitioner asks patient to pull their shoulder blade "down" toward waist at the back (concentric voluntary contraction against slight resistance.) They are asked to arch the low back and breathe in at the same time.

Then practitioner asks for patient to "relax slowly" (i.e. controlled conscious eccentric contraction of lat) while practitioner's hand is still pulling in cephalad direction. (Very important that patient doesn't just "let go"... they MUST learn to relax their lat s-l-o-w-l-y and make their eccentric contraction conscious and felt by their own brain.) The hand adds just enough stress to the lat system that the antagonist (trap in this case) won't take over and completely inhibit the lat. Meanwhile, patient is asked to simultaneously breathe out, pull the low back down at the belt line to the table, and contract their TrA that they now can easily use.

The whole point of the exercise is to help the patient learn to turn the tightness in the lat 'down' by themselves, using lat only and not switching it 'off' by contracting something else instead. Getting everything synched; breathing, abs contraction, spinal movement etc. is paramount.

Ultimately, one is trying to turn down the level of muscle contraction in all the contractors, in the whole body, and learn to control the 'knob' better, more like a rheostat and less like an on-off switch. In somatics this is referred to as completing the motor sensory feedback loop to combat "sensorymotor amnesia."

7. Once they have this piece, and the experience of being able to perceive movement/to move each vertebrae separately has reached the conscious part of the brain, new movements can be stacked in and learned. It is quite interesting to see formerly "stiff" people be able to lie on their side on the floor, extend their hip with the knee bent, twist their head toward the floor, look behind them and be able to see their foot, all the while breathing deeply in a relaxed way and controlling the whole thing from the pelvis. It's even more interesting to learn to do such a thing, to experience it as 'easy', not a struggle.

8. A practitioner, although nice, isn't absolutely necessary for everyone to 'get' this work. But the teacher of it, whether it's in a class or one-on-one, must have the experience of their own brain coming awake and staying awake through movement in order to be able to convey to someone not only how to do it, but be confident they'll be able to do it and convey that.. Its basic experential nature makes it very hard to describe in 'third person' terms. However, it took me straight back to physiotherapy school where we got onto the floor to practice "the developmental sequence" and learned the basics of how to treat hemiplegics and other people with devastating neurological conditions. So I think the work is basic to the nervous system, and that our training is already in place to be able to adopt Somatics as another layer, with no conflict.

What gets completely bypassed in this training are all the bones and joints. They are allowed to be the passive entities that they are. By not thinking about them, they cause no trouble. (What will the entire orthopaedic world do for a living once people learn they can bypass worrying about their bones and joints? I can already sense dismay..)

9. About pain: Of course training of awareness is better to be done when there is no pain. However, once pain is there, awareness training still needs to be done..

At the somatics workshop, pain came up as a topic, "How do you manage to teach this stuff to someone in pain?"

The reply was,"If I ask someone to contract and then lengthen a muscle and they report that they felt pain in their shoulder or their other shoulder or anywhere, I say, 'Isn't that interesting?' Then I say, OK, do the same thing, this time without pain."

Literally, that's the pain treatment. The patient is asked to deal with their own pain production and learn to move without it. It's a very "neural glide friendly" system of exercise.

(I suppose there are some catagories of vicious out of control neuropathic pain situations or pain from mets to bones, etc, where such a casual(but not indifferent) attitude would fail, but for all the common garden variety types of pain, not a problem.)

10. All I can tell you is, it was great to feel my own spine turn into an elongatable snaky-feeling, python-esque, twisty version of its usual somewhat tightish somewhat shortened self. It felt at least 4 inches longer. And the space at the side of my waist between my ribcage and my pelvis widened from a single finger width to a whole hand width. Who'd have thunk my spine could still be capable of all that unravelling at this age?

I'll be doing my little somatic exercises everyday from now on. And six of us locals decided to form a little study group. This is real anti-aging therapy, let me assure you...

Some concluding comments
This work that Servaas is spearheading, (should he succeed with his plan to expand) is going to be big stuff in a few short years... whether or not PT embraces it as its own(.. which it still can do...there's still time) or not. Servaas is beyond his own PT training now. He is holding a door open and all kinds of people are going through it: He says it's for everyone, anyone can learn to do this work and teach it. It is not rocket science, it is simply Effective.

Some small 'tribal loyalty' part of me would like for this wonderful approach to be just for PTs. But another much larger and wiser part of me admires how profoundly democratic his attitude is, and how, really, I agree with that. I've always liked PT a lot better when it encompasses new ideas instead of rejecting them. And I have to agree with him that anyone with an intact nervous system can learn to do this work and teach it to others. It should therefore be made available to all.

It will charm the rest of the aging babyboom population as it has charmed me. (Baby boomers by our sheer volume and numbers have usually forced social change to happen as we move along in life. I can see a society wanting to keep costs down as we age and become burdens..the longer we keep ourselves healthy and capable the less burden we are going to become)) It could pull the rug out from under the PT profession, which would have to adapt or die. It could either be something our profession embraces to simplify our work and make it more efficient, or it could be seen as a huge threat and ignored or buried by those who are seen to be the leaders in the profession. It could either succeed in uniting disparate groups of practitioners still operating under different banners, or drive them further apart as turf battles rage and desperate professionals cling even harder to hard tissues. It could either clear up confusion and result in a "grand unified theory" of how a person in a body can have a comfortable "intelligent" body, or not. It could shorten the length of time a PT needs to go to school by about 50%, probably..

In my opinion. a threat to our profession exists: namely the downsizing and dis-pontification and de-pompous-ification of it. What will all the researchers research? What will the bone&joint people do for a living? What will happen to the push for PTs to become "doctors" in the (dis)United States of America? What will happen to our cherished notion (here in Canada) that to become a PT you need a university degree? Surely all that is the "growth curve"...or is it? Perhaps it was never that complicated after all...

Just some idle thoughts... I welcome other idle thoughts from others.
Cheers,
Diane

[Sharon Haave]

Hi everyone;

I too attended Servaas' recent course. Thanks Diane for the well written explanations of Somatics. Here are a few of my additions:

Somatics is about awareness, about becoming aware of ourselves from the inside. What happens, in my experience, through such awareness of body are positive shifts an opening of awareness in all respects. Increasing awareness leads to evolution, growth in our self understanding and ability to help others.

The somatic experience can be facilitated through the assistance of another person but ultimately requires persistent and patient self exploration. The somatic practioner must develop, through their own diligent efforts, sufficient self awareness to be able to teach this to others. The result of the effort can be transformational. Transformation requires discipline, perserverance, a strong desire. Are you willing?

Somatics is one of many great tools for reaching for our potential, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In my experience, the physical is the most accessible doorway into awareness, and the first step for most people. Somatics can really help us to understand how we are in the world, how we create our own pain and suffering and helps us to shift it.

From a physiotherapy perspective, I have great hopes that more of this kind of process will enter into the mix. It is simple but at the same time, demands more of a practioner, self awareness and the willingness to give up being the healer. Here the client heals themselves, becomes self aware and able to self monitor and treat. It will be interesting to watch where this will go in the physio world.

:)

[Diane]

Great to see you here Sharon, welcome to the site! And thank you for your insightful comments. I especially like the thought about somatics and similar forms of work demanding more of us as practitoners. And the other one about physicality being the easiest doorway to transformation. Oh, and the thought about positive shifts physically being doorways to other shifts...and all the other thoughts too.

On the weekend I could literally feel that space between the bottom of my ribcage and the IC open from one fingerbreadth to a whole handbreadth. Pretty cool stuff.

I treated someone on the floor today, for the first time in years and years.. I sat there crosslegged and bent forward for a whole hour, with no ill effects, because of having had the weekend to change all my own musculature into the more stretchy sort.. if somatics can help a stiff middle ager (who is also fairly chubby) that much, I can't see how it can fail to help all the people who are going to find out about it the first person way, in the next few weeks, months, years.

And Bernard, again, thanks for maintaining this site and the vision you've outlined. I'm sure with intentions like that something good will come out of it all.
:),
Diane

[Green Hornet]

Fantastic writing, Diane.
Welcome, Sharon, and I am glad to see you here as well.
Bernard, I appreciate for your work of somasimple.com.

I wrote this before: I was a threat to my former employer. He did not accept my clinical skills and thinking, despite good clinical outcome and patient response. I had an attitude of attacking what I clinically did for improve patient care. I can imagine that some people will resist somatics.

What is their problem? I have seen so many therapists who do not experience their "soma" on a daily basis. Their lack of first person experience does not allow their trasformation in their life, clinical knowledge and skills, etc.
Some therapists may not want to let their power shift to patient; the power of manually conquer patient's symptoms. It is just for their self-satisfaction from 3rd person perspective.

Good practitioners are the one who can evolve themselves, who can educate themselves and then others.

I can't predict how long it is going to take this Somatics to become the mainstream in health care. But, the change we want to see will occur from those who have experienced inner peace and transformation.
Till then, "Be the change you want to see in the world." - Gandhi-

Education

[nari]

Diane,Takao and all posters-

All great stuff to think about and lots of take-home messages.
It is about empowering patients.
It is about taking ourselves, possibly, out of a job, at least in the private sector unless very strong marketing is done.
It is about physiotherapists coming into the 'soup' (David's terminology) and the 'warm wet jungle' (another's expression) of the brain.
It is a major threat to researchers unless they take on board messages from folk like Servaas, Butler, Gifford et al.
At the worst, it could throw us out of the Cartesian medical system where physiotherapy grew up. That could be a very good thing...but it has its repercussions. Who supports physios working in the Cartesian hospitals?

Would physiotherapy, then, divide into two disciplines? I have sometimes thought that would be a good idea. A shorter course for the hospital workers to do their pigeonhole clinical practices - ortho, neuro, respiratory etc and an extended course with psychological emphasis, extensive functional anatomy, and handling skills supreme. The latter would set the theme for a new physiotherapy approach, which may (or may not) lead to greater profile for the profession.

Can you imagine how thinking and practising along Servaas' lines would benefit, for instance, the aged? Paeds? Rehab services?

In the 60s, an ageing Clinical Superintendent once told a physio friend of mine: Physiotherapists are becoming too smart for their own good. He did not mean it nastily, he foresaw major conflict with nursing, for instance, and doctors. He was reasonably correct - conflicts still thrive.

For many PTs, the departure from traditional medicine would be the hardest to do. It is probably time for all PTs to communicate their concerns and intuitive feelings to each other - and cyberspace forums may be the way to go.....


Nari

[bernard]

Nari,

Give us a try?

I can make an mass email to Somasimplers if you want but as an evangelist you have a job to do => write the text of the mail to make them concerned?

[nari]

Hi Bernard

A good idea, but Somasimplers are already on the way!

I was thinking of another forum (The Other)....but this morning I do not feel very evangelistic, so will see how the week pans out... :roll:

But I am slowly (slow being the operative word) developing a script for patients, much shorter than David's, and perhaps more along the lines of Servaas' principles. He is coming to Aust, I think later in the year.

Nari

[Diane]

Nari,
I think this thread and some parallel threads running just now link up into a nice discussion.

As I continue to ponder somatics, and why it has the deep effects it has, I can offer up a few more first person clues to consider.

1. The work is done horizontal. Therefore gravity must be related to in an entirely unfamiliar way for the majority of us who haven't been on the floor since we were children. That includes practitioners (PTs anyway..) and our patients.

2. We are forced, simply by virtue of the fact that our muscles are relating to gravity differently, and many bits of our inner anatomy are pressing on other bits in this less familiar (forgotten from childhood or infanthood) way, to use our muscles' origins and insertions in unusual ways. Suddenly there are new forces operating. Gravity is not helping our columns compress, instead it is helping them lengthen. We are being asked to move from a "core", which, to our gravitational and righting systems, is not where it usually is, suspended halfway "down" our body, it is on the floor like all the rest of us.

3. The floor itself is supplying afferent feedback like mad, continually.

4. The perscribed movements are requested in a logical unfolding sequence that has been worked out 'perceptually' (first person fashion) by (perceptually) brilliant people, over a number of years of careful trial and error. I think we can trust that they worked out all the potential major glitches such that ordinary structurally intact people can do the work safely.

5. The rest is about focus and learning shortening and lengthening control of postural statically holding musculature that we ordinarily take completely for granted, but which, for better or worse, holds us up.

I want to elaborate on this last point: I really do think that we are in error, and perhaps our teachers are in error, when we "think" we are working on our lats and traps. I believe now that they are just the conscious doorway we are using to enter into the REAL unconscious part of the body, the paraspinals and other ribcage muscles.

I checked out the paraspinals again, in anatomy books. Besides the rotatores and multifidi that insert on the spinal bones they are large, broad, feathery, and there are many vertical rows of them on every back, spreading across it. They insert into all the individual ribs. They are called 'longissimus thoracis' and 'iliocostalis thoracis' and the first one continues on as 'longissimus lumborum'.... and inside the rib cage there are voluntary contractile elements also; 'transversus thoracis' at the front, inside the cage, feathering all the way up to the second and third ribs! (Who knew it goes up that far?)

As PT practitioners, since when have we ever cared about trunk movment except for gross outer range? F. E. SB, and R either way? (And if someone didn't have enough, we blamed the poor joints? Or discs?) The rest of the time, we concern ourselves with appendicular skeltons and the nerves, muscles and joints therein. I confess to having been one of these until inspired to learn more...and more... and more...

What I saw, in the class, was that when someone "got it", verified by the instructors comments, what was going on was a full accordian type motion of the ribcage /torso coordinated with breath and conscious effort. In other words, they were learning to differentiate spinal movment from rib motion. Good trick, and one needs conscious access to paraspinals and the feathery bits up into the ribcage on the INside, to produce such a twisty mobile feat.

I think in ordinary, unconscious outwardly focused human movment and life, these muscles function quite (QUITE!!) unconsciously because most of our breathing is unconscious. But, by lying down, doing deeper and more sequential breathing, we connect our intent directly to them finally, working from the outside in (lats and traps that overly them) and from the inside out (controlling breath and the bit of TrA that we can easily find, the bit between the ICs) to produce waves of motion that can access movement in these ordinarily unconscious muscles that hold all the bits of us together, and persuade them to elongate, be more stretchy and contractile, more coordinated with the rest of the outer somatic 'exosoma'.

I submit therefore, that somatics, among other things to be sure, is a self mobilizing/neural glide program for ribcage/torso. And the conscious awareness part, is learning to 'ground' all our motion from the actual (now mobile) torso (instead of via the appendicular girdles of the lower and upper limbs, bypassing the spine/ribs.)

I'm sure there are more thoughts to come.
Cheers,
Diane

[emad]

Hi all :

Welcome sharon to somasimple.

Diane :
excellent , yuor last post .

I submit therefore, that somatics, among other things to be sure, is a self mobilizing/neural glide program for ribcage/torso. And the conscious awareness part, is learning to 'ground' all our motion from the actual (now mobile) torso (instead of via the appendicular girdles of the lower and upper limbs, bypassing the spine/ribs.)

good conclusions.

cheers
emad

[Diane]

Not sure what you mean Bernard, about losing skin... unless you mean losing skin by rolling around and contracting and lengthening against the floor..:)

Another thought I had about all these paraspinals that are individual rib moving muscles, was that in the case of snakes, those are the only muscles they have to get around with. Literally. They have to do all their ADL with only paraspinals. Every move they make is "trunk" movement. They must have the most fabulous 'somas' of all vertebrates. I doubt anyone has ever seen a snake with 'non-organic' movement patterns..

Maybe that's why our paraspinals go unconscious so readily.

1. We don't rely on them exclusively. Perhaps our neocortex has way more fun with the other more appendicular muscles, judging by the relative sizes in homonculi.. and loves to not have to "think" anymore about these old buried ones, functioning in that grey zone, partly respiratory and partly anchor for more peripheral actions.

2. Our innate (primate) aversion to snakes and disallowing our ability to mimic them, this ability drifting downward into unconsciousness until we have full blown "sensory motor amnesia" and no longer can without teaching/reminding.

3. Cultural admonitions to avoid moving our torsos around like belly dancers, or other so-called "exotic" dancers. We have perhaps deliberately in our western culture "anaesthetized" our 4-6 neat rows of paraspinals (depending on which ones you define as paraspinals) with sensory motor amnesia because fullblown daily use of them would make other members of our culture too uneasy. We 'think' ballerinas with taut and straight torsos reinforced by pilates, is the way to go. Women (who are a bit more innately mobile perhaps, than men) in our culture end up inhibiting natural access to our paraspinals because it might attract unwelcome attention walking down the street. Hmmnnn.. maybe that could be a factor in why more women than men end up with chronic pain?? More girls than boys with scoliosis?? (The topic of how women walk 'like men' in our N. American culture, came up at the workshop incidentally..)

4. Maybe this cultural amnesia about torso movement is why PT didn't think of somatics first, before Hanna did! We are, on the whole, a subculture that is very 'law'-abiding and obedient, when it comes to movement. We've usually up to now, done 'what we're told' (only recently have enjoyed across- the- board direct access, varying in different countries.). We always go for function, and less for 'art' or 'well-being'... as long as Mr. or Mrs./Miss/Ms. can get 'back to work' and stop bothering the 'system', we are content? (Until we are out of the system ourselves..:))

5. I think, Nari, that this is the real crucial point: Worlds collide, cultural worlds and amnesiac worlds. My firstperson experience is now at least partly about deconstructing my own inherent cultural frame around free expression of torso movement, learning to 'permit' such movment into my body and awareness, with all the "stuff" that comes up with it. Somatics training suggests we all practice torso movment daily, in the privacy of our own home. I think that was/is wise. Meanwhile I'll work daily to turn my patient population into a group of clandestinely exercising freed-torso happy fully breathing people with access to their own trunks like they haven't enjoyed since they were infants, (who hopefully will be less apt to develop high blood pressure, GERD and a bunch of other stuff that living in a tight torso can contribute toward.. anti-aging exercise, my own ideas on that...)

Tonight is our first study group session, where we will treat one another. More social disinhibition, and support.

Just some more thoughts about somatics.
Cheers,
Diane

[Green Hornet]

Diane,
Let me know how the study group session evolves.
I am curious to know that.

[Diane]

Well, Takao, I just got home from our first study group, four of us. We practiced a sidelying 'pandiculation' for latissimus, one of us reading it out loud from Dreaver's book while two more tried it and another watched, taking turns. We practiced the holds and the feel. We went through the whole cat stretch series, all 7 phases. We kept ourselves busy for 2 hours, and will meet again in two weeks. We all agreed that there were some bits each of us missed, or had forgotten, that someone else remembered and was able to fill in. We each talked a bit about how we'd been applying the new knowlege at work. We agreed the language needed some updating. We are going to do a bit of digging: Into old sensory motor integration info, a new bit from the Dreaver book each meeting, seeing if collectively we can professionalize the language a bit more without losing the basic gist of the work and how it has to 'feel' to work right.
Too bad you are over that border. Would be great if you could join us.
Cheers,
Diane

[Wendy]

Hi Everyone, I also enjoyed Servaas' workshop. I went as a complete beginner in Somatics, and as a beginner practitioner am liking the results just introductory knowledge can produce. People seem to innately understand what unrelenting muscle tension and the inability to feel and move an area properly can do to them. They certainly like the experience of their ROM improving with no pain. I had a teenager in for a job shadowing day, and she learned the whole cat stretch series in about ten minutes - amazing what a body can do when it hasn't experienced pain or injury of any kind.
Since I'm isolated from any other Somatics people, I hope this forum develops into a distance study group. I'm looking forward to hearing what other folks are doing. Thank you, Diane, for your explanation, it clarified things for me. As I took a few days off work after the course, I have only first visits to report - they were impressive, but next week's return visits will be more educational. I'll find out if I "met them where they were"!

[Diane]

Hi Wendy!
Good to see you here :) Hope you'll join in often!

I think you'll see your patients soaked this up amazingly well.

Most of the people I taught this to got it right away. There was just one I was a bit concerned about. She seemed to not get anything out of the session, a 'red light' person, we couldn't seem to get anything to work or 'open up'.. but she came back the next week and said she'd been practicing and teaching it to her friends. When I checked she was doing a lot better. So you never know.. if people get the concepts at least, then they can teach it to themselves more slowly at home without distraction perhaps, like she did..
Cheers,
Diane

[Green Hornet]

It is good to hear from you, Wendy.
It is nice to hear voices from Somatic practitioners. So, we can have more believers in Somatics.

I am a little behind testing my Somatic skills especially pandiculation, so please keep me updated on your success and experiences. Thanks.

[Servaas]

Hi Wendy,

Great hearing form you! Just keep reading as much as you can, in the manual you got, Hanna's Somatics-book, Hanna's 'The Body of Life' etc. Or read stuff from Feldenkrais, Alexander etc.

It is amazing how people change with the new information you give them. This morning, we ran into a Mexican lady who we had come out to our one day 'The Healthy Back Workshop' a few months ago. Never saw her again, never touched her, just taught her & the rest of the class gentle organic movement patterns. She was on Workers Comp for 2 years, pain, depressed etc. Now she told us she has been doing her movements every day, her pain is manageable, she has found herself a job and she wants to become a somatic practitioner!

That is just one example of what you will find. The changes in people go way beyond relieving their pain. The changes are that they start to live up to their potential, they learn to make a choice !

Keep up the good work!

Servaas Mes
www.somatichealthcenter.com

[Wendy]

Well, people are coming back after my first efforts at Somatics with diverse results. I managed to make most people with neck problems more sore for a day, so will have to concentrate more on the emotional barrier and less on remembering that all my partners at the workshop told me I needed to use more force! The 20 yr. old with two week old spinal and rib fractures (stable) after an MVA loved the parts of the cat stretch that she could do - was thrilled to be able to move with no pain. She did un-nerve me a little when she exclaimed over how good to felt to have her ribs cracking! One lady who started off with an incredibly stiff shoulder after a humerus fracture several months ago was finally getting fair ROM back with much mobilizing and stretching - after one session of pandiculation and a week of occasional exercise, she had full springy external rotation. I had to check that I was on the problem shoulder, it felt so normal.

I have two problems - one is that I book people every half hour and feel very rushed trying to pandiculate and teach an exercise. I think I may start out with one long booking a day, and pick a good candidate for it.

The other is that , in following my notes and the photographs, sometimes I am assisting the concentric contraction and sometimes I'm resisting it. Have I misunderstood something, or are there variations?

Servaas, I think we need another session soon! How's the office construction coming along?

[Green Hornet]

Wendy,
There are no recipes in Somatics. Meet where they are.
When you do that, the result will be phenomenal.
If I were you, I would keep practicing where they are.
And I would find that I could use a large amount of force for some people. When that happens, it would be Okay to use a lot of force (as long as I meet where they are).

[Sharon Haave]

:) Hi Wendy, good to hear that you are applying your new knowledge and learning. Great to meet you at the course.

Thomas Hanna included in his information to clients about Somatics that they may experience some transient soreness but that once the muscle lengthens and blood flow through it improves, the soreness will pass in a few days. I don't think it's unusual for people releasing long held contractions to feel some soreness initially. I certainly did. I find that happens with some clients. The soreness however tends to be more like a post exercise soreness than a pain.

I've been appreciating my improved skills in pandiculation and am getting more confident about creating my own techniques as needed. I used to do a lot more teaching of the Cat Stretch with less hands-on. I think now the results with more pandiculation are quicker and better in most cases. However, I also notice that when I was teaching the client to find their own way without as much help from my hands, they became independent more easily. I am having to make sure that with more hands-on, I'm still strongly promoting independence in clients.

Servaas, or anyone else, any ideas for a contracted scalene and elevated first rib that is hanging on (this is mine, giving me trouble for a couple months). I am persistent in my own Cat Stretch and I play around with all kinds of Somatic movements in my shoulder, neck, back. I can release upper traps nicely but not scalenes. I have a lax shoulder (ligamentous) from who knows what childhood injury (I was a bit of a dare-devil).

[Green Hornet]

Sharon, I put my thought togethere.

To work on (R) scalene, for example.

1) Supine with knees bent. Put left hand behind the neck and put fingers on upper cervical transverse processes (where the scalene attaches).
With this left hand you can self-pandiculate.
Side-bend (laterally bend) the neck from the upper cervical (not from the head) to max scalene activation as you pandiculate with your left hand.
Note any organic chain reaction in the rest of the body, especially in the trunk. As you note the action, consciously perform the motion with scalene activation.
I would breathe in with concentric action and as you slowly release it breathe out. Make sure to take the neck into the opposite direction in the eccentric elongation, but meet where you are.

2) Side-lie. Muscle of the waist from cat stretch series. You might want to get aware of the neck more than the waist.

Sharon, if you try this, please let me know how this works.

[Servaas]

Greetings!

There are many different ways for helping pandiculate the neck.

From the Somatic Movement Series, the 'Spanish Dancer' in different variations will help you lots.

A different handson Pandiculation is visible on:
http://www.somatichealthcenter.com/html/insurance.html

As long as you consider: Scaleni / rib are very involved in breathing. Inhale /exhale accordingly.

Most important: necks only have to work harder because there is still stiffness (SMA) around the center and the neck doesn't follow the flow of spinal movement.

Whatever you do, please involve the arch & curl into the pattern!

I hope that helps!

Servaas Mes
www.somatichealthcenter.com

[Sharon Haave]

Hi Greenhornet and Servaas;
Thanks for your ideas, I'll try them. I've certainly tried lots of variations with sidebending in sidelying. I'm also exploring what kind of emotional/mental burdens I'm carrying around on my shoulders (this is the kind of yoga I work with).

Servaas, what is the Spanish Dancer?

I'm heading off hiking for a week. Talk to you later.

[Green Hornet]

Somtic updates!

I just got home after somtically-educating the entire family of one of my friends. They had complaints of intermittent headache, chronic stiffness, chronic back pain, various movement dysfunctions, etc. All of them had lots of somatic amnesia.

Amazing wake-ups happened in their sensory awareness, postural presentations (standing very very tall), and longer neck (recovery from turtle-like neck), etc. Of course, none of them had pain after the session and all of them stood elegantly and put a smile on the face.

I had a good feeling and returned home.

Anybody else has any updates in your success?
Diane, how is your study-group session evolving?

[Diane]

Hi Takao,
Diane, how is your study-group session evolving?

We've met three times, we practice techniques from the Dreaver book, we lay on the floor and take turns leading a cat stretch. Last time, Jan read the entire luxurious sequence from Servaas' manual, which breaks it down into fine bits that reminded us to take it all slowly and feel all the nuances. It was so wonderful that we agreed that we would do the cat stretch in group session that way from now on, taking turns reading the sequencing. There seems to be a core of 4 of us who are committed to attend every single time. We are still programming our brains. We are all using somatics in our work with patients. I am still enjoying the sensation of having a longer vertical axis, much greater homoncular representation of my torso, vastly more mobile ribcage, and greatly diminished esophageal reflux symptoms.

[Sharon Haave]

Hi Takao and Diane;

My scalenes seemed to settle right down with a 40 pound pack for 6 days. The Nootka trail was fabulously beautiful, topped off with Luna the famous orca whale riding beside the boat for 30 minutes on the way back.

The last day of the hike, the areas most affected in my car accident of almost 2 years ago starting to be annoying. By the time I got home and had a sleep, I woke with an extremely stiff and sore neck/Tspine. I couldn't do the cat stretch, way too sore. I did what I could, got my partner Arlene to pandiculate with instruction and later in the week, Jan (from the course) also helped me with some pandiculation. The whole episode settled down in less than a week (good old Mckenzie exercises also helped a lot) which was just in time for me to have a lyphoma removed from my neck (had been there about 15 years). So my neck had some more trauma. All in all, I'm once more impressed and pleased with how quickly things can settle down with Somatics.

In my last week with clients, I played around with pandiculating scalenes and seemed to get the best results in supine. I never did have much success trying to pandiculate myself for scalenes. I think Servaas is right, it's my Tspine that's the root of the problem. Maybe kayaking will help!

I'm not working for the summer, I'll just be playing. The first is almost a month in the Queen Charlotte Islands including 2 weeks of sea kayaking. We leave on the 10th. Then more yoga gatherings and training, some hiking, then I'll be back to work (Sept. 7th). Talk to you in the fall. Hope all is well. Have a terrific summer everyone.

[Wendy]

I was wondering how your study group was going, Diane. I'd sure like to hear regular updates on what you're doing, it could be a sort of guide to my self study. I have Dreaver's book and have been practising on my kids. Two of them have had fairly significant injuries with horses and and are excellent subjects!
My best success at work the last couple of weeks has been with patello-femoral problems, they did well with pandiculation of hams and quads. If it hurt a bit to do it, I taped them McConnell-wise first.
With my own cat stretch, I've discovered how limited and weak my scap. movement is. It's improving, but I've got a lot farther to go than I thought. Nice to have a better idea how to get there.

[Diane]

Hi Wendy,
One thing we keep exclaiming to each other at the study sessions is how familiar all of it feels really, like basic PT school. I think the only difference is that way back when (when I trained) we never learned eccentric loading. That's the only difference! It is a great refresher. So far from the book we've covered the lats in sidelying, pecs (major and minor), psoas, and low back muscles. We attempted to figure out serr.ant. ourselves. Our favorite part is the time we spend on the floor ourselves, being "guided" by one of us.

Sharon, those must be quite the scalenes you have if they like packs! Have a great summer.

I think my job in all of this is to translate it all, at least in my own head, into which nerves are being affected (glided) how. This will all get clearer (I hope) when I go for that dissection week in August. (Then I'll be on here writing about What I Did on my Summer Holidays, along with Sharon..who will no doubt have fresher air to breath/enjoy.)
Diane