Teaching

[Diane]

I'm awfully tired, pleasantly exhausted actually, after experiencing my very first teaching encounter, yesterday. The whole subjective resistance/inertia I've always felt about assuming the role of "teacher", of all the bits and pieces of personal history, self-esteem/vulnerability issues, simple laziness, conflicting feelings about the profession itself and my personal role in it, deep philosophical questions regarding the point of being here in human form at all, had all ended up jumbled together in a vague inner shadow aspect that I came to recognize and term "the daunt factor." Once I had a name for it, the clear task I faced was to overcome it and free my inner "teacher." Funny how we set ourselves up for deepening into life...

I took a first baby step, by selecting some interested and friendly people to teach, offering to teach them for free the first time, just so that I could practice getting past just the first inner obstacle (the first of many, all seeming insurmountable); that of actually organizing my own thoughts/gleanings on treatment and speaking them in real time while on my feet with people looking at me. Note that these tasks/challenges are motor-cognitive in nature.

It's the first time I had ever put myself in the category of "instructor", standing up in the front with a bunch of markers in my hand, making drawings and explaining things in real time to others who occupied (my previous and much preferred) category of "student." I feel like I've just experienced a trip, not just into, but clear to the other side of The Void. I feel discombobulated inwardly; in retrospect my mirror neurons took quite a beating when I reversed the familiar role play, but otherwise I seem to be fine. I didn't uncover any wellspring of inexhaustible energy, any sudden appetite for external glory and fame, any passion for being in the spotlight, or even any previously undiscovered proclivity or ease with being extroverted. Alas. Attributes such as these may well have more easily flattened both inward and outward obstacles.

I have still such a long way to go. None of this comes easy or naturally to an introvert like me, content for so long to sit, learn from others, ruminate, think and treat. I'm taking the pleasant exhaustion as an inward clue that the experience was growthful in some important way, to me as a person if nothing else; exactly how, I've yet to understand, conceptualize, or be able to explain to myself.

The students were Eric and Cory, thoroughly attentive, never seeming bored and never fidgeting much to my everlasting gratitude. We went straight from 8 AM to 6 PM with just one short break for lunch. I showed them all my best basic moves and they practiced on each other.

These two were simultaneously supportive, objective, and clear in their feedback about the instruction and material, and Eric even volunteered to be an assistant if I decide to teach again to a large class, so I'm not sure why today I feel like I'm in some sort of subjective dark burlap sack regarding the quality of the job I did or necessity of the role I took a stab at or the value of the material itself in the long run or the overall need of the profession to maintain any connection to its humble hands-on origins. Maybe it will all become clearer to me in days to come. Maybe all 'teachers' feel like this at times. Maybe the only meaning or value of any of this material is what I decide to assign/what the learners of it will assign.

Thank you to you both.

Now I think I need a nap.

[EricM]

You have earned your nap Diane. We actually went until 7pm, so give yourself credit for another hour. Can't thank you enough for an enlightening and enjoyable day. More to come...

eric

[Barrett Dorko]

Diane,

An interesting and timely bit of activity and writing. I don’t think Jon will mind my saying that we’ve been privately discussing the lack of influence we’ve demonstrated the past several years despite our massive amount of writing on Rehab Edge, NOI and now here. I think I’m the only one regularly teaching and we all know how much that’s accomplished. Somehow we need more numbers if we’re ever going to reach whatever critical mass it takes to tip the therapy community toward the ectoderm.

Speaking of that, I was thinking of how this meso versus ecto thing might be an avenue we could exploit to greater effect. It has a lot going for it, not the least of which is its vague familiarity and inherent mystery. I feel that we can make a case for this very important but rarely considered division in the body. How big a difference would it make if we got people to think along these lines? I’m wondering how you organized this during the day.

Maybe a series of jokes might pump up the meme. Something like: How many mesodermalists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Answer: It doesn’t matter. They’ll never see the light.

Did I say it had to be a funny joke?

Eric and Cory are a lucky couple of guys, by the way.

[Diane]

Feeling a bit more like myself after a 3-hour nap.
How many mesodermalists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Answer: It doesn’t matter. They’ll never see the light.

Did I say it had to be a funny joke? Barrett, that actually IS funny. :D

The whole day consisted of treating ectoderm, or any bits of mesoderm that happened to be attached to it from below.. distinguishing carefully between the two, discussing their origins, striving to refrain from using any mesodermal terms, backtracking if and when I did.. determined to stay out of those meme woods. It was hard to talk about ectoderm only without talking about life itself, cellular life and oxygen useage, which took me to Into the Cool. In the end, I did my best to elevate the good old-fashioned idea of helping people feel better in a body by becoming good human primate social groomers.

Thank you for your reflections on teaching and thought re: ecto/meso. I agree we must exploit every avenue we possibly can to tip the memes of the profession toward ectoderm. It's the humane thing to do.

Eric, 7PM? Yikes. My brain really did get stretched a little.

[nari]

Diane

Well done.
All I can say is: just wait around, practise a bit, and the sack will open up. The adrenalin rush after a session of lecturing/sharing will come; and then you don't feel like a nap - boing boing, it is a real buzz. In the past, if no-one fell off the chair, or lost eyecontact, or yawned every two minutes. and more than three asked questions...I reckoned it was vaguely successful.
Teaching can be really illuminating; what one learns from the audience/class is amazing.

Nari

[Diane]

what one learns from the audience/class is amazing. I agree Nari.
Cory reflected that many of the moves appeared to be designed to exaggerate/enhance the sensory differential to the brain between what was incoming from receptors in mesoderm and what was incoming from receptors in ectoderm. I had never quite thought about it in that way, but he was spot on.

[Barrett Dorko]

I'd love to see a simple list of mesodermal structures, perhaps with the characteristics of their response to irritation, beside a list for the ectodermals.

If we can eventually agree upon what this should look like I'll start handing it out along with a plug for Soma Simple.

[Diane]

Shouldn't be hard, given that mesoderm is just a bunch of stuff that ectoderm gives rise to in order to conduct its affairs with optimal efficiency, i.e. give it leverage without using up as much energy/oxygen. Evolution pretty much weeded everything else out.

Until we (humans) came along, that is.. what do we need all that cortex for, anyway? We already were bipedal hominids long before that huge oxygen sucking brain grew, i.e., we don't really need it for movement/motor efficacy.

A clue is to be found in Up From Dragons... the authors propose that increased brains in primates allowed/produced stronger social bonding. Looks like the tipping point on this was reached 100,000 years ago. We've been a runaway species for the last 10,000 or thereabouts, starting with invention of agriculture.

Let's make the list.
Ectoderm derivatives:

germ cells (immortality)


brain/spinal cord/motor nerves (CNS)


all the sensory and cutaneous nerves threading throughout mesoderm to get to the "surface"/terminate thickly in skin (PNS from neural crest; we could name more structures that neural crest makes, from the adrenal glands (driving sympathetics) to Schwann cells and glia, but we would start to shade over into mesoderm again, all the way to teeth.)

epidermis itself.


Things mesoderm makes:
bone, blood, muscle, connective tissue, adipose tissue. Red blood cells don't even have nuclei. They are just little oxygen tanks pushed everywhere by the nervous system.

These are "machines" and levers and rigging and oxygen tanks and storage depots for the nervous system, that's all.. They are comprised of integrated living cells, but are not expensive to run energy wise. They can be catabolized for fuel if need be. One could view them as the nervous system's livestock, making work more efficiently done. They can communicate a bit, cell to cell, but they cannot signal very far. Their cell communication is nothing like that of the nervous system's in terms of speed or efficiency or integration.

[Jon Newman]

There are multiple meanings of the word irritation. Those that incorporate a felt sense necessarily involve the nervous system and there would be no such thing as irritation of the mesoderm. However, one definition (from dictionary.com) states: "The evocation of a reaction in the body tissues by the application of a stimulus."

Taking that as a basis, "mesoderm" will hypertrophy, atrophy, demonstrate necrosis or genesis.

Ectoderm will do the same as above. However, that part of the "ectoderm" that constitutes the nervous system can also depolarize leading to felt senses.

That's my contribution for now, please correct anything that may be wrong.

[BB]

Diane,
Thanks so much for the course! I learned a ton. Had lots to integrate for the drive home. I made it back across the border (I forgot my citizenship ID) with no trouble. I'm afraid the US took me back.

Cory

[Jon Newman]

If it is essentially true that mesodermally derived tissue does not depolarize, I wonder if the exception to the rule is the sarcolemma/t-tubules. Would that be accurate?

Of course the effects of that depolarization would be connected to our brain through an intervening, ectodermally derived tissue. I'm trying to improve on the completeness of the project at hand--feedback is appreciated.



Ps. Diane, I note that your satisfaction surveys are at 100%. Not too shabby.

[EricM]

Just wondering, are Sarcolemma/T-tubules derived from mesoderm or ectoderm? Diane do you know?
Googling around trying to answer this question, I found an interesting collection of powerpoint presentations (http://wberesford.hsc.wvu.edu/). They are full of great pictures. Many thanks to Prof WILLIAM A BERESFORD . Anatomy Department, West Virginia University, for making his work available like this.

eric

[Diane]

Dang, my computer can't open the slideshows.
Eric, I'm pretty confident that sarcolemma is mesodermal in origin. It's muscle isn't it?
Ectoderm gives rise to mesenchyme which begets mesoderm which begets all the little labor-saving devices that allow bodies to be large and have leverage.

[bernard]

Diane try this but if the presentations are made for windows only, iy won't work on a Mac.
powerpoint viewer for mac (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e25cb1e5-209c-4a58-b283-23e84b616477&DisplayLang=en)

[Diane]

Thanks for trying Bernard.. my computer downloaded the viewer fine, but the file still won't open. Some compatibility issues I guess..

[Jon Newman]

I forgot to add synthesis as a process to the list (of both meso and ectoderm). I imagine that in response to an appropriate stimulus a variety of chemicals (expressed in a variety of ways) will be produced which may or may not precede the previously cited events.

[Diane]

Can you say more about that Jon? Do you mean biochemical synthesis? At synapses? Receptor sites?

[Jon Newman]

Hi Diane,

Yes I was speaking of the processes usually studied under the heading of Cell Biology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_biology). David Butler speaks a bit about this as it pertains to ion gates being replenished. But I was also thinking of Secretion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretion)

[Diane]

I want to comment on a remarkable mind-bending representational map re-drawing change that has been wrought in my own sensory cortex by some small amount of neuromodulation I personally benefited from while teaching a week ago. A whole week ago. And it took this long for all the changing to transpire. More about that in a minute.

The whole event took less than five minutes probably.. I was demonstrating the little manoeuver I designed to neuromodulate/unentrap the axillary nerve, and offered my own up for someone to practice on.

I've had an entrapment of this small branch off the radial nerve since a car crash in 1989. I was holding a can of coke I had just bought, from the gas station where I had just filled up, in my right hand as I came up to highway speed again; suddenly I see a one-ton farm truck tootle out from a side road on the left, onto the highway in front of my car (Toyota Tercel for pete's sake.. not a chance I'd survive a collision with a truck) without stopping at the stop sign first. No way was I going to miss him. I tried steering the car left so I would be swerving behind him. No deal, not enough time; moving right along to plan B, I jerked the wheel to the right so that when I hit him, it would be all along the left side of the car and not head-on.. then Bam. I had done all that steering and deciding how to manage my own impact with the truck, with my left hand on the wheel, forgetting entirely that I had a can of coke in the right... yet, some part of my motor outflow apparently tried to keep the can from spilling even as the collision ensued, some fussy housekeeper part no doubt. Needless to say, it flew out of my hand anyway, and all over the car.

Cut to the fact I had minor injuries but lived on, dealt with symptoms as they arose, recovered full painless range of the neck eventually, but never got back full shoulder range and always had a sharp twingy tender spot in the posterior fold of the axilla. Once I became more cluey about neural entrapments, like, a whole decade later.. I started to piece together what was wrong with my own arm, and bit by bit have got treatment for it here and there, getting most of the range back. It was never non-functional, and has always been my dominant arm, but it certainly has had its share of pain and angst and has had several experiences of being kinesiotaped into pain submission this way and that..

But last weekend (I don't remember which 'student" performed the manoeuver) the tenderness was finally vanquished, extinguished, nixed, zapped, killed, made non-existant. It felt good at the time, getting rid of that last cranky spot. But you know, I never fully realized what sorts of luxury there is in really, really reducing/eliminating 'nocioceptive drivers'.. In fact I didn't notice until today, a week later, that finally my whole arm feels like I can move fully back into it now; my virtual arm and my physical arm seamlessly overlap once again, and I can be in it all the way to every square inch of my skin. Heaven on earth. Heaven in earth. I guess it either took me a week to notice, or else it took a whole week for the map to change, or for every last one of those ****ing AIGS to disappear... :p (How can you tell I HATE pain?)

I am again reminded that people, just ordinary people with pain that isn't 'pathological' but has nonetheless been persistent as ****, over decades even, can feel much better in a body with these simple ideas/ways of handling. So thank you, whichever one of you it was.. :thumbs_up

[Jon Newman]

Hey great news Diane.

Click play to Celebrate (http://hype.non-standard.net/track/108536)

[nari]

Good to hear, Diane.

It reminds me of the neuromodulation you did on my restricted (R) hip "joint" which had persisted since a heavy trek in 2004, with about 40% loss of ER.
I knew it wasn't OA - though others insisted it would be, for Pete's sake - and although I had done some useful work on it, you finished it off with the obturator nerve communication. It has been 'normal' ever since. The great benefit of that is the return to the ability to sit cross-legged with knees a couple of centimetres off the floor, which I've always had.

Why do others resist this easy remedy so stubbornly? :confused:

Nari

[Diane]

Why is there resistance? I think because it's regarded as way over into the art rather than the science of treatment.

First of all, how can you measure it? If you can't measure it, how can you test it? If you can't test it, how can it be subjected to all the testing and trials and all the craploa required to have it gain "credibility" as a system of treatment.. The way it is now, it will never register on the radar of the profession.

Treatment of the ectoderm has become eclipsed completely by concepts about mesoderm, such as your own "hip" area issue.. when there is a considerable loss of visible (to an outside observer) ROM, and a considerable loss of function/manoeuverability/ROM perceptible to the person inside the ectoderm in question.. everybody is apt to jump to "joint" (mesodermal, conceptual hallucination) conclusions, have a focal length too deep for the actual issue being the nocioceptive driver to be addressed.

Hanging around outside the body, talking to the brain through the skin, can result in remarkable increases in function, ability to fully inhabit one's own body, sense of ease and strength, and decreased pain. But it will never be satisfactory to the profession's status wranglers.

Jon, I've been celebrating all day. (Not just about this.. it's Canada Day today.:))

[nari]

Surely it can be tested, in a way, by measuring ROM and strength before the procedure, and afterwards. Pain can be much harder to 'measure' in a specific area. But I guess finding suitable controls and eliminating variables is tricky.

It would be regarded as an art, just as massage and its variations seems to be. By the same token, mobilisation of a facet joint could be considered an art, as most do not know why increasing joint ROM results in acceptable improvement in pain and function, apart from clinging to the notion that stiffness = pain. So that argument could be considered hypocritical...;)

I haven't heard from Ginger...maybe he is busy with his study.

Nari

[Diane]

It could tested that way, in a recorded way, not just recorded in treatment notes.. but ectoderm gets less press because it's harder to build momentum
1. to learn about
2. to develop a feel for
3. to create systems for handling it based on real science that are transferable to others

.. in sufficient volume to counteract the anecdotal only status that ectodermal treatment results .. um, enjoy at present.

Add to that all the mystical conceptual hallucinations that persist around it. Those have to be stripped away first, because they contribute to persistent obfuscation and repel real research. To me, this site is like heavy paint stripper in that regard, a bit fumey perhaps, from time to time, but a necessary step. Occam's paint remover.

[Diane]

Things mesoderm makes:
bone, blood, muscle, connective tissue, adipose tissue. Red blood cells don't even have nuclei. They are just little oxygen tanks pushed everywhere by the nervous system.

These are "machines" and levers and rigging and oxygen tanks and storage depots for the nervous system, that's all.. They are comprised of integrated living cells, but are not expensive to run energy wise. They can be catabolized for fuel if need be. One could view them as the nervous system's livestock, making work more efficiently done. They can communicate a bit, cell to cell, but they cannot signal very far. Their cell communication is nothing like that of the nervous system's in terms of speed or efficiency or integration.

I want to backtrack just ever so slightly and bring up the topic of the immune system. The immune system is also mesoderm (from bone marrow like all the other blood cells). Of any mesodermal system that exists in the body perhaps this one has the most autonomy, with cells that are not bound to each other, but can crawl about, and ability to "learn", from exposure and experience. Of any mesodermal system, this one is one that the nervous system will interact with rather than just give orders to. True cooperation is necessary here. Usually the immune system will act within appropriate boundaries, protecting the organism from invasion by microorganisms and the nervous system will protect the organism from larger threat. When their relationship is a bit off, allergies and rashes ensue. When it is really off, the immune system can really hurt the nervous system, and all sorts of other systems too, mostly mesodermal like connective tissue and joints, and all the nerves that are embedded within them. The immune system can be directly invaded as in HIV/AIDS and killed bit by bit. It can become genetically haywire and give rise to all sorts of different blood cancers. If it is normal, and able to develop properly, it starts to learn from mothers' milk/antibodies, then by going to "school" in the thymus. Various stimulants in the environment will "teach" it to adapt/conquer. Exposure of a baby to allergens and benign foreign proteins help its immune system "learn", as long as the input isn't overwhelming. Immunizations/vaccinations are cultural introduction of "lessons" to assist training and arm a young immune system in advance of a lethal attack by various pathogens. In this way, medical culture/public health measures work with "nature", at least that part of nature that is the human ecosystem.

[EricM]

Just want to give a quick update on my development as a social groomer/dianesian/integumentalist. I have just finished the second day in my new job at a private clinic and have found myself applying all that Diane taught me to 95% of the patients I've seen with tremendous results. Today was probably the most rewarding day I've had yet as a therapist. This work leads so naturally to some SC and ideomotor movement its as if the two were twins sepearted at birth just waiting to find one another. Thank-you Diane!!

It was Jimmy Cliff or Johnny Nash who may have said it best:

I can see clearly now the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright (Bright) bright (Bright) sunshinin' day
It's gonna be a bright (Bright) bright (Bright) sunshinin' day

Oh yes, I can make it now the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I've been praying for
It's gonna be a bright (Bright) bright (Bright) sunshinin' day

Ooh...look all around, there's nothing but blue skies
Look straight ahead, there's nothing but blue skies
I can see clearly now the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Here's the rainbow I've been praying for
It's gonna be a bright (Bright) bright (Bright) sunshinin' day
It's gonna be a bright (Bright) bright (Bright) sunshinin' day
Real, real, real, real bright (Bright) bright (Bright) sunshinin' day
Yeah, hey, it's gonna be a bright (Bright) bright (Bright) sunshinin' day


eric

[Diane]

Holy Moley Eric, are you a quick study or what! It gives me reason to go on to teach another day. Way to go Eric, all launched out into the world where you can actually get your hands on people and help them that way. It is easy to find parts that want to move, isn't it?

Love your song. There's another song I often think of when I treat, sung by Hank Snow (long dead), called, "I don't hurt anymore (http://www.mp3.com/tracks/743088/dl_streams.html)"

I thought up new lyrics, as follows:

It don't hurt anymore
All my back pain is gone
No more walking the floor
With that ice pack strapped on

Just to think it could be
That it hurt so before
Now at last I am free
It don't hurt anymore

No use to deny I thought I would die
I thought my good days were through
But now that I find I have peace of mind
I can't believe that's it's true

I've forgotten somehow
That it hurt so before
And it's wonderful now
It don't hurt anymore.

All the best!:teeth: :thumbs_up

[nari]

Diane, I figured you were too young to have grown up with Hank Snow - I used to play that very song on my ukulele in 1955......;)

You should hold regular teaching sessions; but I think I mentioned that yonks ago..? :)

Nari

[Diane]

Maybe I'm older than you think. Hank Snow was Canadian eh?

Can't wait to hear more chapters in how your new life as a handson therapist goes along Eric.

[EricM]

In a PM Diane asked:
I'm dying to know, what sorts of things did you treat that you got
good results with? What "ortho" classification would you have put
them into in the pre-"integumentals" days.. ?
And most importantly, do you feel good working this way?

Lucky for me, I'm taking over someone elses caseload. I imagine the patients I see are no different from any patient in any other clinic at any time. Torn supraspinatus tendons, biceps tendinitis, OA, plantar fasciitis, cervical discs, mechanical LBP. The usual culprits. Many of them having received prolonged treatment in the 'ortho' style with no progress. One lady was so pleased she declared it was fate that I took over her care when I did. That made me feel good.
Since I'm in a very different environment from my previous life as a therapist, yes I feel good working this way. My reasoning makes sense to me, I don't have to perform elaborate assessments to understand the nature of the problem, it is easy to explain to patients, the results are instantaneous. How could you go wrong?

eric

ps. that cranky foot you treated finally cleared up, 5 days later. I guess my ion channel recycling depot took a long weekend.

[Diane]

Oh, the foot that had the "bone out"? That foot? Did it clear up with only the skin work or did the cuboid need to be "whipped"? :D
Seriously though, congratulations on learning to move ectoderm and help the brain dump off unneeded pain.

[Diane]

One other thing I'd be interested in finding out Eric, is what was the average length of session you had with your patients?

[EricM]

New patients 40 min. Thereafter 20 min. It will be challenging.

eric

[Diane]

OK. That's not too bad. There will be enough time to get something real done with just enough time pressure to keep your mind from wandering.