Tweet
It's not hard to make the truth sound interesting to patients Pia. I tell patients I'm going to stretch their skin, and just their skin. (That much is true.)
I tell them about their brain, that it never stops working to keep them alive. That that is how they can breath even while they are asleep. That their brain will be very interested in the skin stretch because it is so aware of and reliant on skin to tell it about the environment. That the brain will investigate, because it can't help itself. That it will soon see that there are things that need doing right underneath where the skin is being stretched and that it will get in there to make things right, that it's a process, that the brain is doing all the work while I just hold a flashlight for it.
I also combine skin stretch with all kinds of positional leverage of limbs or body segments, done to diagonally budge the cutaneous nerves/neural tunnels as I visualize them a bit this way or that, roll them a little, bow them, bend them etc. .. This movement is made infinitely easier because of two anatomical realities: The skin is attached to the body, and so is the diaphragm. The nerves are strung everywhere in between. I can take the skin/limb one way and they can deep breathe and stretch their innermost layer the other way, and the neural tunnel's shape can be changed, and the nerve inside it refreshed. I've already told the patient, shown them a picture, of how the nerves travel everywhere; I let them know that it's the nerves that hurt them, the nerves we have to slide a bit to help reoxygenate, that motion is lotion, that once they feel their movement again they'll need to keep it, and we seguey into movement therapy after, often these days, ideomotor. Not so hard
If you ever get a chance to go to hear Lorimer Moseley talk about his research, go.
No mysticism, just science, but really really practical, applied science, the sort we can all use and feel like we're coming out of the dark ages with our hands-on work and its fast pain relief, not going further into them.
I tell them about their brain, that it never stops working to keep them alive. That that is how they can breath even while they are asleep. That their brain will be very interested in the skin stretch because it is so aware of and reliant on skin to tell it about the environment. That the brain will investigate, because it can't help itself. That it will soon see that there are things that need doing right underneath where the skin is being stretched and that it will get in there to make things right, that it's a process, that the brain is doing all the work while I just hold a flashlight for it.
I also combine skin stretch with all kinds of positional leverage of limbs or body segments, done to diagonally budge the cutaneous nerves/neural tunnels as I visualize them a bit this way or that, roll them a little, bow them, bend them etc. .. This movement is made infinitely easier because of two anatomical realities: The skin is attached to the body, and so is the diaphragm. The nerves are strung everywhere in between. I can take the skin/limb one way and they can deep breathe and stretch their innermost layer the other way, and the neural tunnel's shape can be changed, and the nerve inside it refreshed. I've already told the patient, shown them a picture, of how the nerves travel everywhere; I let them know that it's the nerves that hurt them, the nerves we have to slide a bit to help reoxygenate, that motion is lotion, that once they feel their movement again they'll need to keep it, and we seguey into movement therapy after, often these days, ideomotor. Not so hard
If you ever get a chance to go to hear Lorimer Moseley talk about his research, go.
No mysticism, just science, but really really practical, applied science, the sort we can all use and feel like we're coming out of the dark ages with our hands-on work and its fast pain relief, not going further into them.
Comment