Deconstruction of the Runaway "MFR" Thread

[Pia]

Posted by Walt 1-3-06 on the MFR thread:
Diane,
In response to your questions about the neural componant of this work, think of a nerve (or muscle, blood vessel, organ, etc.) as a garden hose. If you step on the hose the water is slowed or shut down. MFR takes the pressure off of the hose to allow everything to return to its normal flow.

I do not recall ever saying that MFR does not have an effect on the neural system but I think Walt said it best in the post above. You are right that what goes on in your head is probably different than what goes on in mine - I will not refute that.
Pia

[Jon Newman]

I'm always up for a good analogy. How is a garden hose like a muscle, nerve, organ, etc? Water is analagous to what in these cases? MFR takes the pressure off these structures in what way?

[Barrett Dorko]

I appreciate your effort Jon but I doubt you're going to get anywhere with this question. Most people think that one analogy is as good as another, and even better if it refers to something with which they are familiar and thus will require very little additional thought on their part. Whoever came up with the well-known analogy of the atom and its associated electrons "like a tiny solar system" pretty much eliminated the possibility that the general public would ever really understand what was actually going on (the analogy having no real relation to the thing itself) but it lent itself to an image that was easily remembered and thus grew into a monstrous meme.

"Pressure from the fascia like a foot on the garden hose" is much the same. Totally bogus but easily explained, and it's not going to go away.

[Jon Newman]

Hi Barrett,

I presume the effort you were speaking of pertained to my attempt at equipoise. I guess I knew it wasn't required in this case and I could feel it when I typed the word "good" before analogy. It was forced. I've got to learn to stop trying squeeze blood from a turnip; especially when the hose is kinked.

[Diane]

There is much more to the nervous system than a kinked hose. Only the nervous system can unload its own kinked hose, with or without a manual catalyst such as ourselves. As David Butler says, we treat physiology, we treat processes, not anatomy.

[Pia]

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

Only the nervous system can unload its own kinked hose, with or without a manual catalyst such as ourselves. As David Butler says, we treat physiology, we treat processes, not anatomy.

Then Diane, what is it that you do in the description above if not treat the kinked hose (the anatomy (the hose) AND the physiology (the kink)) .

Jon:

How is a garden hose like a muscle, nerve, organ, etc? Water is analagous to what in these cases?

I think Diane's description above is the answer to that question ( ie the nural tunnel (the hose) and the nerve (the water)......'the nural tunnels shape can be changed' (stretch the hose) and 'the nerve inside refreshed' (and the water flows).

Why don't YOU admit, Diane that we are all doing the same albeit different (but not so different) analogies in our different brains..
Pia

[Diane]

Pia, you can only rule out that which you've already considered.

[Jon Newman]

Pia,

Analogies aside, I think many on this board have already acknowledged similarities. The differences however are important for many reasons. This point is made over and over and over. It seems to be your personal kink. I feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football and you keep pulling it away.

Don't ask why I'm currently obsessed with Charlie Brown.

[nari]

jon

Why not be obsessed with Charlie Brown? It's a cosmos of human failings brought to life.


Pia,

Water? Do you mean axoplasm or something else? It is an unusual analogy and not very applicable to what happens inside (or on the surface of)the body; it sounds more like a mechanic with his head under the bonnet.


Nari

[bernard]

If you step on the hose the water is slowed or shut down.

Thanks walt for this perfect explanation. The remaining problem with Barnesians is a constant inability to clearly define "the you".

[Luke Rickards]

Not only is the "you" factor a problem, but it is also very well documented that both nerve roots and peripheral nerves have been found compressed up to 90%(I think..I'll check) in totally asymptomatic people.

[Bas Asselbergs]

..."analogies in our different brains..Pia"

Well, I beg to differ - again. Our brains aren't very different - what we do with them IS.

And "doing the same" is a strong example that you have trouble understanding that there is NO dispute over what the hands do here......It is wit the THEORY of the technique...
Sorry I am shouting. When do you get it through that similarities in TECHNIQUE have NOTHING to do with what science tells us with what happens UNDER the hands...

Jeez.....

[Diane]

Bas, don't have a cow man.. she's off, lost in her own dream of webs of fascia ruling the intracommunication of the body. Nerves? Mere garden hoses to unkink so water can flow, and wet the garden of fascial flowering of paradigm shifting awareness of how science has blocked real understanding of "how it all works" all this time, how we are all hiding behind it.. refusing to see the light.

[Bas Asselbergs]

I am calm again, Diane - thanks for that. I forgot myself and my place in the universe - even forgot to put my shades on....Thinking and reading and....
It was not scary at all, actually; being able to see past my nose - far past my nose.... (and my nose is, welll....a NOSE)
:-)

[Barrett Dorko]

Bas,

In the first essay I ever wrote for "PT Forum" (reprinted in Shallow Dive )I wrote this:

"In an old episode of "Saturday Night Live" Steve Martin plays a medevil barber. Jane Curtin brings to him her obviously ill daughter (Loraine Newman) for treatment. Martin looks at her and says, "Don't worry good woman, we used to think that something like this was caused by a witch's curse or the ingestion of some devilish vapors (he stifles a laugh). But now we know that it is actually due to a small toad or dwarf lying on her stomach.

Thus we witness the progress of science."

I get the impression that trying to get the MFR people to think critically and rationally would be pretty much like getting the Steve Martin character off his story about the toad. They laugh at other's ideas and arrogantly stay precisely where they have landed, never really considering anything else.

I myself have given up.