Five Questions

[EricM]

Jon, I know what you mean, however, no, not this time. I was fairly ho hum about the whole thing. I wonder though, if had been trying to be competitive whether that may have ramped up my attention to such things? Or perhaps I was so perfectly focussed I was blocking out any danger messages until afterwards where I could pay more attention to them. Maybe a bit of both?

eric

[EricM]

Back to the 'bone out of place' idea. Are we biased to interpret sensations this way because of our culture, or is there some evolutionary advantage to think this way? Or better yet, have we not yet evolved enough to replace this thought with an alternative? I'm thinking here as a human, not an educated therapist.

eric

[Jon Newman]

Hi Eric,

I can transport you (in a manner of speaking) back to 1872. Maybe someone else can take you further back yet. I thought the opening paragraph of this article was prophetic.

Bone Setting

I think a dead theory and approach it gives rise to is kept walking by the culture we create. It is interesting to see how many of the details live on today (e.g. manipulate it twice). How these theories come about in the first place might be better addressed in the abduction thread.

[EricM]

Fascinating window into the past Jon, thanks.

[BB]

Jon and Eric,

I recently read a book titled "Blue Lattitudes."

It was about a man who travelled in the footsteps of Captain Cook.

In it he mentioned that, on Cook's stops to Tahiti, the Tahitians (I think it was the Tahitians) were manipulating eachother to relieve back pain.

I don't have the book in front of me, but I think that was late 1700's

I'd love to hear what you think on how this treatment has come about. I'll tune in to the abduction thread!

Cory

[nari]

Hippocrates made a reference to spinal manipulation as a remedy for back pain.....

Cory,

Re the Tahitians and manips - the art of walking on people's backs to fix spinal pain has been around for millennia, popularised by the Japanese and others. Micronesians twang each others' necks for headaches...don't know about the Polynesians.

Speaking of walking up and down backs - an Australian PT who lives in Sydney flies over to London to treat the Royal family by request from the palace every so often - walking on backs is part of the treatment, and has been for years. This is not anecdotal; it has been published in newspapers off and on, validated with reports from Buck Palace. She is heavily into the mesoderm, and also uses yoga and sustained stretches.

So there we are - bonecracking/setting is an ancient thing...

Nari

[Diane]

Interesting how crosscultural it all is and how the perceptual fantasy part of it is perpetuated through the 'basic common sense' mechanism. By that I mean, any ordinary person feeling their own body can palpate their own bones, or in palpating someone else's can can feel others' bones, but their palpatory sense doesn't extend beyond that; the "bonesetters" haven't learned other systems co-existing in there or how to noodle the whole system gently to encourage better behavior out of it (i.e. how to wrangle ectoderm instead of attacking/shoving the mesoderm).

Eric, for you the next step is, find someone who will get your 'fibula' balanced up on their fingertips (you in supine). Such an individual sits quietly with your fibula perched up on their fingertips for several minutes while you breath abdominally. Eventually the leg/fibular neural tunnel will 'relax'/lengthen although it will take a long time.
It might work with a Toblerone chocolate bar box.. and you could eat the bar after.. but fingers are more neuromodulatory.

[Barrett Dorko]

Is it fair to say that mesoderm demands that we coerce it? It has no "mind" of its own after all.

If so, it follows that the ectoderm demands that we communicate with it.

[Diane]

If mesoderm has no mind (and I agree) then it can't "demand" anything.. the only thing that "demands" that we coerce anything is some persistent delusion we carry around in our head about other peoples' mesoderm and/or that that is what we are "supposed" to do.

[Barrett Dorko]

Diane,

I certainly can't argue with that.

It appears that learning the mesoderm as we are forced to do in school turns therapists into something they simply shouldn't be. They come forth as coercers and cheerleaders, their mirror neurons overwhelmed by what they've seen in their teachers. It occurs to me that this is very much a "western" way of seeing the world. The gunslinging mesomorphic sort come to town to "straughten things out." Now there's a metaphor that fits perfectly with the Eastwood "Do you feel lucky today?" line I've been rehearsing.

There are certainly times when addressing the mesoderm is essential for recovery, but as I've said for years, these do not include painful situations that lack relevant pathology. When that happens care, not training or coercion is essential - and care begins with communication of some sort.

Great, great discussion.

[Diane]

I like that cowboy image- that's exactly the one I have of people who do that sort of..um, ..."therapy".

Let's face it people; we are human primate social groomers, we do it because we like it. It's evolved (in all primate troops) as a fairly low status activity, i.e., the lesser groom the greater and more overall peace results in the troop.

How do some people cope with the fact that they are part of a low staus activity? They call themselves something more high staus, like 'doctor', and they dominate someone elses' tissues. Not so much to make the patient feel better, more I think to make themselves feel more powerful.

Absolutely the trick is to communicate, kinesthetically, with the hindbrain parts of someone. The hindbrain parts will never lie about results.

[nari]

I certainly agree with the cowboy/gunslinger approach to clinical treatment. Many clinics appear to run just like that; according to what I have seen, read and heard. As I have said before, it is all about control; many of us cannot resist taking control "because we (PTs)know better than you (the patients) do".

Communication takes many forms; and PTs tend to be excellent communicators. It is the content of that communication, however, that is crucial, whether it is verbal or tactile. I have heard PTs 'explaining pain' and it is mesodermally based and treated; the term 'pain input' from the mesoderm is still alive and well....unfortunately.

Nari

[EricM]

Lorimer Moseley is catching on. Now he's got his own 5 questions.

[John W]

Great dynamic slide show:thumbs_up...but I counted 9 questions.

[HeadStrongPT]

Ozzie math. Lorimer is a great physical therapists.