Moving Into Harmony

MOVEMENT & BREATH: HEALTH - FITNESS - WELLNESS

Symptoms and My Potential

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Pain, Dysfunction, Degeneration, and Dis-ease have origins in anatomy and subtle anatomy, physiology, and progressive deviations, mal-adaptative responses to adverse tensions and pressures.
This produces stress, limiting all biological movements and physiological rhythms.

Within all of us exists a wisdom, an intelligence, that knows how to adapt, repair, restore, and resolve. This intelligence is in every cell, from a stem cell to any tissue cell, with the capacity to coordinate with its neighboring and related cells and systems to keep the body well through balance, harmony.

“…..in accord with its own mechanical principles, molecular activities, and metabolic processes, may recover from displacements, disorganizations, derangements, and consequent disease, and regain its normal equilibrium of form and function in health and strength.” – Dr. A.T. Still, D.O.

The body’s capacity to heal and regenerate has the greatest potential when symptoms are not present. The capacity to adapt and heal exists when one is able to move and be in their lives when below the threshold of accumulated stress responses. And the lower below the threshold, the greater the capacity – as illustrated in this graph:

copyright Moving Into Harmony, inc. 2015
Body’s Ability to Adapt Graph

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Restoration of natural healing rhythms and movements is possible with the proper guidance through a compassionate, non-violent, hands-on approach, combined with individualized instruction in a movement practice that promotes, integrates and strengthens these movements and rhythms.

The other consideration is your capacity for change and self-healing.

“We suffer from two things – want of supply and the burden of deep deposits.” – Dr. A.T. Still, D.O.

In order to move progressively beyond the symptoms that limit your ability to live a satisfactory balanced life requires something different of you. To just superficially address the symptom within a short period of time is like just cleaning and skimming the surface of the swimming pool and disregard or forget changing the filter, or spending a little time to maintenance the pump (it is summer, and swimming is a vital activity for me, prefer fresh water lakes swimming and wave surfing, but the analogy of the pool fits well here…..).

What are you wanting to change? Willing to change? Capable of changing?
What are your internal vital resources for change? What is your relationship to them?
What are your strengths you can call upon for change to be integrative, long-lasting, and sustainable?
What is available to you once you are assisted in releasing physical, mental, and or emotional holdings?
What are you releasing to, or onto, that will support you in letting go and integrating your new found potential?
How do you move your newly discovered potential toward being actual and available?
What are your tendencies – such as how you stand, routines, how you breathe that may be limiting your well-being?

Big questions, and consideration into these will help you find an orchestrated way into changes that can be life-changing and you can utilize your potential for a revolutionary vital life.

Effectiveness of Physical Therapy for Low Back Pain

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A new study out of University of Washington (Seattle) and George Washington University (Washington, D.C.) shows very significant research to support the field of Physical Therapy. The study was published on May 23, 2018 in the the journal Health Services Research. The study reviewed and studied health care costs of individuals with diagnosis of low back pain from over 150,000 health care claims between 2009 and 2013.

“Overall, patients saw “significantly lower out-of-pocket costs — on the average, $500 — when they visited a physical therapist first,” says Bianca Frogner, a health economist at the University of Washington, and lead author on the study.”

In the study the use of opioids prescription drugs and advanced imagery procedures (MRI and CT scans), as well as emergency room (ER) visits and hospitalizations, were evaluated for effectiveness of delivering cost effective services for low back pain.

Patients who received physical therapy for low back pain before trying other treatments had an:

  • 89 percent lower chance of needing opioid prescription pain relieving drugs,
  • 28 percent lower chance of needing or requiring advanced imaging studies,
  • 15 percent lower chance of needing to go to emergency room, or being hospitalized

Part of the study also suggests that patient education on the musculoskeletal system might actually understand this pain better than the average family physician. This is very true. In a recent study published in the Annuals of Family Medicine (May/June 2018) titled Physician Activities During Time Out of the Examination Room by Valerie Gilchrist, MD, et al.

On average, doctors in this study spend 8 hours and 8 minutes in the office per day and have 20 patient visits. Visits last an average of 17.5 minutes.

Approximately one third to one-half of a patient visit is spent entering data into the computer (depending on staff assistance in the room during visit to document the visit), lessening the patient face to face, and contact time to effectively listen and connect with the patient, determine the patient’s needs, desired outcome, plan of care, education and any treatment provided. It is not possible for clear guidance can occur during this short time. The education and optimal care for a person suffering from low back pain needs to be individually catered based on:

  • Local, regional and other areas affecting or affected by low back pain –

Kenneth Harwood, a coauthor of the study and Director of Physical Therapy at George Washington University, says Physical Therapy can diminish a patient’s pain by physically moving the joints of the back, knee, or hip through a full range of motion, thereby decreasing the stiffness and immobility patients might feel.

  • history of current condition –

As studies show, pain lasting greater than 4-6 weeks requires a different plan of care because tissue healing has been completed. The pain someone experiences is likely not related to the tissue that was injured. It is usually based on adaptive patterns, compensations that produce less competent movement and mobility, ineffective use of the body or parts to perform the required activities in one’s life, protective behaviors that actual complicate one ability to move and heal, and other behaviors related to past and current experiences relating to the pain and dysfunction a person experiences.

  • lifestyle,
  • demands and stressors in their life at work and at home,
  • desires and wants for healing,
  • what are the current strategies a person is using or doing to alleviate the pain, and improve their function in their life,
  • what activities they are interested in doing for self care,
  • what they miss and want to get back to when low back pain is not limiting them,
  • cognitive abilities to understand pain signals and how to respond,
  • learning capabilities,
  • body awareness abilities,
  • beliefs and false beliefs about their body and the pain being experienced,
  • social and family dynamics around limited abilities and capacities secondary to pain,
  • and more……

The average physician visit mentioned above is not enough time to even touch the first two variables.

“the evidence continues to mount supporting the implementation of more effective, non-invasive care for low back pain, and that many pricey standard treatments — including surgery and spinal injections — are often ineffective and can even worsen and prolong the problem.”

It’s also worth noting, that some patients who could benefit from physical therapy don’t get it, because of health insurance imposed restrictions from the policy they were either given by their employer or they signed up for. In addition, some health insurance policies place services in a different category of reimbursement, cost limits (at $2500 – $3000 per year, this would cover on average 8 to 10 visits based on cost billed) and lower reimbursement rates from the health insurance companies increasing out of pocket expenses. These become barriers to get the proper and effective care a person suffering from low back pain could receive.

Physical Therapy is a valuable resource to promotes healthy living through movement, nutrition, and education that can improve the health of a person’s spine.

“We need to look for better ways to help patients manage the current pain they have and prevent it from coming back in the future” says Bianca Frogner, adding that physical therapists “are well positioned to provide ideas on exercises, movement and ways of living to prevent the pain from getting worse — and hopefully from ever coming back, once it’s gone.”

Effective strategies are available at Moving Into Harmony to provide effective and efficient exercises that promote the health of the spine, preventing the debilitating affects of re-current low back pain, discovering movement patterns and how mobility affects the health of the spine and the body, and develop long term strategies and activities for a healthy spine.

Contact us about your interest and how we can help –

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Inquiry and Insights: Doorways – Thresholds of Pain

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“We’re living in a time where we each need a tremendous amount of courage —
a fierce kind of attention and intentionality.
The doorway is always through your pain and vulnerability,
the experience where you are open to the world whether you want to be or not.
I’ve come to consider vulnerability
as a form of imaginative intelligence,
and the good news is that it can be cultivated.
The real challenge is the pain that comes with vulnerable living.
When pain arises, it is tempting to say to yourself:
‘If this is the way that God is playing, no thanks, I’ll back up.’
Self-compassion is needed to understand this.
During and after the season of pain,
the question that comes up is:
‘Will I turn back to vulnerability, to living a wholehearted life?’”

~ David Whyte

When pain arrives at the doorstep of your awareness, do you move into the message from your body with courage? Do you recognize your ability to intentionally attend to any part of your body – a fierce kind of attention and intentionality – to follow what your body is calling for?

Living a wholehearted life.

Pain is described as a signal from within. It is not external. It is not foreign. It’s the language of the body asking for help. Asking for a different way to do things. The real challenge is the pain that comes with vulnerable living; the vulnerability to accept, once you listen to the body’s calling for balance and ease, to move in the direction of harmony and self-healing. How do you rediscover the flow of harmony?

The doorway is always through your vulnerability.

And in the vulnerability to life do you move with courage or do you fight, flee, or freeze? Courage comes from the root Norman French word cour, meaning the amount of heart you have in your life. Is there courage to participate in the unraveling of your being, to witness the shadows of your existence? Trace your shadows back to their source, toward expansion and receptivity. This is vulnerability.

Or, do other factors stronger than your courage send you in a direction of contraction?  These come from reaction, inaction and the mind’s directions that pull you away from harmony and your source of vitality.

When pain arises, it is tempting to say to yourself:
‘If this is the way that God is playing, no thanks, I’ll back up.’

Actions of fight, flight or freeze create fixations in the body. Fixation requires the body to adapt. The body must compensate around these, sometimes in ways that shut off other vital functions that are initially unnoticed but, over time, become noticed. My teacher, Frank Lowen, says the body has amazing abilities to adapt, but that this is a finite amount, a finite space of living. Signs and Symptoms don’t become conscious until we use up the capacity to adapt. Meaning when the body has used up its abilities to adapt, it signals, “I can’t do this, this way anymore. Help!” These signals show up as degenerative processes, dis”ease” and pain.

copyright Moving Into Harmony, inc. 2015
Body’s Ability to Adapt Graph

When pain arises, can you discover ways to find more space? Can you have courage to step into the dark, into the unknown, into the silence inside yourself to willingly learn something consciously new from life itself?

A wedge of freedom inside your heart.

I say this with a great deal of compassion; Self-compassion is needed to understand this. With 20 years of clinical experience, I’ve observed many expressions of the body’s signal described as pain, and the responses to the body’s messages. Undoubtedly, pain is real, and the expression of pain is as individual as there are people in the world. Sometimes the volume of the pain signal is so loud, nothing else can be heard or felt. We can try as professionals to objectively measure pain, but to scientifically categorize this phenomenon is negating the individual experience, and therefore their interpretation and self-discovery.

“I’ve come to consider vulnerability as a form of imaginative intelligence,
and the good news is that it can be cultivated.

David Whyte describes imagination “is about your faith in the images inside you, the images of your particular way of belonging in the world.” A form of intelligence – imaginative, expressive, cultivated – from your ability to intentionally listen, discover and learn about the natural state of your being. We all have one thing in common: We are all trying to find our way back to harmony and experience divine Love. And our body “knows” this inherent desire, and will do anything to maintain a harmonious state. How amazing to know you have the potential to cultivate a deeper understanding and awareness to your existence with life. Cultivated from inquiry, the action of stepping through the threshold, out the door, exploring, discovering, recognizing, and integrating new experiences full of life; and knowing what you do on this day will make the days ahead greater.

Not new, but wholeheartedly and consciously new.

Manual Therapy – An Art of Assisting Human Potential

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Manual Therapy is a large word “umbrella” to describe the use of the hands to assist individuals with enhancing their mobility for health and wellness. The concepts that determine the modality, or technique(s), for treatment are based in correction and regulation. Corrective techniques are often based in specific anatomical tissues, or a structural orientation for health. Regulatory techniques focus on function, and how physiologically the body has adapted and responds for restoring health.  In today’s Manual Therapy practices and schools of thought, the primary emphasis is placed on the structural issues specifically in the musculoskeletal system, and less on the capacity as a manual therapist to assist the body in balancing physiological function.

It is the physiology and the inter-related mobility and activities of all systems that determines and modulates physical movement and functional capacity, health and wellness. Often physiological patterns that restrict balanced bodily activities are not addressed with exercises; in fact exercises often facilitate further compensation patterns due to the body’s innate intelligence to protect vital structures from further stressors of tensions and pressures.

Physiological functions rules physical function.

At Moving Into Harmony, we recognize this and strive to provide the best practice services to facilitate whole body health. The ability to perceive and effectively address patterns of stress & strain, trauma, compensatory patterns, and healthy mobility can only be accomplished with:

  • the sense of touch,
  • attention to the optimal and appropriate engagement of assistance (no force) that contributes to the body’s balance and healing mechanisms and activities,
  • the knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and fluid dynamics,
  • the acknowledgement of an individual’s needs, and
  • knowing who is doing the healing – you.

The style of Manual Therapy utilized at Moving Into Harmony is primarily derived from the initial discoveries and philosophy of Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, and following the traditional Osteopathic approach through individuals that carried his original perspective on human potential, function, health and wellness.

Different fields in health care have slightly different perspectives:

  • Within the physical therapy profession, Manual Therapy is defined as – a clinical approach with direct patient contact utilizing skilled, specific hands-on techniques, including but not limited to manipulation/mobilization. Used by the physical therapist to diagnose and treat soft tissues and joint structures for the purpose of modulating pain; increasing range of motion (ROM); reducing or eliminating soft tissue inflammation; inducing relaxation; improving contractile and non-contractile tissue repair, extensibility, and/or stability; facilitating movement; and improving function.
  • The International Federation of Orthopaedic Manipulative Physical Therapists (IFOMPT) defines manual therapy techniques as: “Skilled hand movements intended to produce any or all of the following effects: improve tissue extensibility; increase range of motion of the joint complex; mobilize or manipulate soft tissues and joints; induce relaxation; change muscle function; modulate pain; and reduce soft tissue swelling, inflammation or movement restriction.”
  • Alternatively, Irwin Korr (1978) described manual therapy as the “Application of an accurately determined and specifically directed manual force to the body, in order to improve mobility in areas that are restricted; in joints, in connective tissues or in skeletal muscles.”
  • The founder of Cranial Osteopathy stated “It is a science dealing with the natural forces of the body. We work as osteopaths with the traditional principle in mind that the tendency in the patient’s body is always toward the normal. There is much to discover in the science of osteopathy by working with the forces within that manifest the healing processes. These forces within the patient are greater than any blind force that can safely be brought to bear from without.” – William Garner Sutherland, D.O.
  • “Osteopathy, I consider a sacred science. It is sacred because it is a healing power through all of nature.” – Dr. A.T. Still, D.O., the founder of Osteopathy.

The healing arts involve a complex range of skills cultivated over many years, implemented, tested, re-tested and drawn together in a unique way by the practitioner. The skills, experiences, understandings and perspectives complement a “scientific” foundation based in clinical outcomes, to create the wisdom and artistry of a therapeutic approach.

“In the Knowledge of the Art is the Science; in the Practice of the Science is the Art.”
– Frank Lowen, my Manual Therapy teacher

CranioSacral and Other Healing Therapeutics

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One of the most common questions asked about the hands-on therapeutic approach offered at Moving Into Harmony.

“Is what you do CranioSacral?”

The simple answer is “no.”

Craniosacral therapy is an approach emphasizing fluid dynamics within the central nervous system and it’s reflective pattern of movement in the peripheral nervous system and limbs. The rhythm associated with this dynamic is symmetrical, both sides move in the same direction. When the right side of your cranium rotates out and forward, referencing the temporal bone around the ear, the left side will do the same pattern of movement in a balanced healthy pattern. This rhythm is more easily felt without external pressure on the cranium, and is a light gradual movement, often over several seconds for one full cycle. It is an engagement with the dynamics of the tissues associated with the Cerebral Spinal Fluid, that are directly attached and influence the cranial bones. The sacrum, or “sacral” portion of the approach, is the other end at the tailbone where there are connections of these specialized tissues attached to the sacrum that influence its movement along a vertical and horizontal axis. These movements are more related to the body at rest, and in my clinical experience best used to re-establish a relaxation state, a decrease in heightened states of often an “over-active” or stressed system.

The approach at Moving Into Harmony, that I have been fortunate to continue my studies and apply clinically for 24 years, is based in a tissue model that is associated with connective tissues around the circulatory and nerves within the body and the limbs. These connective tissues reflect a dynamic that is in response to pressures and tensions in response to the circulation dynamics in a given area, systems, cranium, spine, or limb. And their reflective, or associated, tensional rhythms and patterns in corresponding and physiologically related areas, systems, cranium, spine or limb mobility and movements. These rhythms are asymmetrical in nature, meaning when the right temporal bone of the cranium moves outward, upward and forward, the left temporal bone will move back, down and in toward midline. These movements are related more to function and normal dynamic movements of activities, and often require a bit of alertness and resource in the body to perform action for change, even when the person may appear relaxing or not performing movement. It is an integrative approach, as the body addresses limitation, utilized its natural healing rhythms to facilitate change, and an simultaneous integrative response in the whole body while the change is happening.

Change in one area of the body, ripples through every associated system(s) and affects the entire body.

We look forward to seeing you, and assisting you moving into harmony.