***Did you know that the brain physically changes the shape of the body to accommodate what we do on a repetitive or chronic basis?

***Did you know that certain states of mind or emotion can also become physically reinforced, and that most of the physical tension or pain we experience is being driven or exacerbated by stress or other emotional states?

***Did you know that a muscle can be weak, yet at the same time tight and contracted, thus creating pain?

***Did you know that all of this can happen at a subconscious level, as an involuntary action of the brain, so that it can become beyond your conscious control?

Have you ever experienced an injury that didn’t make sense? I’m not referring to falling off of a cliff or getting hit by a car. I’m referring to something that just doesn’t add up. “All I did was reach to open a cabinet and I threw my back out,” or, “I woke up with a ‘crick’ in my neck,” or, “I threw a baseball to my son and now my shoulder feels ‘frozen!'”

Truth is, these types of ‘injuries’ are not usually a direct result of the activity that seemed to trigger them. It is what we do daily that sets us up for injury. How so?

***REPETITIVE ACTIVITIES ARE PHYSICALLY REINFORCED WITH CONNECTIVE TISSUE, A.K.A. SCAR TISSUE, EVERY NINETEEN MINUTES!!!*** This applies to physical activities, non-ergonomic postures, and states of emotion such as stress.

If we tax one area repeatedly, the brain attempts to support it with connective tissue and soon we feel an adhesion, or painful knot. If the strain pattern continues, the muscles nearby are often recruited and ‘glued’ together, so that range of motion is now compromised. Eventually this tissue interferes with nerve pathways, creating ‘carpal tunnel’ and other symptoms.

Imagine what would happen if one link in a system of levers and pulleys becomes bound, maladjusted or kinked. It would affect the whole system. Or, imagine a string wound so tightly on a guitar, that when plucked it completely snaps!

So since your body has been reshaped to support constant typing or chronic slumping, it is when you do something different, like fall asleep on a couch, that you wake up and can’t move your neck, or, lift weights and tear your rotator cuff. These are the types of injuries that don’t make sense, and can be prevented.

So if you sit at a desk all day, hunched over, typing, with forward head posture and eyes bugged out at the screen, you will create a body that is able to sustain that activity! Have you ever seen an elderly person with a ‘humped’ back? Unless there was a strong genetic or birth affect, the hump likely developed little by little, for every nineteen minutes that that person hunched over. If you feel unhappy, angry, stressed, or sad, and stay in that state often, well…have you ever seen someone whose brow is furrowed and they look perpetually worried, angry, or mean? I think you get the idea!

So why Applied Somatic Therapy (AST) for Repetitive Stress and Injury Patterns?

AST will teach you techniques that will immediately prevent the reinforcement of repetitive stress patterns in the tissues. It will help you to regain awareness of areas of your body that have become controlled by the brain on a subconscious level. It will help to awaken muscles that have become inactive due to sensory motor amnesia.