Why Applied Somatic Therapy?
Welcome to a therapy that teaches you how to awaken and trust your innate therapist. Modern medicine disregards the clients own perspective of their condition, and gives one a ‘third-person’ view of the body, which is not always accurate. Even the modalities of ‘alternative medicine,’ though generally holistic, are usually delivered by an expert who is ‘doing something to you,’ the client, from an outside point of view. Unless one is helped to understand their condition from an inside, ‘first-person’ perspective, and taught to participate in their own healing process, continuously repeated sessions might be ‘deemed necessary.’ Treatment results may only last a few days, and can become very expensive!
I am not stating that alternative medicine is not beneficial. I have consistently used modalities such as Chiropractic Neurology, Acupuncture, MyoFascial Release and Structural Bodywork, NeuroKinetic Therapy, Personal Training, and Rolfing. However, until I learned to use these therapies somatically, I was throwing money away. Very few, if any, therapists will teach you how to change your condition from within, so that you do not need to return for multiple sessions. They might teach you a stretch or an exercise, but what is really needed is to learn how to change the way your brain is keeping you in that injury or stress pattern. Nothing will “fix” you, unless you learn how to re-pattern the way your brain is controlling your body.
The intention of Applied Somatic Therapy (AST) is to help you to reawaken your Mindbody’s physiological self-healing mechanism. It is not only ‘holistic,’ but ‘wholistic.’ And yes, although the Structural Bodywork and Myofascial Release portions of AST modalities are technically performed ‘on you,’ or ‘to you,’ from another person’s viewpoint, they are executed in specific ways so as to empower you with a keen sense of self-awareness. Yes, I can help relieve acute pain, enhance athletic performance, and reverse damage caused by repetitive motion and other stressors. But I will do so in a way so as to help you retrain the way your brain has kept your body in subconscious patterns of recurring pain, and thereby help you to regain conscious control of your body, and your life.
Why Applied Somatic Therapy for Repetitive Stress and Injury Patterns?
Did you know that…
- The brain physically changes the shape of the body to accommodate what we do on a repetitive or chronic basis?
- That states of mind or emotion, i.e., stress, 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?
- That a muscle can be weak, yet at the same time tight and contracted, thus creating pain?
- 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.