What people do not know why they hurt and why it is almost impossible to figure it out!!

There is a bigger picture to the body that is going on without us knowing and unless you know the whole picture or as much of the key factors you will be missing your mark majority of the time. Here is an article on a big part of  the body that everyone need to know about:

Sensory-Motor Amnesia is a term coined by Thomas Hanna . The term describes a phenomenon in which individuals lose both sensory awareness and muscular control of certain parts of their bodies. They no longer have the ability to sense which muscles are being held in a state of chronic tightness and which are relaxed. Muscles held in a perpetual state of contraction will invariably become painful due to ischemia (low blood flow, like the white knuckles of a clenched fist).

Sensory-Motor Amnesia is a conditioned response in the brain resulting from injury, long-term stress, or postural distortion:

INJURY

Following injury, the brain sends signals to the body to recoil from movement of the injured area. This is a natural and positive response, aimed at protecting the body from further injury. However, if conscious, active movement is not initiated after the injury has healed, the original reflexive contraction may remain.

Example:

A guy named Mike slips on an icy sidewalk and lands in a sitting position on his tailbone. This jars his sacroiliac joints and strains his sacroiliac ligament (which covers the surface of the sacrum). The muscles in his buttocks and lower back contract to reduce movement in the sacroiliac joints, movement which would be painful. This is positive, protective response. However, after the strain has healed in the sacroiliac ligament, the muscles in his buttocks and lower back do not automatically relax. They have become accustomed to a state of habitual tension. Mike’s brain has lost conscious control of them. This is sensory-motor amnesia. The original injury has passed but now there’s a new source of pain: chronic muscular contraction in the buttocks and lower back.

LONG-TERM STRESS

Another type of conditioned response is that caused by long-term stress. The powerful potential effects of stress on our muscles cannot be overstated. The body experiences both a biochemical as well as a neuromuscular response to sustained stress. The neuromuscular response can be an intense, sustained contraction of our musculature.

Example:

Ruth works in an office in which her boss is not only disorganized and unpleasant, but he blames others for his mistakes. Ideally, Ruth would prefer to work somewhere else, but she’s a single mother, has three kids at home, and the benefits and salary of this job are as good as she’s going to find, given her skills. The stress of this situation results in shallow breathing and a strong contraction of Ruth’s abdominal muscles, though she’s not aware she’s doing it. When Ruth leaves the office at the end of the day, she takes her stress with her because she knows she has to return tomorrow, and the next day, and perhaps every day for the rest of her life. Or so it seems. The constant muscular contraction of her abdominals pulls her body into a gathered, round-shouldered shape, and this causes her back muscles to respond with their own contraction. Thus, her abdominal muscles and her lower back muscles begin to engage in a wrestling match. Ruth has fallen victim to sensory-motor amnesia.

POSTURAL DISTORTION

Another problem which can lead to sensory-motor amnesia is the unconscious muscular contraction that occurs as a result of postural distortion. If an individual has a torsion in their pelvis, for example, often the result will be a functional leg-length difference. This leg-length difference will cause that individual to lean off the center-line of gravity when walking or standing. But the body always seeks balance and will compensate by pulling itself upright. This action, however, can only be accomplished with a powerful act of muscular contraction in the back muscles.

Example:
Jim works out all the time – he runs and bikes and lift weights – but he never stretches. Also, Jim spends a lot of time in his car, commuting back and forth to work. The result is that Jim’s primary hip flexor muscles (his psoas muscles) have become extremely tight and short. The left hip flexor is especially tight and short because Jim drives with his left knee bent. This situation has led to a posterior rotation in his left pelvic bone, resulting in a functionally short left leg. When Jim stands or walks, his body tends to lean off-center, toward the functionally short left leg. But his body doesn’t allow him to remain in this leaning position. His body compensates with the powerful contraction of his right quadratus lumborum muscle in his lower back. That muscle spends so much time in a contracted state that, when Jim lies down at the end of the day, the quadratus lumborum doesn’t relax. It has become conditioned to be in a contracted state, and Jim has lost his ability to sense or control it. Again we see sensory-motor amnesia at work.


So what I realized that unless we get communication back between the central nervous system and the muscles we will always be in this hamster wheel of not know why things hurt and blaming it on things that don't matter. At Evolve Restorative Therapy this is our first place to begin ,if you do not begin there folks you and your client are in a battle being blind and deaf. Not saying you can not succeed but just so much harder.

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"The Will to Change"

 "The Will to Change"

The will to change is a key factor in healing your body and changing anything in your life. Yeah, you might think this is common sense, but it actually is not. Many people attempt coming in to my office to just passively lie on my table and wait until I make them feel better. Some do not even realize that they are their own worst enemies. Their minds say the same negative talk over and over again: “I will never get better,” “My pain has been here for so long that it will always be here,” etc. When will it stop? When they just experience a brief period of time where there was no pain and they had free movement. Yet when I tell them about what just happened, they immediately do a movement that even I would have trouble with, feel pain, and say “oh, there it is again!” Why do people do that? Well, the reason why so many people do that is because they can’t picture who they would be without that lovely pain. They can not imagine what life would be like without it.

On the other hand, I have had clients that don't even remember why they came in to see me in the first place. They forget because they want to change so much that they move on to the next issue without realizing that they cleared up the first one well before I did anything. It is so beautiful to watch people empower themselves to clean up their own issues; their smiles and they way they carry themselves is amazing. I can't get enough of it! That is why it is so important to teach people about the will to change—without it, they won't get to that smile I have seen, and that empowered feeling of self-healing.

So the question we must ask is this: “How do you help a person that does not realize that they are not on the right side of the will to change?” We have to ask this because everyone knows their own issues, but some hold on to them and complain about them, while others acknowledge them but still keep them, doing nothing about them. Well, there is no right answer, but I can tell you this: if you don't get the person to realize that they are not really dealing with the problem or that they are side-stepping the problem (this includes times when people just keep speaking about it in a negative manner under the guise of confronting the problem), then they will never get over it. As the person trying to improve, you must first acknowledge where you are with your issue, taking care to notice how that overloaded super-computer, as in, your brain, is "mind fucking you," as Puffy said in Get Him to the Greek—funny movie!
 
Now, all I get my clients to do is feel. Once you feel anything, your mind will turn off and now your body will process real sensations so much faster, thus giving you clearer commands and information without your rational mind creeping in. Monitoring your bodily sensations like this shows you that change can happen fast if you watch it; things are always changing in the body because it’s not black or white, or pain versus no pain. Once we get the person to this level of awareness, we can now slowly build their confidence by showing them their small victories, such as they went ten minutes without thinking about their issues. Before you know it, they are more in tune with their bodies, which then brings them to a bigger and better place of body awareness—which is a whole other can of worms. But remember, if you can not get them on the right side of WILL TO CHANGE, then it is hopeless for that individual. Good luck everyone, and live and move pain free!