When we injure a part of ourselves, we usually see a specialist. When we have a broken bone, first the broken bone is immobilized by an orthopedic specialist, and then we see a physical therapist who focuses specifically on that body part, showing us exercises to strengthen or stretch that specific area.
We’re fortunate to have such experts at our disposal.
And yet, my experience has been that once a bone heals, then that injured foot or wrist which was immobilized for a number of weeks, is left on its own to reintegrate with the rest of the self as best it can. After spending two months in a cast, the ankle seems to have forgotten how to move normally. Once the cast is off, we practice stretching and strengthening the foot, and most movement seems to come back, but it isn’t actually reintegrated into the moving whole of ourselves. It adjusts while many of the compensating musclular patterns still remain and it feels “normal” to us.
Because our brain is always working for our benefit, when a part of us is injured, our brain directs our muscles to “hold” the unstable bones in place or make up for other muscles that are temporarily unable to do their job.
Compensating muscular contraction patterns are put into effect, and stay in effect, until they’re no longer needed. And years later, the imbalances that our brain is managing, begin to appear as neck pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, and so on, depending on each person.
We don’t connect the pain we now feel to that old compensation pattern from years ago.
We seek out therapeutic relief for the specific areas where we feel discomfort, but the relief is not lasting because we’re dealing with it on a muscular level, not at the level of the brain—the control center of the body.
This thinking in terms of “fixing parts” is called segmental thinking and it’s a common way of thinking in the West.
As a massage therapist for many years, when a client came to me with pain between their shoulder blades, they would request deep work on that specific area to give them relief. This is completely understandable—we all want relief!
And yet, we are not a bunch of segmented pieces of muscles and bones. We are a living, moving whole organism.
As my teacher David Zemach-Bersin writes,“Your shoulder blades don’t live separately from your whole self…there is not one part of you that lives separately or distinctly from the entirety of yourself.
The Feldenkrais Method
The Feldenkrais Method® includes the whole person. To learn more about The Feldenkrais Method®, click here.
Whether someone is lying on the table for a private in-person session, (called Functional Integration or FI) or lying on the floor for an online group Awareness Through Movement® class (ATM), the intention is to connect the dots so that the person can feel their wholeness and become aware of how she’s connected—from their pinky toe to their head, from their sacrum to their jaw, from their hurt wrist to their ribcage.
I’ve experienced significant improvement in the range of motion of my neck from tilting my pelvis in a certain way. I’ve seen my students find relief from tinnitus after a pelvis/jaw lesson. My plantar fasciitis went away over time after connecting small movements from my head and neck to my ribcage and pelvis.
Sometimes there is immediate improvement, and other times it takes several months. Natural healing takes time and it’s not generally a linear progression.
When we let go of the muscular tension that has been preventing this ease, and begin to move as an integrated whole person, we are free from the habitual chronic tension and tightness that we may have been living with for years.
If you’d like more information about what options are available to release your chronic muscle tension and pain, and integrate your whole self, schedule a FREE 15-minute consultation and we can discuss the best plan for you.
And if you’d like to experience how the method works, download this FREE audio lesson and see what you observe! You might notice your back muscles feel supple and you feel calmer overall after only a few minutes!