Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1256819
Watch Til Luchau's technique videos and read his past articles in Massage & Bodywork's digital edition, available at www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com, www.abmp.com, and on Advanced-Trainings.com's YouTube channel. Watch Til's ABMP video playlist where all his videos have been compiled. To Learn More • More about Robert Schleip and his work is at www.somatics.de/en and www.fasciaresearch.de. • Listen to Til Luchau and Robert Schleip's entire conversation in Episode 15 of the Thinking Practitioner Podcast, sponsored by ABMP at www.a-t.tv/ttp. table. That was not happening with the ankle joint, for example, so it means: in many people, shoulder joint restriction is some nonvoluntary, not EMG [muscle tonus]-related muscular restriction. But it seems to be independent of fascia also. TL: The change in range of motion was from something that the anesthesia affected; probably the nervous system. RS: Yes, nobody believes that anesthesia effects collagen fibers or the viscosity of the ground substance within a few minutes. That would be a huge surprise. Anesthesia is usually specialized to influence the nervous system and particularly the muscle tonus. So it meant that some component of a chronic movement restriction was not only fascia properties. And I wanted to find out which—and how we could separate them. SOMETHING MISSING TL: Is that what took you into your doctoral work? When I visited you in Munich last year, you told me that you were in your fifties when you decided to go back to graduate school and dive into research. Was that the question motivating you? RS: This question had been fascinating me long before. Before I did the experiment in Australia, I had a chance with some German doctors who were experimenting with ketamine, which is an aesthetic drug. In my subjective Rolfer's experience, if I Rolf somebody's leg in normal conditions, and then again when the person is under ketamine anesthesia, I realized that there is something missing. You don't get the specific response that you are used to. And then I tried it with very fresh meat from the slaughterhouse, in which the animal had just been living two or three hours before and it's still warm, and I got a similar sensation. And that was for me a more stimulating question. TL: So in both cases something is missing. RS: Yes. And of course you do get a response similar, like if you lean on a piece of bread or anything else that's pliable and not animated. And the basic question that has been inspiring me until today is: What is the difference between live tissue and not-alive tissue? And that is, of course, also a profound philosophical question. It comes back to: What is life, in a living body? If you take some of the elements of life away—for example, if you kill the animal, then the animal is dead, but some of the cells are still living—the muscle cells can still twitch for three, four hours. But if you wait 10 hours, then all life is gone in the tissue. Under ketamine some life has gone, but the life that is gone is not the fibroblasts and not the muscle cells. What is gone is the connection with the central nervous system. And with, for example, people who have had a stroke and are half paralyzed but where one side of the body is normal, you don't lose connection with the whole central nervous system. But with a big part of it, in one side, the connection with the central somatic nervous system is mostly cut off. And if you work on one side, you'll get a different tissue response than if you work with the other. TL: I see. So the difference in the working the two sides in someone with a stroke or with some paralysis on one side was confirming what you were finding in those other cases. RS: But you also have it when you work with clients. You get to an area in their body and you feel nobody at home. And you have some clients where you get slightly bored because wherever you work, you think you are working more or less on a piece of meat. And then you get the next client, and wherever you touch you go, "Holy cow! Somebody is in there." Note 1 Robert Schleip, "Talking to Fascia—Changing the Brain: Explorations of the Neuro-Myofascial Net," Rolf Lines 19, no. 2 (2005): 18–21. Til Luchau is the author of Advanced Myofascial Techniques (Handspring Publishing, 2016), a Certified Advanced Rolfer, and a member of the Advanced-Trainings.com faculty, which offers online learning and in-person seminars throughout the United States and abroad. He invites questions or comments via info@advanced-trainings.com or @TilLuchau on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. N e w ! A B M P P o c k e t P a t h o l o g y a t w w w. a b m p . c o m / a b m p - p o c k e t - p a t h o l o g y - a p p . 83