Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1384577
64 m a s s a g e & b o d y wo r k j u l y/a u g u s t 2 0 2 1 pumping out extra signals down the motor nerves to the muscles. The motor nerves are the only way "out" of the brain. You get input from eyes, ears, body, and the rest, but all the output goes to your muscles—striated and smooth. Thus, we are all carrying a muscular "set" with which we confront the world. It might be open and easy, or it might be shut down and protected in the front and thus breathless. Or it may dramatize, scampering away from the back with a sucked in and pushed forward pelvis. Or the spine curls in on itself in grief—we all have a complex "set" built up over years. THE NEUROMYOFASCIAL "SET" AND HABITUAL RESPONSES The neuromotor set can be coupled with a lot of emotional force or only a little—it varies by person— but we are all somewhat controlled by our habitual responses. This habitual response is "noise" in the motor output of the brain. Burnout increases the neural noise, and the resulting muscle tension leads to more holding and more pain. Our job is to break that cycle. So, our second job—and it is a higher calling than simple awareness, as powerful as that can be—is to facilitate client resolution of this noisy overdrive. Unfortunately, there is always some "noise"—the anxiety that we're not moving fast enough, that "somebody might be gaining," as Satchel Paige said, may produce constant underlying tension in the hamstrings, tension we are not aware of. These tensions accumulate over a lifetime, and gradually both mind (habit patterns) and body (your fascial fabric) take on that pattern as a permanent fixture of your posture. The amount of change we all needed to adjust to this past year—and likely for more years to come—has either temporarily or more seriously overcome the habitual responses in some of us. the engine to be capable of dropping to a low idle when there's a chance to rest and repair, while still being capable of revving up when power or speed are needed. Stress—or, more properly, continual unresolved stress, which science calls "distress"—revs our motors up to a high idle, preventing parasympathetic self-repair and the restoration our organism needs regularly to self-maintain. This past year has been a transparent model of what continual stress does to us all. Consider the balancing act your body performs—to so many different rhythms. Your eyes recreate the visual world many times per second, constantly reconciling what's seen now with what's been seen before. Your heart rebalances, spinning out a gout of blood about once a second. A relaxed breath balances your blood every five seconds. The fluid in your head waxes and wanes several times a minute. Peristalsis moves your food. Every few hours, your kidneys force you to find a place to pee. Once or twice a day, you rebalance by defecating. Every 28 days, you shed the lining of your fruit. And so on, with a hundred fluctuating waves that constitute our minute- to-minute high-wire act. When the idle runs high, repair runs low, and it is a matter of time until whatever part is weak starts to whine or just seizes and quits. The chemistry of stress is well documented, so follow your own lights with supplements or medications or vagal stimulation—not my bailiwick. But can we change our chemistry by other than chemical means? Yes, with hands- on work, by working in from the other end of the equation. What do I mean? Instead of approaching burnout from an emotional or chemical vantage, what happens to the movement system? First, sensory data from the tissues—principally but not exclusively from the fascia—up to the brain gets distorted. Any bodywork or movement work can help return accurate reporting up the proprioceptive and interoceptive tracts—you accomplish that every day. No matter how you practice, greater awareness is our most important offering. And sure, getting into the sore places is great, but better yet, see if you can find a way to touch or move the silent but short areas that will free clients to resolve the strain patterns that led to the pain patterns in the first place. So, first, some places in the sensory body image get lost. Second—and this relates more to the burnout part— an anxious brain with unfulfilled needs ("You can never get enough of what you don't really need") is constantly As you introduce any self-care practice to a client, think ahead. What is your goal? I look for a "We'll be done with this exercise when you can . . ." statement.