Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/790815
C h e c k o u t A B M P 's l a t e s t n e w s a n d b l o g p o s t s . Av a i l a b l e a t w w w. a b m p . c o m . 97 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 Facebook page. "Floating the Sacrum Technique" the second volume of my Advanced Myofascial Techniques book now needs a bit of revision, even though it came out less than six months ago. 5 Darn. WHAT ELSE DOES THIS CHANGE? Like other newly emerging disruptive explanations (such as the changing views of pain and nociception; 6 the debate about the importance or unimportance of biomechanics; 7 or the questions about tissue-change explanations for the results we see in hands-on work); 8 the key question is, "How does this affect what we do in the practice room?" If we could correct for our own confirmation bias (and we can't, at least not by ourselves), we could say that if the old methods work, then maybe we just need to explain them differently. For instance, if clients seem to get calmer after a pelvic lift technique, then that technique is presumably doing what we want it to, even if we need to update our theory about why it seems to work. After all, the only thing we've changed is what we call this branch of the nervous system, and a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. Or so they say. But since we're all prone to look for the results we expect to see (the confirmation bias I mentioned), I wonder what we will notice if we start thinking about affecting sympathetic function (instead of parasympathetic function) with our pelvic lifts, sacral holds, etc. For the moment, let's leave aside questions about whether our touch is able to directly affect these deep structures. Are there new possibilities we might consider, given this reclassification? For instance, instead of up- regulating the parasympathetic system with 2 The autonomic nervous system's efferent nerves are divided into sympathetic (red) and parasympathetic (blue) outflows. The recently revised mapping reassigns the sacral nerves of the pelvic ganglia (in purple) from parasympathetic to the sympathetic division. III: occulumotor nerve; VII: facial nerve; IX: glossopharyngeal nerve; X: vagus nerve; gg: ganglion. Image courtesy Advanced-Trainings.com. After H.V Carter 1918, and O.S. Espinosa-Medina et al. 2016.