Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1384577
L i s te n to T h e A B M P Po d c a s t a t a b m p.co m /p o d c a s t s o r w h e reve r yo u a cce s s yo u r favo r i te p o d c a s t s 57 REMOVING EXCESS EFFORT IS PROBABLY THE SINGLE BEST THING YOU CAN DO— BETTER THAN LEARNING A NEW MODALITY, INCORPORATING FANCY NEW TECHNIQUES, OR ADDING HOT TOWELS AND ESSENTIAL OILS —TO MAKE YOUR SESSIONS MORE EFFECTIVE. You guessed it: They start working harder than they need to. In other words, your brain might agree with the idea of using the minimum effort needed, but chances are your body is going to start working harder as soon as you stop reading this. As always, I say this without judgment. Recognizing the disconnect between brain and body is a crucial aspect of our longevity (or lack thereof ) as therapists, and it is something we are not very good at. The longer I teach, the more obvious it becomes. Most therapists don't have a clear sense of how much effort they expend. We are bodyworkers. Our whole job revolves around helping other people's muscles. And yet, unless you have a well- developed practice of body awareness (tai chi, Alexander technique, and Feldenkrais are the ones that have been most helpful for me), chances are you don't have a clear sense of how much you are contracting your own musculature! With practice, however, you can learn to monitor your muscles. And you can start in the next session you give, with the clue that is literally right in front of you: your arms. If you are doing a stroke with your forearm, and you are trying really hard to make that stroke great, chances are (at some point) one of two things will start to happen: Your hand will clench into a fist, or your fingers will rise up toward the ceiling. Either of these mean you are exerting more effort than needed. You are working with more than the minimum effort necessary. I often see the same counterproductive habit when a therapist uses the heel of their hand as the point of contact. If you are pushing rather than pouring with the heel of your hand, then your fingers will begin to rise up toward the ceiling. The same is true with our thumbs. When we are exerting more than the minimum effort as we use our thumbs, then the fingers tend to straighten and tense. Some tension—whether in your fingertips, thumbs, or wrists—may not seem like a big deal, but it is. Remember the warning light analogy from earlier? The problem is not the tension in your hands. The problem is that tension in any one part of the body is, in my experience, an indication of tension elsewhere. Excess effort in the hands likely means the muscles of the forearm, upper arm, and shoulder are also working harder than they need to. There is a good chance the muscles of your trunk are joining in with their own excess effort. Clients are a good reminder of how excess tension spreads. Think about that client who is glued to his computer. His shoulders and neck are hunched and taut, obviously, but does the tension stop there? Of course not. You can trace the consequences of his keyboard over- efforting all the way down the trunk and even into the lower body. Your client is probably carrying excess tension in his gluteal muscles, his internal and external rotators, and even his hamstrings—even though he is just sitting all day. The nature of tension is that it never exists in isolation. Excess effort is contagious. Because the body's tension is so good at spreading, we should identify it wherever and whenever we can. You can use this tiny, and seemingly inconsequential, signal from the end of your arms to become aware of the overwork that is happening along the entirety of the kinetic chain. Even better, the signal itself contains the solution. It can be daunting (even when we do recognize the whole arm is working harder than necessary) to actually try and reduce excess effort in the neck, shoulder, arm, and hand all at once. But if you start just with the most distal joints—that area beyond the contact—you'll find a reflexive effect. FLOPPINESS WORKS BOTH WAYS Once you get used to the idea of observing the area beyond the contact, you can start expanding your awareness in the opposite direction. Instead of only observing the more distal joints of the body, you can also start to observe the more proximal joints—the joints before the contact. Start with your wrist, elbow, and shoulder joints. Then, as you are ready, you can spread your awareness even further up through your cervical spine, down