|
You are invited to let down your guard; it is safe to relax here.
When we therapists feel a person’s muscle guarding, we sometimes feel the urge to break down their guard. Maybe the person even asks us to go deeper, harder! Even if we succeeded in making the muscles softer, the person would likely raise their guard again after we leave. A natural approach to guarding is to agree with the brain. If the biceps is guarded, that means it is trying to contract. So if we bend the elbow, this helps the brain achieve what a contracting biceps does. While the biceps is held shortened, the brain realizes its guarding job is accomplished, and therefore no need to contract. The person feels safe. In this way we invite the person to relax. After the session, the recipient may feel lighter or a sense of floating. Since the relaxation was caused from within, there will be no soreness the next day. When relaxation was their own idea, chosen at their own time, they step to a new plateau of relaxation. Each time, the person learns more and more thoroughly how to relax and just be. Your customers are more than happy—they are discovering themselves.
Melting Muscles is a conversation you initiate with a person’s hind-brain. You “speak” through positioning short of the subtle motion barrier, slowly without acceleration, using gradual buildup and letdown of pressures, and by seeking to feel the cranial motion. The person “hears” through their muscle proprioceptors and pressure sensors. The person “replies” by reducing muscle contraction, and cranial motion may reverse. You keep the conversation going by following and celebrating these changes. Whether the person’s forebrain falls asleep, talks about the weather, tries to “help” or resist, you remain engaged in a lively conversation with their hind-brain that stimulates your mind and sharpens your presence. Because treatments are gentle and thumb-free, your hands are happy.
Connecting with the brain to negotiate a peace, does far more than relax muscles. While in this sense of peace, the immune system finds more joy in supporting the person. The digestive, endocrine, integumentary, nervous, and cardiovascular systems return to efficient balance. A person in a state of peace rethinks behaviors and relationships. The world becomes a better place.
The position above is unusual (and fortunate) that the same hand position both shortens the neck extensor muscles and palpates those same muscles. Shortening the muscles creates safety; according to the standards the hindbrain calculates. Your presence with the shape of the muscle fibers plus your expectation of change, convinces the hindbrain that it can afford to let you take over. When the brain decides it no longer needs to guard, you feel the muscles melt. Melting usually begins within one to five seconds and may continue for minutes.
In the advanced Atlas and Axis workshop, you will learn four different ways to assess the muscles that control rotation of the head (rotation of the atlas upon the axis), and how to apply the ultra-gentle Melting Muscles method to resolve muscle imbalances here.
|
|
"As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate."
-Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, and musician (1875-1965)
|
|
