7 Limitations of Most Body Work
1. DENDENCY ON THERAPIST INTERVENTION
Outside intervention is most useful when it is equivalent to the root cause like an acute impact injury in a local area that pushed bones out of place or created scar tissue and circulation problems
On the other hand, body workers applying a therapy directly themselves only do not address root causes like shoes and chairs, or teach normal movement to correct chronic imbalanced movement.
2. MASSAGE Muscle Only
Massage is mostly a treatment of symptoms of chronic movement problems that appear as tension in the muscles. That does not address the movement patterns that cause tension.
Even fancy Rolfing and myofacial techniques feel amazing and seen life transforming but made no difference to me in the long run, as my daily activity undid it all. These techniques may however, be necessary for acute injuries through accidents or chronic overuse injuries were left untreated too long.
An injured area can benefit be forcefully restore circulation or breaking up scar tissue and lymphatic congestion. But a massage gun or your own massage might do that, too.
3. MOVING BONES
Poking bones into place does not adjust muscle motions that pull bones out of place.
Chiropractic or other adjustments can help get out of pain, although sometimes create more pain and injury by forcing and antagonizing muscles and connectors that are not ready to move. My lower back hurt for a long time after some of these kinds of adjustments.
The position of vertebrae are generally determined by factors below from hip and foot angles, or from above by cranial and dental alignment.
Perhaps the most useful adjustments I had were directed at impact injury. I had fallen on my tailbone when I was very young and can barely remember it and there was no pain there but chiropractic X ray revealed it. An osteopath doctor adjusted my tailbone from inside my rectum. That was only one step and I had to work with the entire area to break lose the imbalances and patterns of movement that were learned. Chiropractors adjusted it a few times that felt better than anything else they did, with more power coming into my legs, but they did not focus on that much as if they did not know how important it was.
4. BELOW THE HEAD
Most body workers don’t address above the neck. Some chiropractors adjust aspects of the cranium but the dental picture of the teeth and bite is not addressed and they do not guide people to a solution. In fact, they are almost universally defensive about someone challenging the limits of their expertise and forget about the welfare of patients.
The largest “subluxation”—the chiropractic term for misaligned bones pinching nerves and constraining energy flow-- is of the cranium constraining the brain and cranial sacral fluid motion. This also relieves stress to the nervous system which is not as obvious as a pinched nerve in your back, but affects a level of stress that may be 24/7 that you take for granted and cannot perceive.
Sphenoid
Some chiropractors have noticed that the further you go upstream toward the cranium the stronger is the result, as if the cause is rippling the effects downward. The top vertebrae of the neck is called C1 or the atlas. Some therapies specialize in adjusting the altas and only adjust that in a session since it has such a powerful result in adjusting the whole body: they measure the result by how even your leg length is before and after. It is very relaxing, which shows how much alignment affects the nervous system. And you can’t do too many adjustments or it is exhausting and everything can tense up defensively. This had no real benefit for me for alignment or chronic fatigue, as you just have to keep going back for temporary relief.
Even more powerful is to go upstream one more step the sphenoid bone that is next bone above the atlas on the base of the skull on the inside behind the eyes, in contrast to the occiput that is on the rear bottom of the cranium. The sphenoid has been called CO. It interfaces with the 3 major systems: spine, cranium and the dental bite at the upper palate or maxilla. It can be adjusted at the temples, through the mouth or by putting a balloon up the nose and inflating it as with NeuroCranial Restructuring—NCR. With latter you feel like you hit your head on the bottom of a pool for a second before you float away into bliss as your nervous system has been reset.
NCR loosened things up along with accompanying cranial adjustments, but did not fully hold long term. I did not achieve more facial symmetry and general alignment until I started adjusting my palates myself as the maxilla is the main constraint on the sphenoid.
5. CRANIAL without DENTAL
have done many therapies like NCR, biocranials, KIST, cranial sacral therapy, osteopathic manipulation and many things I can’t remember that adjust the cranium but the practitioners never helped evaluate orthodontic therapies.
Cranial sacral therapy, cst, is work mentioning since it has good educational value: it explains how the cranium and sacrum are related as a system and there is a rhythm to its movement. They focus on balancing the sacrum and occipital bone of the cranium to start with. CST is a light touch and physical manipulation to open up and balance Sometimes CST therapies work with orthodontists to help the cranium adjust. But alone it does not address the dental constraints on the cranium, nor all the do it yourself movements to align.
Orthondontics
The bones that cannot be fully moved by muscles now are cranial and jaw bones. Originally those were shaped by tongue muscle movement over time through childhood growth rates. As adults, orthodontics are necessary to apply pressure to open sutures of the palates to grow bone in the opening cracks to expand, and it is not considered fully proven that adults can achieve this kind of development.
DIY techniques of manipulation and tongue habits can open these sutures for immediate relaxation and motion that remains, but bone growth probably requires dental appliances by an alternative orthodontist width and forward growth of the face, which makes more room for cranial bones to move and adapt.
PHYSICAL THERAPY that is Too Stressful
Physical therapy usually gets the idea of balancing muscles, but it often relies too much on strengthening muscles by exercising them when they might already be overworked. It also tends to isolate causal relations to the nearest factor, NOT the chain reactions throughout a system.
For example, physical therapists like to treat shoulder and neck pain from a forward slouch from sitting at a desk by strengthening the opposite muscles on the upper back and shoulders. Those muscles may already be overworked from compensating to hold the head back and up so if the person is weak it can lead to more exhaustion and pain. This does not attempt to create the ideal spinal stacking with as little assistance from muscles as possible. Misalignment of the spinal stack occurs from wrong hip angle in the chair or forward head posture from a narrow palate. This is an example of not understanding a system and just relating A to B in linear, simple causation, like taking a supplement for a symptom, “taking this for that.”
There is probably a wider variety of techniques used by PTs but that is my experience.
Sometimes you need to release tension of a muscle for balance, not apply counterbalance through forceful exercises.
ADVANCED FITNESS, not for difficult cases.
There are all kinds of fancy movement systems that impress people and may feel good or help at a fitness level, but don’t really help the difficult cases of pain and misalignment or address the cranium at all.
I am not going to respond to questions like, “Have I have heard of X method?”
Think for yourself by using these criteria for completeness and provide your own review if you want.
I find many of these systems pretentious in the way they try to impress people with a new technical language when they have not even done basic root cause analysis because they do not know how to define root causes in the first place.
Plenty of systems have results that feel good that may only be a partial solution, or just because it’s great to get off your butt and move and move in a new range motion, etc. But better is not best.
People who are impressed by many methods seem to have not experienced a serious alignment or health problem. I’m interested in complete customized solution for the extremes:
- The most difficult causes of misalignment with pain and multiple problems like chronic fatigue with nervous system dysregulation and no exercise tolerance.
- High performance of brain or athletics what leave no stone unturned in continuous improvement.
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Primal Rejuvenation
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