When shopping for groceries I try to stay on the outside walls of the store…meaning I try to buy things that tend to spoil faster. Such as Veggies, Fruits, Meats, Eggs, Trail Mix and maybe a little Almond Milk when needed. By doing so I tend to stay away as much as possible from all the processed foods…but it does happen on occasion! If I do I try to hold out till the weekend or a designated day. It helps hold me accountable. Another thing I really try to stick with is portion size/control…I feel by watching my portions I can still enjoy some of the bad stuff every once in a while like potatoes and pastas. For the most part I’ve just cut out all pastas, starchy carbs, and definitely bread. Instead I opt for a lettuce wrap in place of bread for my burgers, lunch meat, or really anything sandwich like. When it comes to what I buy in terms of organic vs. non-organic, lets face it, in a perfect world I’d buy everything organic but lets face it, its darn expensive!! So I do my best and buy organic when I can but just buy good healthy things instead of the processed stuff. I also like to change it up and try different methods of eating/fasting to see what works best for me. A couple of my favorite ways are the Daniel Fast w/ a few added proteins and the paleo method. My motto if I have one would just be to eat healthy, watch how much I eat, and make sure I’m eating to sustain/maintain my activity level.
The process of a negative feedback loop in nature. I am sure we are all familiar with the concept by another description, you have a river and you remove the plants from the bank and so the river washes away the soil and permits more water to flow and wash away more plants, soil, etc. This is analogous to the pain/dysfunction cycle in the body. Something happens that we don’t fully understand and so we brace ourselves. In doing so we stop moving as much, and things become impeded, they hurt more. So the process continues until we reach a place one day where something snaps or we never return to fruitful movement. Then a more severe injury occurs one day when we are moving the simplest of objects.
When people ask me about the benefits of massage this is one of those things that is difficult to describe because positive change is occurring in every part and system in the body. It is a lot of small changes everywhere that make the experience. The therapist’s intention is much more than "fixing" someone. It is to guide them back through the dysfunction (that negative feedback) to establishing and understanding what they are experiencing. If someone is experiencing lateral knee pain, I would be remiss to simply work on them without them hearing something about how and why that pain is occurring.
The usage of myotherapy extends far back into our past. As the development of technology progresses so does the understanding of the effects and need for specificity of technique. Among the many prominent thinkers is the work offered by the now passed Ida Rolf. Now Dr. Rolf contributed a great deal to the field of knowledge in body work, examining things from her biochemical perspective and using a holistic eye to appreciate the many layers of transformation that occur in movement and in the context of a massage or structural session.
Massage does many things, too many to effectively list here. Today’s focus is on the changes occurring in the pliability of connective tissue in movement and massage.
Think back to time spent in your kitchen. Now, we have all made a good chicken broth, some of us have made a meat based stock. What differentiated the two is the presence of dense connective tissue, bones, etc. When reduced to its more basic components the function of each strata becomes more apparent. When you cook a stock then place it in the fridge over night something magical happens. The layers separate and several things form. Usually on top is a layer of greasy fat and other fatty compounds, then comes a translucent jelly. That jelly is the ground substance and the dissolved solids of the connective tissue. If you examine that jelly in your hands you will notice how smooth it is, how well it lubricates and how quickly when heated it returns to liquid.
There are some mechanical properties you can observe simply by playing with your food. These exist in vivo to a less transitory extreme. By that I mean they change but to a lesser or slower degree. As we exercise the dense connective tissue melts, literally changing physical state. The same thing happens in a "rolf" type massage (is occurs in other massage modalities but to a varying degree and not as specifically).
With enough heat the jelly base (hylauronic acid, water, solids) would dissociate and we are left with is a pliable and maleable substance that both maintains structure and lubricates. In the body through the pouches and tissues the fibers of the connective tissue help to segment and offer a more permanent structure. In the case of a stock on the stovetop, that complex straining mesh has been broken down and there is little to keep fluid from freely flowing.
Now, the connective tissue never becomes a proper liquid “en vivo,” it is more of a chemical colloid. In that changed state however, nutrients/oxygen can permeate what was formerly a largely solid mass – hylauronic acid, collagen, elastin, reticulin and to a smaller degree fibrin.
Since the pliable tissue is now freely moving; the force moving through the body gets transferred to solid masses or adhesion and congestion in the body. In the case of acute injury, this microscopic tug of war is contraindicated (discouraged) in the case of a chronic injury or dysfunction is it likely the best thing for it. Hence if you attend physical therapy they have you do exercises in the formerly injured area.
As we move we massage ourselves. As the joints move, relative pressures change, and muscles press on each other. The self massage is not occurring as specifically as a therapist would induce but some of the benefits cross over. In the case of the synovial joints where circulatory permeation is occurring to a lesser degree (hence the very white color) we depend on movement – in the case of a massage or actual exercise to migrate nutrients in and out of the joint.
As we cool down, we decrease the rate of activity to below the rate of recovery so we improve our state with each repetition. This allows the less desirable consequences of exercise to be reduced (eg post workout soreness) while we are still in this gelatinous state. As we cool down we begin to congeal, if we are drinking enough water, the water will become trapped in the different tissues of the body and reduce how solid or stiff the tissue will be.
A structural massage does not mandate pain, it is about overcoming the chemical bonds in the tissue and facilitating a relaxed neurological state. Less is more, it is about the quality of the contact. In many instances I hear from clients about how they were left sore and bruised – deep tissue massage is a basterdization of this kind of technique.
If I take my beef stock from the night before and microwave it, I only need the gel to melt. By heating up the stock for 20 minutes I only make the stock to hot to eat, I don’t make it any more of a liquid than heating it for 5. In fact frequently pain is something that encourages an antagonistic effect, when we experience pain we begin to brace to protect and rightfully so. Similarly to heating the stock, if your therapist is working on a congested area, they only need to increase pressure to overcome the pressure outside the cells (its osmosis, fluid flows to the lowest pressure area until pressure equalizes) at a certain point the channels on the cell wall through which fluid flows are maxed out, we can force any more fluid through those holes at a single moment without risking injury.
Dr. Rolf’s work was about overcoming the chemical bonds that impeded movement and posture in a very specific way. It was about encouraging fluid to migrate and “fuzz” to break up between the sliding surfaces of the body. In her work and certainly the education a structural integration therapist is given, the pressure is very specifically applied – we don’t overcome poor technique by simply mashing into the body harder.
If you take one thing away from this article let it be that there is no replacement for an understanding of the body, and that although each issue is unique – there are underlying principles that are still universal and there is hope. Also discomfort is ok in massage, pain is to be avoided. If you are shopping for a therapist for yourself and they are going to work on a painful area that is not currently injured it is a good litmus test if they can answer to you how and why that area is painful. If they can’t at least suggest cause, they probably don’t know enough to be taking on that responsibility.
– Frederick Preston LMT
I completed this 12 mile, 24 obstacle race on December 1st and am now over the trauma and able to talk about it. Just kidding (kind of)- it was an unbelievable experience and an amazing accomplishment. When a few friends from college asked me to join their team I thought it was going to be great! I had never run 12 miles but figured that the obstacles would be spread out enough that I wouldn’t have to run more than half a mile at a time. Boy was I mistaken.
Walking to the starting line I felt butterflies in my stomach and was suddenly more nervous than I had ever been. To get to the actual starting line I had to climb an 8-foot wall, to prove that you are in for a tough ride even from the very beginning. Before the race we were stuck in a corral like situation like cattle waiting to be let free listening to some of the stories of people who had completed this race against all odds. A man in a wheelchair that completed EVERY obstacle thanks to his team mates, a cancer survivor whose husband was supposed to run in her honor had died a few months earlier in a car crash, and all of the wounded warriors who had run with prosthetic limbs and in honor of those that had fallen. In my wave I met a 74-year-old man and someone who was on his third run of the course THAT DAY.
The gun went off and the floodgates opened- I was not prepared for we were in for. I’ll just name some of the obstacles for you. Arctic enema (a tub of ice water you must submerge yourself in), electroshock therapy (electric wires hanging for the last 20 feet of the race), funky monkey (monkey bars over ice water), Everest (greased half pipe you must run up), and the list can go on and on. Having a team there for you is truly what helps you get through it, but honestly it felt like everyone running was on my team. Without the constant motivation from those around me I do not think I would have finished.
I cannot fully explain the feeling of crossing the finish line after almost 3 hours of 12 miles and 24 obstacles. As soon as I was done I saw my mom and broke down crying, I was physically tired and emotionally drained; but getting that orange headband and free beer was totally worth it!
Now I am extending out a challenge to you all – May 18, 2013 the Tough Mudder will be held here in Jacksonville – Melissa, John, and myself are putting a team together. I want everyone to seriously consider joining us- all levels welcome, trust me when I say that this is something you do not want to miss out on!
Check out the event at toughmudder.com and let us know! If you have any questions about the actual event and obstacles that I have not covered I will be happy to talk with all of you!
Finally, a blog worth reading. For my first entry, I was puzzled as to what to write about. I wanted it to be about something exciting, so my love life was out. Perhaps it could be about some great adventure I had, but midnight trips to Walmart, while amusing, cannot really be considered adventurous. I started to get depressed for leading such a miserable life, and was grasping for a feel-good story to lift my spirits. My mind was ignited and, as my thoughts began racing, I thought about my friend Coy Orange.
I first met Coy a few years ago through a mutual friend. I knew that he was a runner who recently began coaching runners. I also knew he had a somewhat troubled past, but who doesn’t these days? Intrigued I called my friend Coy and asked him to meet me for a cup of coffee at a coffee shop whose name I won’t mention because, frankly, they don’t need any more advertising. His story couldn’t be all that bad, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. Continue reading →
