New Article in Natural Horse

Leave it to me to forget about writing while writing.

I was asked to write an article about "sway" back in horses for Natural Horse Magazine. Randi the publisher is a great editor and is very patient with my lack of writing education.

I approached the article from the soft tissue perspective and what I called "saggy" back. There is a discussion of the coupled spinal movements in the article. It also covers some physiology and techniques for working with this condition.

The article should be in the Sept. issue.

More Spinal Movement musing

One of the great things about Dr. Gracovetsky's talk is that it answered some questions and posed many more, at least for me. The information presented was at a fairly high level and not directly useable in a body therapy practice.
I want to write a little about what I'm doing with it. There will be more on the website www.animalsi.com, as I develop it.

The spine can be modeled as a semi rigid column--remember that the orientation and adaptation of the human spine is not identical to a quadruped's and a dog is differet than a horse--as such it is subject to certain rules of coupled motion. The motions that the spine can do, are: Side bend, flex/extend and axial rotation. If any two of these motions occurs, the third is introduced or coupled with them. In other words, if a horse is landing after a jump and turning towards the next one, its spine is in extension and side bending, therefore it will also axially rotate. You can see this in some of the dramatic pictures of Grand Prix jumpers.

One of the things that I got confused about in my evolution of movement was the idea that fish only had lateral side bending as their main movement, without the flex/extend and axial rotation. Dr. Gracovetsky cleared this up for me in his talk.

Look for more about this on the website www.animalsi.com in the free article and video section.

So little time...

It seems like it takes me more time than I like to write to this blog. But, I am very busy, all of my private practices are very busy this summer. We've started the Equine Myofascial Release DVD, videoing. I'm hoping it will be available by December. I am reviewing new books for the online fascial anatomy course. AND we put out a new website last week, www.animalsi.com, give it a look and let me know what you think.

I went to a talk by Serge Gracovetsky last night. He's the author of "The Spinal Engine", the talk was supposed to be on the evolution of spinal movements from Fish to Humans, but it really wasn't. Even so, it was a wonderful talk by a very funny Nuclear Physicist, is that possible? I learned a lot, had a lot that I have been thinking about confirmed and had many new ideas sparked.

The Equinemyofascialrelease group on Yahoo has been pretty active. We've had one person who's been realy sparking things for us with a discussion of her horse. I'm working on an animation of some of the concepts I've been talking about on the group which will be on the new website.

That's all for now.

Way too long since the last one

WOW! It's been way to long since I last wrote anything here. I decided today that I need to start writing every week at least or?
It's been 5 weeks since I had a day off. Some great courses in May. A tornado during the equine course!
Last night we shot/video'd the first shots of the Equine MFR DVD. If you have any requests for what we should cover send and email through the website.
I've been really working hard on a new website, the problem is that when I go into an intensive teaching and practicing schedule I forget what I wanted in the website. It takes me a day to get back up to speed and then I'm back into practicing... Anyway I hope to have the new site up by this weekend.
I've also been reviewing an number of books Kinesiology, Biomechanics for the online course, which takes a long time, at least for me--I read every word--and time is at a premium for me.
My latest passion is the spinal movement I've written about in the past, worm, reptile and mammal. I've been doing alot with this, mostly study and modeling. I'll be producing some videos--I bought a Glidecam 2000 pro over the weekend--to illustrate what I'm talking about. They'll be posted for free on the website.
Enough for now. Country internet is not that reliable.
jim

Uncovering or working with?

Rolfers are famous for the modality we use and it's ability to change the structure of our clients. When the practitioner thinks that it is something that they are introducing into the clients structure which is creating the change this creates a problem. In other words these practitioners think that they are intruducing some "thing" into their clients which didn't previously exist.
I rebelled against this somewhat egocentric way of working with clients. My rebellion led me to a different concept; what we were doing is "uncovering" something inherent in our client's structure which was good by chipping away what was hiding this inherent "better" posture.

My analogy was that Rolfing a body was like sculpting was to a piece of granite. The sculptor didn't add to the granite but rather freed the scuplture that was bound by it. This is different than the idea that we don't to work with resolution of a body's problems but rather enhance the good, functional parts that exist in the body and that these somehow can rise above the restrictions to express themselves.

This is a nice concept but rather simplistic to my current thinking, I reserve the right to change my thinking. To my current thinking the body will always be as energetically efficient as it can be in that particular moment. In other words, the body has no allegiance to anything, postural, habitual, movement... that it doesn't deem to be energetically efficient. Given this the posture we see, the movement we see will be the BEST that that body can perform at that time, in that moment, if you will.

What we, as change agents, want, is not induce change in the structure but rather suggest to the body a new, improved--more energy efficient--way to be. If this suggestion is accurate then the body will accept it, no questions asked. If it's not then it will be rejected also without bias. The trick, to me, is to make a number of small suggestions, to break the interventions down into easily discerned parts and then step back and see if they were accepted. This is in leiu of making larger broader less discriminated interventions that may not be accepted in whole, but who's smaller parts may have been.

Energy efficiency is the name of the game. From this perspective, every posture we see is predicated on its being the most energetically efficient one, for that body at that time. The danger of learning concepts like conformation and postural analysis is that we can become fixated on what we think is important for a body and forget to let the body show us what it needs. By making small interventions and seeing if they've been accepted before making another suggestion for change we can; build on our successes, work more efficiently, not waste the nervous system attention we need for change to occur...
What do you think?

You gotta love computers

I love computers. They allow us to communicate with others like never before. They allow us to see how our business is doing with just a little effort. They provide us with the opportunity to really understand what's important in life, what's happening now or what you've worked on for the last 9 months. They do this when they crash!
I had a disc drive crash early this year. The day that I was going to finish my canine video. Got up in the morning, got ready to go into my office at home and work. I hit the keyboard, which usually brings the computer back to life in the morning, failed this time. The blue screen of death is what they call it in the windows world.
I spent the day, that I had scheduled to work on the canine video, running around to the computer repair people, I could care less about the computer I wanted the info on the drive.
I finally decided, late that night, to buy another computer, I could always return it if I needed to and external enclosure so I could pull the drive out of the old computer and continue to work. Unfortunately, what had crashed was not my computer but the drive. Windows has a problem that can corrupt the initial indentity block, this isn't what it's really called but I'm not writing a tech report, that tells drive where it's identity is! This renders the drive useless, actually less than useless since it will crash the computer, or not let it boot.
Now I'm really incensed and mad even. This is when my meditation training comes into perspective and I realize that there's nothing I can do unless there is. But either way it doesn't pay to worry about it, besides I have to see 6 human clients the next day and I'm booked for the rest of the week.
Thursday's I'm in my Longmont studio and luckily Adam Silver www.silverliningproductions.net, has his video and photography studio in the same building. Adam is an Apple guru. What does this have to do with my Windows disc drive? Alot! It turns out that the Apple operating system, so scoffed at by windows folks, doesn't need to see that first ID block on the disc to know what's on it, that's a windows thing. Adam is able to "see" all of my disc info and, that's a big and, get it to another drive for me.
To make an already long post shorter, we were able to get the video information, not the formatting which is another story, and recreate the video after three weeks of work. This puts not only the video but every other project I'm working on, behind by three weeks. This isn't to mention the problems we had with our replicators.
Moral to the story, back up to another drive frequently, you never know when a crash will occur. The bigger the drive the more you lose!
We hope to have proofs of the Canine Myofascial Massage/Release DVD next week. It's a 2 disc set due to the amount of information on it.
take care

Evolutionary movement #2

I've already talked about how mammalian movement has evolved: from an dorsal/ventral undulation that we see in a worm, to the addition of lateral spinal bending that we see in fish, snakes and reptiles, to the anterior/posterior movement of the legs and arms that we see in mammals. These three movements are not only 3 distinct movements but are also a integration of one on the other. In other words, the primitive movement of the worm is still present in the body and contributes to the amphibian movement. The summation of the previous two, worm + amphibian, plus a change in leg position = the mammalian movement.(The mammalian leg position, under the body rather than to the side of it, as in a reptile, predicates the mammalian movement.)
Since the mammalian movement is the highest order--at least to us--or most complicated, it depends on the foundation of the other two being present for it to occur. If there is a deviation or loss in one of the lower two movements the higher ordered one can not occur. While the lower two movements are always present they are usually hidden by the higher order movement.
The reason that I am interested in this, is the implications it has for the therapeutic intervention we choose. When we see these "lower" movements in a quadruped or biped this indicates that there is some thing restricting the higher movement. If we can see the parts rather than the sum--the sum being mammalian movement--then that implies that there is some disruption of the summation function. If we can determine where and what is disrupting this summation we can potentially make more informed therapeutic interventions. This seems like a worthwhile endeavor to me.
The key to being able to "see" where the dysfunction is and, therefore, where we can intervene therapeutically, is in understanding the relationship between the spinal movements and their place or sequence in evolution.
For reference you may want to read Phillip Greenman's "Principles of Manual Medicine", Luigi Stecco's "Fascial Manipulation for Musculoskeletal Pain" and Serge Gracovetsky's "The Spinal Engine".
The spine has the following movements: Flexion/Extension, Lateral or side to side Bending and Rotation. Two of these are "coupled", which means that when one occurs the other occurs as well. The third is the product of the first two occuring. If one laterally bends the spine the coupled motion of rotation also occurs, with these two occuring there will be a flexion as well. The coupled movements occur due to the spinal mechanics, which is dependent on the anatomical barriers of the spinal vertebrae, their form or structure. The third movement occurs as a physical law applying to a semi-rigid column. (I'm making a video of this principle for the new website www.animalsi.com and for the upcoming equine myofascial massage/release video.)
I'm going to stop here, the key points are simple:
Mammalian movement is the summation of 3 evolutionary movements.
Mammalian movement, as a pattern, will be absent in the presence of a restriction. (The restriction is probably in the spine.)
The more "severe" the restriction the further backwards in evolution the movement will be. (This is the summation collolary: if mammalian movement is the summation of two early movements worm and reptile, then reptile movement is built on the worm like one. Therefore the restriction of the mammalian movement will result in a reptile like movement and the suppression of this will result in the worm like movement. This isn't a negative in itself, it is the body's seeking the most efficient movement for it has available. In other words there is no struggle in this.)
I'll write more as the investigation reveals more to write about. If you want to comment on this please do.