It's a been a great year for me. I hope you are feeling the same.
One of the things I like to each quarter of the year is look at how my business as gone and make any needed adjustments to it for the rest of the year. At the end of the year I take some time to review the year and dust off the business plan and make adjustments as needed.
We all love our practices working with people or animals or both, but may be somewhat ambivalent about the business side of our business.
One of the problems that I see with the body therapy world, a service business, is that we may get caught in the "Long Tail" of the service world. The long tail is a statistical term to describe an event over time. If we look at our practices as a service we may see some of the long tail in the way business has been: We open our doors and have a number of clients use our service, then someone else--the competition--opens their doors and our practice suffers. Rather than being happy that we have competition, which we seek for our own lives--we like that there are more than one oil change places driving price down--we get freaked out. Now instead of looking at our own business and why it's not doing as well, we chase after some other modality or product to offer, which returns us, if only briefly, peak before we're back in the long tail.
If you want to read more about this and some ideas on how to make the long tail profitable visit free articles at www.animalsi.com.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
Strokes
It's pretty ominous to label a blog entry "strokes". What I'm going to talk about here is the "strokes" that are used in working with animals. I've been asked by many people about the differences between a Structural Integration stroke and those used in other modalities, like massage.
My answer is that there is no such thing as an SI specific stroke and that all other strokes come in two flavors: those that are disruptive and those that are organizing the tissue. The focus of SI is organization of the body. As such most of SI occurs with the appropriate application of an organizing stroke or touch, which usually follows some disruption of a tissue holding or lesion.
Some Background
About 15 years ago the AMTA brought together a group of high level practitioners to lay out a map of the different types of body therapy. Two of the members were Rolfers, Tom Myers and Jeff Maitland. This group came up with a "hierarchy" of body therapy in three distinct paradigms: relaxation, symptom relief and wholism. Each level of the hierarchy includes aspects of the level below it but not the one above it. So, relaxation can occur when a symptom is relieved but rarely--I won't say never--does a relaxation modality relieve a symptom, nor should it be used for this. The paradigms are labeled first, second and third, and have come to be used in the Rolfing community to describe different types of interventions. For instance, a Rolfer might say that helping a vertebral segment that is stuck in a rotation to de-rotate is second paradigm. Pure Rolfing is considered,by us Rolfers,to be third paradigm or wholistic in its view and application. Of course one may move up and down this paradigm ladder to achieve a specific goal.
Back to the strokes.
Most people are very good at disrupting the tissue but organizing is a skill that takes years to learn. This is why most of the description of body patterns lend themselves to disruption; knots, spasm, holding... Contrast this with third paradigm descriptions like; the feet are not relating to the knees,or there's a strain in the AO which is causing a rib to come up, etc.
What this leads to is a plethora of modalities which all aim at symptom relief through disruption with very little relational, or whole body organization consideration--I'm not saying none just little. This focus on disruption leads us to create measurement tools like Myofascial or Body Mapping (this is a system developed by Sharon Giammetto Ph.D, PT, who copy righted the term). These systems focus our attention on the "problem" holding areas that need to be released rather than on the whole body organization. If one is releasing holding patterns than everything is good, even if the ultimate cause of the pattern remains.
Don't get me wrong, the release of these holdings, if you will, is highly effective in helping a body. If there is a restriction to blood flow to an area and the restriction is removed this is beneficial to the body. It's just not SI, it's second paradigm work of relieving symptoms, which is not a bad thing.
Modalities like sports massage, neuromuscular, MFR... are all second paradigm. Very effective but not at the top of the hierarchy. Most of what people call SI, is, as I mentioned before, second paradigm until it becomes relational. Too often the new SI practitioner gravitates towards the second paradigm modalities to provide them with some "ground" that pure SI work seems to lack.
Dr. Rolf gave us a series of sessions that provide us with a container or safety net while we practice and learn SI. She asked us to stay with this program for at least 5 years, until we could learn from it how a body could be organized.
She admonished us that anyone can take a body apart but few could put one back together. As such there are no SI strokes there is only an SI view which utilizes the strokes of the other two paradigms, just like a paint brush in the hands of a house painter puts paint on a wall while in the hands of an artist creates art. (No offense to house painters.)
My answer is that there is no such thing as an SI specific stroke and that all other strokes come in two flavors: those that are disruptive and those that are organizing the tissue. The focus of SI is organization of the body. As such most of SI occurs with the appropriate application of an organizing stroke or touch, which usually follows some disruption of a tissue holding or lesion.
Some Background
About 15 years ago the AMTA brought together a group of high level practitioners to lay out a map of the different types of body therapy. Two of the members were Rolfers, Tom Myers and Jeff Maitland. This group came up with a "hierarchy" of body therapy in three distinct paradigms: relaxation, symptom relief and wholism. Each level of the hierarchy includes aspects of the level below it but not the one above it. So, relaxation can occur when a symptom is relieved but rarely--I won't say never--does a relaxation modality relieve a symptom, nor should it be used for this. The paradigms are labeled first, second and third, and have come to be used in the Rolfing community to describe different types of interventions. For instance, a Rolfer might say that helping a vertebral segment that is stuck in a rotation to de-rotate is second paradigm. Pure Rolfing is considered,by us Rolfers,to be third paradigm or wholistic in its view and application. Of course one may move up and down this paradigm ladder to achieve a specific goal.
Back to the strokes.
Most people are very good at disrupting the tissue but organizing is a skill that takes years to learn. This is why most of the description of body patterns lend themselves to disruption; knots, spasm, holding... Contrast this with third paradigm descriptions like; the feet are not relating to the knees,or there's a strain in the AO which is causing a rib to come up, etc.
What this leads to is a plethora of modalities which all aim at symptom relief through disruption with very little relational, or whole body organization consideration--I'm not saying none just little. This focus on disruption leads us to create measurement tools like Myofascial or Body Mapping (this is a system developed by Sharon Giammetto Ph.D, PT, who copy righted the term). These systems focus our attention on the "problem" holding areas that need to be released rather than on the whole body organization. If one is releasing holding patterns than everything is good, even if the ultimate cause of the pattern remains.
Don't get me wrong, the release of these holdings, if you will, is highly effective in helping a body. If there is a restriction to blood flow to an area and the restriction is removed this is beneficial to the body. It's just not SI, it's second paradigm work of relieving symptoms, which is not a bad thing.
Modalities like sports massage, neuromuscular, MFR... are all second paradigm. Very effective but not at the top of the hierarchy. Most of what people call SI, is, as I mentioned before, second paradigm until it becomes relational. Too often the new SI practitioner gravitates towards the second paradigm modalities to provide them with some "ground" that pure SI work seems to lack.
Dr. Rolf gave us a series of sessions that provide us with a container or safety net while we practice and learn SI. She asked us to stay with this program for at least 5 years, until we could learn from it how a body could be organized.
She admonished us that anyone can take a body apart but few could put one back together. As such there are no SI strokes there is only an SI view which utilizes the strokes of the other two paradigms, just like a paint brush in the hands of a house painter puts paint on a wall while in the hands of an artist creates art. (No offense to house painters.)
Monday, October 27, 2008
How smart are our animals?
This isn't going to be some cogent dissertation on animal intelligence, rather it's more of my early morning musing.
This morning at 6:45am I went out to feed my horses, which this time of year means letting them into one of my pastures. I have a routine that I follow: I go into the barn, say good morning to the horses, and get the halter for the most dominant horse. Usually this horse walks in out of the paddock in "his" stall and I put the halter on and lead him to my larger pasture, which can take more feeding pressure. Some mornings the dominant horse doesn't come in, and instead stands by the gate to the paddock to be--I assume--to the pasture which is off the paddock. I always think this is because there is something that grows in this pasture which isn't in the other one and he wants a change in his diet. That is an Anthropomorphism on my part the assignment of a human characteristic to an animal.
Most mornings I have to lead the horses across the driveway to another larger pasture. I take them across one at a time since I'm pretty sleepy in the morning and the chance's for a mistake are higher and safety rules!
Now that it's getting colder, 28 degrees this morning, I feed hay in the morning, summertime is pasture only in the AM and hay in the PM. For my larger pasture I set up some hay feeding stations, one more than the number of horses so they can eat and not fight.
In anticipation of having to do this the next morning I set up the stations a couple nights ago. Yesterday when I went out to feed and the dominant wanted to go out in the closer pasture... The hay I put out stayed out in the other pasture.
This morning when I moved the horse, pretty exciting on a cold morning with a hot horse and turned him loose he immediately went to the hay, which was covered in frost, that I had put out two nights before.
When I brought out the next horse I thought I would have to show him where I had put out more hay, but he walked right to it, even though it was 60 feet from the first horse and across my irrigation "ditch"--a two foot wide by two foot deep cut in the pasture.
Here's the intelligence question: Did the first horse see, smell or know that there was the hay out? Did the second horse use some logical reasoning, deduction, to determine that there was another hay pile, or did he see, smell... it? By logic I mean he's thinking: Horse one is eating hay, he'd have to see this and associate what is being eaten as hay and not pasture grass, therefore there must be another hay pile and it's usually over there...?
A little more,when I came into the house the cat came up to me and meowed until I said "show me what you want", she then ran over to her feed dish, one of those autofeed things, and it was empty, she needed food and was telling me. Was this a sign of intelligence or of habit?
Any comments?
This morning at 6:45am I went out to feed my horses, which this time of year means letting them into one of my pastures. I have a routine that I follow: I go into the barn, say good morning to the horses, and get the halter for the most dominant horse. Usually this horse walks in out of the paddock in "his" stall and I put the halter on and lead him to my larger pasture, which can take more feeding pressure. Some mornings the dominant horse doesn't come in, and instead stands by the gate to the paddock to be--I assume--to the pasture which is off the paddock. I always think this is because there is something that grows in this pasture which isn't in the other one and he wants a change in his diet. That is an Anthropomorphism on my part the assignment of a human characteristic to an animal.
Most mornings I have to lead the horses across the driveway to another larger pasture. I take them across one at a time since I'm pretty sleepy in the morning and the chance's for a mistake are higher and safety rules!
Now that it's getting colder, 28 degrees this morning, I feed hay in the morning, summertime is pasture only in the AM and hay in the PM. For my larger pasture I set up some hay feeding stations, one more than the number of horses so they can eat and not fight.
In anticipation of having to do this the next morning I set up the stations a couple nights ago. Yesterday when I went out to feed and the dominant wanted to go out in the closer pasture... The hay I put out stayed out in the other pasture.
This morning when I moved the horse, pretty exciting on a cold morning with a hot horse and turned him loose he immediately went to the hay, which was covered in frost, that I had put out two nights before.
When I brought out the next horse I thought I would have to show him where I had put out more hay, but he walked right to it, even though it was 60 feet from the first horse and across my irrigation "ditch"--a two foot wide by two foot deep cut in the pasture.
Here's the intelligence question: Did the first horse see, smell or know that there was the hay out? Did the second horse use some logical reasoning, deduction, to determine that there was another hay pile, or did he see, smell... it? By logic I mean he's thinking: Horse one is eating hay, he'd have to see this and associate what is being eaten as hay and not pasture grass, therefore there must be another hay pile and it's usually over there...?
A little more,when I came into the house the cat came up to me and meowed until I said "show me what you want", she then ran over to her feed dish, one of those autofeed things, and it was empty, she needed food and was telling me. Was this a sign of intelligence or of habit?
Any comments?
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Seabiscuit part 3
First let me say thanks to Jerry B. for pointing out that Phar Lap wasn't a small horse. I think I got this from a picture which may have been Seabiscuit and I got confused.
Never the less--that's how you imply that you're still correct--his power came from his lumbar coiling and his ewe neck contributed to his ability to coil, especially if he had restricted shoulders. Whereas Seabiscuit had a really nicely set on neck and an ability to rise between the shoulders to coil the lumbars.
Lumbar coiling is a very important feature in promoting power in the rear, this is what Dolphins and whales do. While other marine life, fish, don't have this movement. They have lateral bending but not coiling. If we postulate the whales and dophins evolutionarily returned to the oceans from land; then we can postulate that this movement is terrestial and returned with them. So what does this imply? Why was lumbar coiling so important to terrestial life that it adapted it, and that dolphins and whales retained it? I'm still pondering this one.
I first started on this track of analysis in 1995 when I read the proceedings from the "Second Congress on Low Back Pain", my initial interest was applying this to humans--my primary practice--but it quickly mapped over to my work with horses and then with dogs. The key to the coiling--take this with a grain of salt--is the lumbar aponeurosis which is a large fascial "sheet" in the lumbar region of the back. The aponeurosis acts like a spring in that it stores energy from the coiling of the rear end and returns it during the ground phase of the stride. (I'm defining the ground phase as the from the time the foot hits the ground to the time it leaves it, this is obviously part of protraction, or the stance phase.) The aponeurosis is stretched by the coiling as well as the brachiocephalicus stretching the latissimus which attaches into the aporneurosis and the humerus.
By the way it's this aponeurosis that gives Tiger Woods his phenomenal driving ability.
The question is: Why did this adaptation take place in evolution and only in mammals? Was it a part of the legs moving under the body? (amphibian legs are on the outside of the body)
Much more to think about.
By the way, if you look at Seabiscuits pictures you'll see he's really over at the knee on the left fore. I'm writing a two part article about working with one cause of this in Natural Horse Magazine, the first part is the next issue. I'll venture that this didn't slow him down because he was able to dynamically move his Center of Mass towards his rear legs, this is what dressage people call "lightening the forehand".
thanks for reading this.
Never the less--that's how you imply that you're still correct--his power came from his lumbar coiling and his ewe neck contributed to his ability to coil, especially if he had restricted shoulders. Whereas Seabiscuit had a really nicely set on neck and an ability to rise between the shoulders to coil the lumbars.
Lumbar coiling is a very important feature in promoting power in the rear, this is what Dolphins and whales do. While other marine life, fish, don't have this movement. They have lateral bending but not coiling. If we postulate the whales and dophins evolutionarily returned to the oceans from land; then we can postulate that this movement is terrestial and returned with them. So what does this imply? Why was lumbar coiling so important to terrestial life that it adapted it, and that dolphins and whales retained it? I'm still pondering this one.
I first started on this track of analysis in 1995 when I read the proceedings from the "Second Congress on Low Back Pain", my initial interest was applying this to humans--my primary practice--but it quickly mapped over to my work with horses and then with dogs. The key to the coiling--take this with a grain of salt--is the lumbar aponeurosis which is a large fascial "sheet" in the lumbar region of the back. The aponeurosis acts like a spring in that it stores energy from the coiling of the rear end and returns it during the ground phase of the stride. (I'm defining the ground phase as the from the time the foot hits the ground to the time it leaves it, this is obviously part of protraction, or the stance phase.) The aponeurosis is stretched by the coiling as well as the brachiocephalicus stretching the latissimus which attaches into the aporneurosis and the humerus.
By the way it's this aponeurosis that gives Tiger Woods his phenomenal driving ability.
The question is: Why did this adaptation take place in evolution and only in mammals? Was it a part of the legs moving under the body? (amphibian legs are on the outside of the body)
Much more to think about.
By the way, if you look at Seabiscuits pictures you'll see he's really over at the knee on the left fore. I'm writing a two part article about working with one cause of this in Natural Horse Magazine, the first part is the next issue. I'll venture that this didn't slow him down because he was able to dynamically move his Center of Mass towards his rear legs, this is what dressage people call "lightening the forehand".
thanks for reading this.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Seabiscuit Part 2
I've written in the past that I am concerned about how erroneous information gets propagated as fact. To hopefully not propagate erroneous information I want to write a little more about the SeaBiscuit article.
In my analysis one reason why Seabiscuit was so effective was his ability to coil his lumbars and therefore have his rear feet on the ground for a long time, transferring energy to the job of moving the body (center of mass or COM. Seabiscuit could do this, lumbar coil, because his shoulders were free enough to allow the thorax to rise between them. This is obvious when watching him walk, the initiation of the movement happens with the upward movement of the sternum. The free shoulders allows Seabiscuit's neck to rise at the base and round at the top. This is what we want.
Contrast this with Phar Lap, who also had a phenomenal lumbar curving movement but not free shoulders. To allow for the tissue length needed to coil Phar Lap, since he couldn't raise his thorax, brought his head up and bulged the base of the neck out--ventrally--causing a ewe neck.
The error that I am concerned about spreading is one that postulates that the important function in lumbar coiling is the rounding of the back, its not! The rounding is a secondary effect, and important one, but not the initiator. What allows and causes the rounding is the thorax rising between free shoulders. This is often called "lightning the forehand" or "collection" or moving the weight to the rear...which all happens as a result of shoulder freedom.
The next time you look at a horse moving at a canter or gallop--this is where the lumbar coiling is obvious--look for the rising of the thorax between the shoulders that precedes the coiling. If there isn't much coiling than there isn't much shoulder freedom.
In my analysis one reason why Seabiscuit was so effective was his ability to coil his lumbars and therefore have his rear feet on the ground for a long time, transferring energy to the job of moving the body (center of mass or COM. Seabiscuit could do this, lumbar coil, because his shoulders were free enough to allow the thorax to rise between them. This is obvious when watching him walk, the initiation of the movement happens with the upward movement of the sternum. The free shoulders allows Seabiscuit's neck to rise at the base and round at the top. This is what we want.
Contrast this with Phar Lap, who also had a phenomenal lumbar curving movement but not free shoulders. To allow for the tissue length needed to coil Phar Lap, since he couldn't raise his thorax, brought his head up and bulged the base of the neck out--ventrally--causing a ewe neck.
The error that I am concerned about spreading is one that postulates that the important function in lumbar coiling is the rounding of the back, its not! The rounding is a secondary effect, and important one, but not the initiator. What allows and causes the rounding is the thorax rising between free shoulders. This is often called "lightning the forehand" or "collection" or moving the weight to the rear...which all happens as a result of shoulder freedom.
The next time you look at a horse moving at a canter or gallop--this is where the lumbar coiling is obvious--look for the rising of the thorax between the shoulders that precedes the coiling. If there isn't much coiling than there isn't much shoulder freedom.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Seabiscuit
I rented a documentary on Seabiscuit that was a compilation of "lost" newsreel footage about him.
What was really impressive is how small he was relative to the horses that he raced against, 15hh, how much lumbar coiling he was able to achieve and how fluid his body was. The lumbar coiling is the transfer mechanism for energy to the ground to allow the Center of Mass to be propelled forward. Through the coiling the spring mechanism of the lumbar aponeurosis is engaged as is the lattismus dorsi muscle/fascia. The greater the coil the more time the rear feet are on the ground and therefore the greater the energy exchange that occurs.
Increased lumbar coiling is one of the things that I look for in a horse that I am working with as a sign that the work is progressing well.
Another small horse with phenomenal lumbar coiling is the Australian racing legend Phar Lap.
If you go to youtube and watch the match race, here's the link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcnawQ7DFaE pay attention to how the two horses move their rear at the walk, around 51 seconds into the video. You can see that Seabiscuit is much more "reachy" with his rear legs a sign of a topline that can lengthen. You can also see, for people who've trained with me, the "wave" of energy from the GRF moving along the spine and out the head.
Phar Lap on the other hand was not as subtle along the top line and got his length through turning his neck upside down, or ewe neck, which positioned the poll closer to the rear feet.
enjoy
What was really impressive is how small he was relative to the horses that he raced against, 15hh, how much lumbar coiling he was able to achieve and how fluid his body was. The lumbar coiling is the transfer mechanism for energy to the ground to allow the Center of Mass to be propelled forward. Through the coiling the spring mechanism of the lumbar aponeurosis is engaged as is the lattismus dorsi muscle/fascia. The greater the coil the more time the rear feet are on the ground and therefore the greater the energy exchange that occurs.
Increased lumbar coiling is one of the things that I look for in a horse that I am working with as a sign that the work is progressing well.
Another small horse with phenomenal lumbar coiling is the Australian racing legend Phar Lap.
If you go to youtube and watch the match race, here's the link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcnawQ7DFaE pay attention to how the two horses move their rear at the walk, around 51 seconds into the video. You can see that Seabiscuit is much more "reachy" with his rear legs a sign of a topline that can lengthen. You can also see, for people who've trained with me, the "wave" of energy from the GRF moving along the spine and out the head.
Phar Lap on the other hand was not as subtle along the top line and got his length through turning his neck upside down, or ewe neck, which positioned the poll closer to the rear feet.
enjoy
Friday, September 26, 2008
How Important is Gravity?
I've been writing about what I'm calling the movements of evolution.
This started when I noticed that my dog Jake has a "fish" walk, not a trot just a walk. This journey was also sparked by my reading Serge Gracovetsky's book, "The Spinal Engine" that premises that bipedal locomotion starts in the spine and not the legs.
I took Jake swimming the other day--actually he swims a lot but I noticed something the other day--and noticed that his swim gait is a walk, not a trot, and that while he was swimming or walking in water--not on--his pelvis movement was that of a mammal and not a fish! Can we postulate that water removes the effects of gravity? If so than we can also postulate that whatever causes him to walk like a fish is dependent on gravity.
More thought is needed.
I'm working on animations of the different pelvis movements and will post them to the website when they're done.
This started when I noticed that my dog Jake has a "fish" walk, not a trot just a walk. This journey was also sparked by my reading Serge Gracovetsky's book, "The Spinal Engine" that premises that bipedal locomotion starts in the spine and not the legs.
I took Jake swimming the other day--actually he swims a lot but I noticed something the other day--and noticed that his swim gait is a walk, not a trot, and that while he was swimming or walking in water--not on--his pelvis movement was that of a mammal and not a fish! Can we postulate that water removes the effects of gravity? If so than we can also postulate that whatever causes him to walk like a fish is dependent on gravity.
More thought is needed.
I'm working on animations of the different pelvis movements and will post them to the website when they're done.
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