Stretch therapy and mind-body connection
A review published in June 2017 in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience concluded that inflammation is a common pathway of stress-related diseases.
Combine that with the fact your brain locks onto your body’s state via the primary somatosensory cortex.
Then it’s easy to assume the increased stresses from injuries affect your brain and this is something I come across time after time again in my practice.
So if the brain talks to your body, what’s or who is responsible for you if know how to communicate to yourself that everything is okay? That feeling not so good is okay and it’s just where you are. That progress that is measurable is worth more than your subjective state of being?
Mind-Body connection. If the brain is holding the body back, does that mean the body is holding the brain back? Does that mean the body hold's the body back and the brain holds the brain back?
The short answer is both and this is where we health professionals come in and provide clarity for our clients.
What my journey through injuries had taught me, particularly my insidious neck injury, is that a lot of facts play in. Every 3 days I would find a new factor that would send it towards or away from positive change. It would change from, apprehension of movement (mental, I was concerned not to hurt it again) to physical trigger (body, a movement would hurt it) to symptom management (mental and body, I had to change my habits so I could function day to day while allowing it to heal) to apprehension (mental, baby steps to see if other things would agitate it), physical trigger (a different task would agitate it), so on and so forth.
This cycle was on repeat until I collected enough evidence to realise what the root problems were so I could manage symptoms this allowed me to relax because I could accept what was happening to me, which provided me clarity so I could uncover the cause.
This is a conversation that was looked into deeply by Stretch Therapy Teachers.
Kit Laughlin, the founder of Stretch Therapy. Drives this conversation with both scientific literate and the N+1 practitioner (either teacher or client experience). Watch such a conversation here
Because of the binary nature of this mind-body connection, training the body to be flexible and strong without excess tension guided by relaxed breath over a consistent period of time means you're confidence as your threshold has deeper reserves. To the point, you can raise and lower the amount of stress required for mental growth under your own will and can still have a calm manner about you.
This way you’re equiped to deal with injuries before they happen.
The practice of this is rather simple, once you have your breathing practice to the point you’re appropriately relaxed, you ask yourself, as you’re doing a task (say walking the dog then), how do I feel right now? This gets your mind talking to your body, so it can update itself again from how you were feeling earlier.
In my exercise coaching and massage treatments, I do this by learning how the client communicates with themselves and I guide the conversation to things that relax their breathing and puts them into a state of thinking or acceptance.
More information:
Be Great
Anthony Albert.
