Perhaps the biggest health secret humankind needs to hear is being carried by the bodywork profession! What do you think it is?
Ever since Ida Rolf stressed the important of verticality and the role that fascia plays in that – we have seen, in essence, the final step in human evolution.
Most humans are stuck to some extent though – still leaning over like half-apes sometimes (and behaving that way sometimes too!).
What’s the problem?
I call it hypersympathetonia (HST for short). People are stuck in “fight or flight”. When they are stuck there, they stay defended. And the primary psycho-physical defense is to stay in flexion.
Again and again we therapists see the terrible health consequences of being chronically forwardly flexed:
- not enough room to breathe
- chronic back pain resulting from hunched over posture
- compromises in gait with an unbalanced body
- inability to access one’s gut feelings
- compromises in digestion, assimilation and elimination
- compromise of the thorax – the heart’s environment
- pain in the shoulders and neck
- forward head that accompanies flexion ultimately compromises blood flow to the brain
Clients are in pain, they’re under-oxygenating their bodies. they have diminished access to their feelings, they can’t think or even walk straight. That’s a HOST OF BIG PROBLEMS!
What’s the secret then?
GO TO THE BELLY! There is no other place so desperately needing attention in the body!
You cannot even begin to remedy the dire consequences of chronic flexion without going to the center and to the musculoskeletal source of chronic forward flexion – tension in rectus abdominis, iliopsoas and other abdominal muscles and organs.
That is why knowledgeable abdominal massage is perhaps the most important skill we need to help our clients.
Yes I know they won’t come in asking for it, usually. But when they begin to experience the benefits of opening here – THAT THEY CAN NOT GET ANY OTHER WAY – clients begin to want those results again.
When we make peace with our bellies and open up, it will be a new world.
On February 22-24, we are bringing in from Seattle, Washington, for the first time one of the greatest international teachers of Abdominal Massage – Marty Ryan.
Look at his videos. Read his bio, and then register for this class. Don’t Miss it! Everyone needs this level of knowledge, skill and evolution.