I wonder what that pain means?

We sometimes talk of the "mind-body connection" like it's a fascinating theory. It's not. It's truth. The entire body is one unit so there never was a separation of the mind from the body.

Your emotions happen physically, not ephemerally. They start in your brain, in a specific place, in response to some stimuli. The brain then kicks off a cascade of instructions to the rest of the body --  organs, glands, muscles, nerves, etc. Your emotions get expressed through and sometimes stored in your body, in your tissues.

This article has a great picture of where emotions can get stored. It also has some very good advice for ways to understand and work with that.

Sometimes our muscular pain is just overworked muscles. Sometimes it's more. If you suspect you've got some old emotions stuck in your tissue, let's talk about that the next time we see each other. You don't have to tell me anything about the specific emotions that you don't want to but we can include some focused work in your session if you'd like to see what it can do for you.

Be well, enjoy the weekend (and a special blessing to any of you who work retail!), and I look forward to seeing you again.

Count Your Body Parts

Take a moment and count how many body parts you have. Go ahead, I'll wait.

[insert Jeopardy music here]

What number did you come up with? 5? 10? 100? The answer is.....

1

Seriously, 1.

We divide the body into parts to make it easier to study. In truth, however, the body is only one part. A single unit. 1.

The toe and the earlobe are one.
The left hip and the third rib are one.
The bladder and the hypothalamus are one.
The hamstring and the belly button are one.

The body functions as a single entity. All parts -- all parts -- are interconnected. Yes, what happened to your neck in that car accident in 1987 can be the reason your feet hurt all the time in 2013.

You entire body is suspended in a web of fascia and the fascia is continuous throughout the body. Fascia is an amazing thing to study, explore, and understand. Fascia also allows my work to have significant effect, sometimes, with very little effort. If I can engage the fascia, I can eventually move everything in your body.

And, yes, I do think that's pretty damned cool.

How much control do we have over body fat?

From The First 20 Minutes: Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer by Gretchen Reynolds.

Meanwhile, despite the popular notion that slow exercise burns more fat than longer, harder bouts, it doesn't.

Did people burn more fat calories in the hours after they'd exercise? The answer was an unequivocal no.

Why exercise doesn't inevitably make people skinny is one of the more intriguing and vexing issues in physiology. Yet study after study finds that, with some rare exceptions, it does not..."In general, exercise by itself is pretty useless for weight loss," says Eric Ravussin, Ph.D., a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and an expert on the topic.

The idea that you can walk your way to fitness, it's just not proving to be true.

In physiological terms, the results are "consistent with the paradigm that mechanisms to maintain body fat are more effective in women," Dr. Braun and his colleagues wrote. In practical terms, they're scientific proof that life is unfair. Female bodies, inspired almost certainly "by a biological need to maintain energy stores for reproduction," Dr. Braun says, fight hard to hold on to every molecule of fat. Exercise for many women (and some men) inexorably increases the desire to eat.

Several years ago, researchers discovered that people who carry certain variations of a gene known as the fat-mass and obesity-associated, or FTO, gene have an enormously increased risk of becoming obese over their lifetimes. Close to a third of Americans of European descent may harbor this gene.

Other scientists have found that physical fitness, whether or not it's accompanied by personal fatness, leads to a longer, more robust life.

New truths about exercise and food

From The First 20 Minutes: Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer by Gretchen Reynolds.

If you're hungry, you need to eat. Food happens to be very good for that...That practical wisdom will not, of course, prevent the continued rise of gimcrack dietary fads.

Antioxidant supplements "prevent the induction of molecular regulators of insulin sensitivity and endogenous antioxidant defense by physical exercise," the German scientists concluded. Or, more bluntly, the vitamins undercut the exercise's benefits.

"The human body, [Li Li Ji, Ph.D., a professor of exercise physiology and nutritional science at the University of Wisconsin] says, is quite a smart machine.

Ask Yourself: Am I an Athlete? Be honest. If you're not working out more hour a day or at an achingly strenuous intensity, then, really, you're not.

If you're thirsty, drink. If you're not, you are probably sufficiently hydrated.

In general, in fact, exercise seems to be one of the few reliable means of avoiding stacking on pounds. If it doesn't aid much in weight loss, it is helpful in weight control.

Making Your Knees Feel Better

Do you have osteoarthritis of the knee? You can make a big difference in how you feel with self-massage.

A study in Canada showed that 20 minutes of massaging your quadriceps (front of the thigh) and around the knee can bring pain relief (though it won't increase range of motion).

The study used a specific procedure to massage the knee. I don't know the protocol but I can  show you ways to massage your quads and work around your knee. We'll both see how that works for you.

You can read the details here.

Goofiest (and good) explanation of massage I've seen lately

Just watch. And smile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPzHjb0W9yE

Show Me Yer Scars!

Life is full of boo-boos, woopsies, and oh-sh*ts and they often leave a little memento behind in the form of a scar, large or small. So if you're older than, say, 5 you've probably got scars.

I love working with scars. I learned some basic techniques 2 years ago in a short course. I took the longer course this past weekend and now I'm even more excited to work with scars! If you've got 'em, let's take a look at them next time you're in.

Don't tell me they're too small, too old, never bothered you, etc. Every scar -- every scar -- affects the tissue around it in 3 dimensions. Scars are living tissue and are, therefore, always open to change. It's stunning (seriously, boggles the mind) how far and insidious the effects of scars can be.

This is a brief sampling of the volunteers and their scars I got to work with this weekend:

* a woman with a contracture in her palm (functions like a scar); she felt the work all the way up to her elbow

* a woman with a 20-year-old hysterectomy scar that was tightening up her low back (abdominal scars often exacerbate or cause low-back pain)

* a man with a 60-year-old (yes, 60) heart surgery scar that was affecting how much he could turn his head

* a woman with torso scars that hamper her ability to sing her full range

* a man with a scar on his Achilles tendon; he got more range of motion in that foot than he's had in his entire life

Take a moment to do a mental catalog of all your scars. How many do you have?

I did that this weekend, of course, but only just remembered this evening that I have a 48-year-old scar on my wrist! I'm curious if it is part of the reason I am decidedly less adroit with that hand.

It's worth seeing what can be done and exploring what might be happening in your body because of scars.