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Home - Fixing Backs, Pain, Stress and Tightness with
Structural Integration Free Booklets List Higher Function Booklet Intro Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 5 |
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Your Body, and Mind,
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SOME KEY
PSYCHOLOGICAL In the rest of this booklet, I’ll explain more of the psychological and personal growth benefits of both the Bodywork and the Bodymind Therapy techniques. Remember that even when we’re just removing what we think are physical tightness and pain, with this approach, we are also directly affecting the parts of the person we usually think are psychological, mental or emotional. These four aspects are inseparable, because we are really “one thing” and we just look at ourselves from different perspectives. Besides the results I’ve already reported, I want to briefly describe four important psychological benefits we can get, just from the physical manipulations alone. And I want to emphasize that these benefits, along with many others, get even better when we add in the Body-Mind Therapies introduced in the next section. I just briefly mentioned one benefit, that people reported their psychotherapy got better because they could see and understand their issues better. That’s because the negative stored energies of past events are often located under a layer or two of tight outer muscles. When this is the case, people’s brains can’t “find” that information. So in their psychotherapy, they just can’t seem to get a handle on the source of the issue. When the Bodywork releases the tightness in the outer layers of muscles, these inner energies can be felt and the information about the past events can more easily come to mind. A lot of times, their emotional content can be reached and the person can get a catharsis, or release, of feelings that have been stuck inside for decades. A second benefit also helps in psychotherapy. I mentioned above that people find themselves more willing and interested in making positive changes in their lives. This is because the “stuff” that was influencing us to act negatively got removed when we pressed on it and spread it out. But when it was there, a lot of people would just keep going round and round on the issue and never seem to “get off it.” Many people would even keep doing the negative thing when they agreed with the therapist that they’d try to stop. That’s because the part of them that agreed and truly wanted to change, was not the stored energy from the past “battling,” repression and hopelessness. As I’ve explained, when the Bodywork squeezes this material out of the tissue and it dissipates out of the body, the ideas and behaviors from the past events no longer exist in the body nor in the mind. Neither do the tensions and rigidity. What I want to add is that the person’s consciousness can now think more deeply and clearly about the issue. As the Bodywork removes the negative stored material, it also removes our muscular hardness layer after layer. That allows our minds to actually feel more of us inside ourselves. In fact, the Bodywork has moved the “place” of “our consciousness” deeper inside us, literally. The tissues are obviously clearer of the garbage and tensions so people “live pleasurably” from deeper inside their emotional and awareness centers. Even when measured scientifically, the tissues actually have a more positive and “enjoyable” energy. So the quality of who we are “improves.” A third benefit is a true “psycho-somatic” one. Psychological characteristics get better along with physical characteristics. Different areas of the physical body actually affect different behaviors that we usually think are only mental. The arms and sides, for instance, are used for “reaching out,” either to take in or push away. The legs give us a stance and get us around. The depth, breath and ease of breathing can give us an “inspiration.” If we can’t breath deeply and our bodies don’t move from neck to pelvis, and if our sides and back also don’t move much either, how much inspiration will we be able to have, either physically or emotionally? If the legs are tight and restricted, and they lean on such a tilt that we have to use our torso muscles to stop from falling, what kind of stance do we have in the world and how well do we move ourselves around? On the other hand, if the legs feel light, but they also feel sturdier than before, and our stride is longer and freer, what kind of stance and movement will we have then? If our arms and the sides of our torso are much more flexible than before, and we can move around more freely, won’t our abilities to reach out and make contact be better? It’s been demonstrated over and over, that when we physically improve each of the sections of the body, we are indeed improving some of our behavior characteristics as well. They are psycho-somatic functions. And again, the quality of who we are improves this way, too. The fourth benefit has to do with being able to express our wishes, and our inner desires, out into the world, and get them acknowledged better. I’ve explained that the Bodywork removes physical and psychological blocks. Here is how the removal of those blocks lets us move forward in the “flow” of our “life’s direction.” To take action in the physical world, we conceive of what we want to do in the forebrain. The rear brain then transmits the way to carry out these ideas by sending motor signals down the spine and into our various muscles and organs. Then the structure works in a sequence, first the small muscles deep down initiate the movement, and then the big, doing muscles on the outside of the body carry it out. This will occur for doing and accomplishing movements and it will also occur for contracting and protecting movements. It even occurs when we speak and sing, and blink our eyes. When we’re bunched up and chronically tight, this pattern of muscle movement doesn’t happen as well as it's designed. The muscles don’t move as much as they’re designed to move, and sets of muscle don’t move in a coordinated effort, the way our anatomy is supposed to be working. The various muscles next to each other are too glued together, in a block, with one muscle’s fascial sack stuck to another’s sack. So a lot of our differentiation and articulation can’t happen. This same glued-up condition keeps the inner-muscle-to-outer-muscle movement from happening very well, too. So our inner expression doesn’t take the form in the outer, physical world the way we picture it, mostly because the bunched-up and glued fascia inhibits the nerve and muscle action from doing what it could do. What Structural Integration Bodywork does is separate, or un-glue, those fascial sacks from each other at the same time we lengthen everything. And in the process, we’re putting the muscles, bones and joints more into the “organization” they’re designed to be in. Then the sensory nervous system will receive a more accurate picture of what’s going on in the body. And when the motor nerve system sends out its well-defined instructions, the body’s physical structure will do what we want it to do better. A world record holder, Olympic athlete told me his control over his movements was noticeably better after I’d structurally integrated a lot of it. Other people have said they’re able to give public talks better; they no longer have their old fears about “being out there,” and their presentations are more powerful. Loving feelings also come out better. In fact, when we’ve neutralized the restricting tightnesses from our traumatic events, people are able to express a wide range of feelings easier. As you’ve read, the loosening removes a lot of old traumatic energies that were stored in the tissues at the same time that it re-lengthens the muscles. So we’re “cleaner,” and the emotions we express are also more “accurate” for the current situation, or for the point we’d like to get across in our communication. One actor said only his character would now come out when he spoke his lines. “He” wasn’t in the way. And because the neuro-muscular system works better from the deeper levels out to the surface, we can express our creative ideas and long term goals out into the world and more people will hear and acknowledge them. Many people find their career paths open up after getting their bodies “Structurally” Integrated. In fact, at various times in our lives we want to expand, sometimes in a new, or just bigger direction. But the muscle and fascia system that make up our form, is still fixed in the shape and consistency of what we have been doing. So what we want to express from the inside gets modified, or restricted by the form it has to go through to reach the outside. Structural Integration clears out the old form along with its energies from past restrictions, and simultaneously gives us a new, higher functioning form that can adapt to a series of new expressions, and not get so stuck in any one of them. Many people say their lives open up better to their goals after this treatment. And a lot of that has to do with freeing up our energies so they get out into the world better. We have a series of energy centers and energy flows inside the body, or actually, as part of the body. They’ve been measured many times and are used in various medical disciplines, including Traditional Chinese Medicine and various hospitals in the former Soviet Union. These energies work along with our muscle movement, and were shown to be inhibited by bunched-up and hard fascia. (It’s like lead shielding; the energy doesn’t pass through it well) So when Structural Integration makes our inside-to-outside muscle flows better, it is simultaneously making the energy flows better, too. People notice acupuncture and “energy healing” treatments affect them stronger, and they can feel the energy flows go much deeper and more fully into their bodies. On the physical level, we’re made of atoms and the elements inside atoms are just flows of energy. The muscles, and the organs, all of which have fascia running through them, are now of a different consistency, and their qualities are better. They absorb nutrients and remove waste products better, and they absorb and transmit biological energy better, too. We know we can make this better with nutrition and cleansing, and with exercise. We give it a very big boost with Structural Integration, too.
This
energy also flows out of us, through the air and
into
people and things around us. And we also
receive energies from people and things
around us, too. When we were bunched up and limited all the way down,
that’s what people “got” energetically, no matter what the information was we
wanted to say. In fact, our message out in the world was weaker. And
on the receiving end, our inner awareness and understanding couldn’t get a clear
“picture” of what was being transmitted from others.
After Structural Integration, other people get a
clearer picture from our own, deeper centers, and the inner centers get a
clearer picture from them.
Introduction Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
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