What is your body telling you?

While pondering what to write about this month, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to share a couple of recent experiences I’ve had with interpreting messages from my body. We all have aches and pains, some familiar/chronic and some unfamiliar and perplexing. We usually think about these aches and pains as being of musculoskeletal origin. That may be true, but a painful flare up could be due to an inflammatory process from food or a neighboring organ or meridian. I hope that sharing my personal stories will help you to think about possible reasons for your discomfort. When we know the source, we have a better chance of correcting it quickly. 

• I have chronic rib pain on my left side. It seems that at least one of my ribs has a sloppy joint between it and its paired vertebra. This causes many of my ribs to pop and shift, creating discomfort. I manage it with strengthening exercises, chiropractic, massage, and acupuncture. A couple of weeks ago, the ribs were especially irritated and inflamed. When a chiropractic adjustment didn’t give the usual relief, it occurred to me that maybe my spleen was having an issue. The spleen is located directly under the affected ribs. I muscle-tested myself, and found that the spleen was stressed. I didn’t find a specific stressor, but did find a supplement, Spleen PMG from Standard Process, that offered support to the spleen and did the trick. Within a day or two, I was back to my usual level of management. 

• Several months ago, I started having a right hamstring issue. Somewhat suddenly, I wasn’t able to comfortably do a Downward Facing Dog pose while practicing yoga. I’m not sure how I injured it, or if I actually did. I worked on it and tried to help it heal with massage,  acupuncture, and stretching. It was very stubborn! After a couple of months of not much change, I finally decided to try an acupuncture technique of pricking and bleeding an acupuncture point at the end of the bladder meridian to relieve the restriction in the meridian. The bladder meridian runs from the inside of the eye, up over the head, down the back, down the back of the leg (along the hamstring), and ends at the outside edge of the little toe. I did the treatment just before I started a yoga session. When I got into Downward Facing Dog pose, the pain and flexibility was at least 75% improved. From this point of increased flexibility, it was much easier to fully rehab the hamstring. 

• A few months ago, I had a similar situation with sudden mid-lower back tightness and discomfort. After a couple of days with no change, I started testing myself, suspecting a kidney issue. Indeed, it was a kidney issue. Again, I found a supplement, this time Renatrophin PMG from Standard Process. I was back to normal within a couple of days.

• Another story I will share is about my arthritic big toe joints. I’m pretty certain that the arthritis was originally triggered by mercury toxicity after a lot of dental work in my late twenties, which included removing old amalgam fillings. If only I had known that the amalgams and their removal was the cause way back when, I would have been able to do more to support my toes! In the last 10 years, my big toes were what taught me that I was very sensitive to oxalates in my diet. (See the previous issue of the Red Clover Clinic Newsletter for more information on oxalates.) I first realized that if I ate spinach, my toes would flare up. Then cashews. Then beets and chocolate. The list goes on… The degeneration and pain in the joint is pretty severe, but I’m able to manage it with strengthening my feet, wearing proper footwear, and avoiding oxalates in my diet. However, the toes still occasionally flare up. 
  It finally occurred to me that the reason for these flares is that the big toe joint lies at the beginning of the liver meridian. The liver is a major detoxifying organ in the body. When the liver is stressed, the big toe joint area becomes swollen and painful. Often this happens when my body enters a cycle of detoxification. If I find appropriate supplementation to support the liver and kidneys, it quiets the flare up fairly quickly. 

• The final story is about my dry, irritated eyes. I’m sure there are many contributing factors to my eyes being more dry than they used to be, most notably aging. That said, one of the most helpful supplements has been Cytozyme LV from Biotics. In Chinese medicine, the liver meridian opens to the eyes, which means that the liver meridian is intimately connected with the health of the eyes and vision. Muscle testing showed me that my liver was the stressor to my eyes, and that’s how I found the right supplement. 

When working with my clients, I’m always looking for clues like these to get to the bottom of their ailments. When a musculoskeletal complaint stays flared up, I look for underlying reasons such as these. Emotions are another possible trigger, and you can read more about how I deal with emotional blockages in the July/August 2022 issue of the Red Clover Clinic Newsletter. If you need help making sense of what your body is trying to tell you, I would be happy to help!

Are you moving functionally?

In my last article, Getting to the Root of Pain and Illness, I introduced Neurokinetic Therapy (NKT) as an option for treating musculoskeletal pain. I would like to focus a little more attention to this method, so that my clients can develop a deeper understanding of how their bodies work and how we can use NKT to increase function and decrease pain.

Do you have a pain that is always there no matter how much you use a foam roller or seek out other therapies? Do you get temporary relief, but the pain always returns? If you have pain that is a result of damage to your body, NKT may not be able to offer much relief. However, if you have a chronically tight muscle that feels like a toothache, a chronic muscle weakness that prevents you from moving normally, or any annoying aches and pains, NKT may be just the thing for you.

In NKT, we assess movement patterns. We consider where the person has pain, what the tissue feels like, and what muscles may be involved. We do a series of muscle tests to determine which muscles are facilitated (testing strong) and which are inhibited (testing weak). It is important to note that facilitated could mean that the muscle is functioning normally, or that it is too tight and is the prime mover in a compensation pattern. On the flip side, if a muscle tests inhibited, it doesn’t mean that it is inherently weak; it may just be switched off by a facilitated muscle. The layers of compensation can get very complicated, but the magic of NKT is that layer by layer, we can reestablish healthy, functional movement patterns.

The bottom line is that when your body uses dysfunctional movement patterns to move, pain develops. When your body uses functional movement patterns to move, pain goes away.

How do dysfunctional movement patterns develop, and how do we fix them? 

All movement patterns are stored in the brain, specifically in the motor control center that is part of the cerebellum. The motor control center is directed by the cerebrum and the limbic system to create movement patterns. The cerebrum controls all voluntary actions of the body and the limbic system is the emotional center of the brain, which creates an interesting link between strong emotions, stress, shock and trauma, and movement patterns. When you’re under stress, do you hold your breath or clench your jaw? This could be the start of a dysfunctional movement pattern. Due to the plasticity of the brain, dysfunctional movement patterns are as easy to create as functional movement patterns.

When the body is injured or stressed, whether physically or emotionally, healthy movement may become difficult. Without us even noticing, the brain recruits other muscles to do the work of whichever muscle is injured or fatigued. After the compensation pattern is repeated, it becomes ingrained in the motor control center. This is how dysfunctional movement patterns are established.

For example, if you are doing bicep curls, and you decide to use a heavier weight and do more reps than you usually do, your biceps will fatigue and weaken. If you continue to work through the muscle fatigue, your brain will begin to recruit other muscles of the shoulder and forearm to make the movement happen, without much help from the biceps. If you continue to do this, your biceps will become inhibited and won’t fire properly during normal use and you will most likely develop pain somewhere in your body, due to the compensation pattern that was created.

In this example, we can see that the motor control center learns through failure. If the bicep is weakened, the body learns how to recruit other muscles to achieve the desired end result.

In NKT we use this concept to our advantage. We do manual muscle tests that isolate the function of the muscles being tested. If the muscle test is failed, i.e. the muscle is inhibited and doesn’t fire, the motor control center becomes open to learning a new pattern or to reestablishing a functional pattern. This is our window to find the dysfunctional movement pattern, release it, and assign a specific exercise to burn the functional movement pattern into the brain. Often the exercise is just a repeat of the muscle test without the resistance. In the bicep example above, the bicep curl could be repeated without weight or with very light weight, simply to fire the bicep.  

Next time you are in the clinic, ask if NKT may be the best approach to help with your chronic aches and pains.

Getting to the root of pain and illness

Over the past several years, I have studied many different treatment methods. I’ve learned quite a few that are effective at stopping a symptom. I have found, however, that often symptoms return if the root cause wasn’t addressed. The methods that I stick with are those that focus on getting to the cause of pain and illness.

The body speaks!

What makes a treatment method able to get to the root of a problem? It requires a way to talk to the body and allow the practitioner to be led to the root cause so she or he can determine the best treatment method.

In spite of the fact that we all have arms, legs, livers, and brains, each body requires different strategies to heal. The trick is trying to find out exactly what YOUR body needs to heal its back pain, digestive troubles, headaches. When the body gets exactly what it needs, it is able to heal itself.

The two methods that I have incorporated into my practice to ask the body what it needs to heal are the pulse testing method called the VAS (vascular autonomic signal) and muscle testing. Both methods allow the practitioner to gather information about the body and figure out exactly how to treat it. 

Vascular autonomic signal

VAS is the voice of the body I listen to primarily when practicing auricular medicine. I have different protocols on how to scan the ear to search out specific kinds of information, indicating things like pain, dental issues, emotional blockages, and other conditions. What I’m looking for are changes in the pulse. When the pulse gets noticeably sharper, it indicates a relationship with what I’m searching for. When treating with a needle or laser, I can be very precise with the location of the treatment. This kind of precision is very important, as even a tenth of a millimeter makes a difference.

Muscle testing

Muscle testing is another great method to converse with the body. I have been using it to evaluate the body nutritionally by doing Nutrition Response Testing and Morphogenic Field Technique for the past three years.

Muscle testing works because our body is made up of energy. Our nervous system is our electrical system, which pushes energy through our muscles. If you are exposed to something that impacts your nervous system negatively, your muscles will short circuit and go weak temporarily. This is how we can test foods, which have their own energy fields, and other substances that can act as poisons to the body. We can put light pressure over an organ or other area of the body that may have impaired function, which also causes weakness in the muscle test.

Once we have determined what the problems are, we can do muscle testing to find the solutions. For example, if the body is stressed from a chemical exposure, we can find a supplement that will help the body detoxify it. If a food sensitivity shows up, we can recommend avoidance of that food as well as a digestive enzyme to help clean up the debris left behind by the immune reaction to the food.

Something new-Neurokinetic Therapy

I recently attended a training session for a method called Neurokinetic Therapy (NKT). NKT uses muscle testing to assess dysfunctional movement patterns and pinpoint the root cause of these patterns in the brain’s motor control center. This therapy is very useful to identify which movement pattern is causing pain, weakness, and postural distortion, and determine how to release it and reprogram the motor control center to restore normal function. The reprogramming happens through a few minutes of simple exercises daily.

I’m excited to be adding a therapy that helps me precisely assess the musculoskeletal system in order to determine the most effective treatment and rehabilitative exercises to resolve a problem. This method pairs well with both bodywork and acupuncture, and I am confident that it will incorporate seamlessly into my practice.

As I’ve studied each of these methods, I’ve been tickled by how much overlap there is among them. They’re all tuned to factors that disrupt the body’s normal energy patterns, be they repetitive stress, sugar or other toxins, or scars. And they’re all able to listen to the body and figure out what it needs to heal, be it nutrition, herbal therapy, homeopathy, acupuncture, and/or rehabilitative exercises. It’s like learning different dialects of the same language-the body’s language.

Poor posture = loss of function = pain

Do you have nagging pain in your low back? Do you carry chronic tension in your shoulders? If you have chronic discomfort in an area with no known injury, you may wonder why that is. The best answer is postural stress. Can you relate to the photo at left?

There are several very common postural stress patterns that I see in my clinic: posterior neck pain and stiffness, shoulder pain with restricted range of motion, a painful knot near the shoulder blade, low back ache, and hip tightness. People typically describe these areas as tight and restricted, with nagging pain. These patterns are quite frustrating, because they are stubborn and resistant to treatment.

How to think about postural stress—the back has a front

When we have pain in our shoulders, we typically massage our shoulders. When we have pain in our backs, we massage, twist and stretch out our backs.  Though this offers relief as we're doing it, it often doesn't fix the problem. 

We would do better to remember that our back has a front. How we hold our body has a big impact on how we feel.

The common pain patterns that I see are a result of tight flexor muscles (generally, those on the front of the body) and/or stretched, weak extensor muscles (those on the back of the body). 

Looking at the figure above, we can see that the front of the body is collapsed and contracted, while the back is arched and stretched, like a hinge closing on itself. We need to figure out how to pry open the hinge, stack the body the way it was meant to be, and focus on healthy, functional movement.

Shoulder or scapular pain

If someone has shoulder or scapular pain, I not only work on the area where it hurts with acupuncture and massage, I also work to loosen and stretch the front of the upper body, specifically the pectoralis muscles (pectoralis major illustration) on the chest and the subscapularis (subscapularis illustration) in the armpit. If you don't loosen these muscles, the pain in the shoulder and around the scapula will come right back. 

With this pain pattern, it is common to see rounded shoulders and shoulder blades that seem to be sliding down the back. In this case, relaxing the chest isn't enough; the back muscles must be strengthened as well.

The door stretch shown above is a helpful exercise you can do yourself. Hold each stretch until you feel the muscle fibers releasing. It is also important to do the stretch with your hand positioned at different heights to open the chest more completely.  

Neck pain

Once the upper torso is loosened and more functional, the neck will typically feel and move better.  If there is still residual pain, then the muscles of the neck need to be addressed. 

The best place to start is by massaging and pinching tender points along the scalene (scalene illustration) and sternocleidomastoid (SCM)(SCM Illustration) muscles on the sides and front of the neck, as seen in the first illustration. These muscles should also be stretched, as seen in the second illustration. 

It is also important to stretch and loosen your sub-occipital muscles (at the base of your skull) by tucking your chin and gently pressing it posteriorly, and massaging them with your thumb or pressing them into a tennis ball.

Low back pain

If someone has low back pain, it is very important to be sure the iliopsoas muscle (iliopsoas illustration) isn't contracted. It often becomes shortened with extended sitting. If it is contracted, all the back stretches in the world aren't going to solve the problem. I recommend lunges with an arched back (below, left) to stretch the iliopsoas, before stretching the back itself.   

Prying open the hinge of the hip

For hip pain and tightness, I always recommend using a tennis ball to roll out the hip flexors, with a focus on the tensor fasciae latae (TFL) muscle (TFL illustration). Look for the most tender spot that may refer pain down the leg or into the buttocks, then allow yourself to sink onto the tennis ball. A foam roller can also be used to roll out the tight areas on the hips and legs. Don't forget to also roll out the gluteus muscles to improve hip function. 

Once the muscles have been softened, you can stretch out your low back with a forward bend (above, right). This has the added benefit of stretching out your hamstrings, in case they are tight and pulling down on your pelvis. The pelvis forms the foundation for your structure, and when it is functioning properly, your whole body will stack and move as it is meant to move.

Helpful homework

These are a few simple exercises you can do to support your body and correct postural negligence in between acupuncture and bodywork treatments. Over time, your body will become more functional and your pain and discomfort will decrease. 

For the best, most  efficient results to reestablish proper posture and function, I refer my clients to Michelle Mariska for Healing Motion Therapy, based on the Egoscue Method. This method has helped me and many of my clients tremendously. Read the following article to learn more about this powerful method.

Healing Motion Therapy

by Michelle Mariska

Healing Motion Therapy (HMT) takes your whole body alignment into consideration when treating your symptoms. The therapy’s basic principle is that everything in the body is connected. The body needs to be evaluated and treated as a whole, rather than just focusing treatment on areas of the body that are experiencing pain.

During an initial appointment, I will obtain an understanding of the pain you are experiencing and evaluate your body’s posture and alignment to understand the source of the pain. I then walk you through an evaluation, including use of photos that are helpful in understanding postural and alignment issues.

Based on my analysis, I’ll next guide you through a short series of exercises, designed specifically for you. The exercises are simple, gentle, and easy to replicate. Clients are expected to complete the exercises at home, then come back for another session in two to three weeks.

Most clients see and feel positive results at the first session. Typically, four to eight sessions are necessary for clients to maximize the postural changes. At each subsequent visit, your static posture and gait are re-evaluated and a new set of exercises is provided.

I often see overused and tight muscles in the mid-back from too much sitting. We sit at work, we sit in the car, and then we sit at home. For example, a client comes in with knee pain. Upon evaluation, I explain that tightness and decreased motion in their mid-back contributes to a lack of motion in their pelvis. The pelvis has muscles connected to the knee, and is thus causing the knee pain. The client is often amazed how their knee pain is relieved after doing the individually designed exercises that are focused on their upper body, not on the area that is painful.

HMT differs from physical therapy because it treats the cause, not the symptom. The therapy also works great as an adjunct to other modalities, including acupuncture and massage. HMT enables another practitioner to reach a new level of healing, since we are releasing the superficial layer of muscle compensation.

Symptoms treated-muscle and nerve pain of the back, knee, hip, shoulder, ankle, foot, neck, elbow and hand. If it’s connected to your body, I’d like to think I can help you.

Michelle Mariska has a bachelor’s degree in exercise physiology. She has over 17 years experience helping clients relieve their symptoms and live a pain-free life. HMT is based on the teachings of Pete Egoscue and The Egoscue Method in San Diego, CA, where Michelle worked for four years.

Healing Motion Therapy is located at 2718 E 50th St, Minneapolis, MN 55417

(612) 799-6946 or michelle@healingmotiontherapy.com