Stress (in life and relationships) and repetitive motions (e.g., in our occupation) have similar effects: we tighten or get tight so often or for so long that our brain — the master-control organ of our muscular system — learns to hold muscles tight indefinitely, automatically, habitually, and ultimately, beyond our ability to relax them.

For example, a car mechanic may develop back spasms or neck pain; a haircutter may develop wrist and hand pain; someone with a stressful job or home life may develop headaches — and of course, joint pain due to overcompression by tight muscles is common among the general population.

A person going through a life crisis may emerge with new tensions, restricted breathing, and low energy.

We forget how we used to be and get stuck in a strange new condition. The burn of muscle fatigue and stiffness become permanent. Inflammation, chronic fatigue, and joint degeneration commonly occur as long-term side-effects of that tension. Stress-related symptoms such as headaches or sciatica or other symptoms occur, seemingly inexplicably.

Despite these symptoms, including pain, we may have no injury. The injury may have healed, the life crisis may have passed, but we may remain stuck with the residue of injury and/or stress.

Because tight muscles cause pain and stiffness, because your brain controls your muscles, any therapy, to be effective, must address muscular activity at the brain (i.e., memory) level.

Somatic education has some advantages over drugs or therapy applied to soft tissue and joints: much less pain during therapy and faster improvement. In many cases, Hanna Somatic Education^® is sufficient as a stand-alone rehabilitation method.

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According to one ad, depression (formerly a psychological condition related to conditions of life, to be treated by psychotherapists who foster responsible living) is now “a serious medical condition” to be treated by anti-depressant drugs; we have “ED” to be treated by Viagra, Cialis, and — what’s the third one?? — rather than by improving ones overall health and the quality of ones relationships; back and muscle pain, of course, are to be treated with Advil or Tylenol or God-knows-what, rather than by relieving the muscular stresses that underlie most back pain; and sleep disorders have their favorite drugs of the day. Attention Deficit Disorder is commonly treated with drugs, without recognizing that our idiot entertainment media have made a “style” out of one-second visuals that interrupt attention before it can rest steadily upon the object being presented. Even botulism toxin has become a cosmetic! Allergies, wrinkles, breathing difficulties, hair loss, smoking addiction, and acid reflux — a drug for everything — in a time when the phrase, “War on Drugs” is somehow held as righteously meaningful.

Does it make you wonder?

Many people seem to think that the key to what ails them is something they can put into their mouths. It’s “conspicuous consumption” mutated into a health profession serving an unhealthy society.

And, of course, for that, people pay through the nose.

Responsible living seems to have the bouquet of a pipe dream.

Drugs are a major medical expense.

And yet, the one major thing people put into their mouths — food — stays relegated to the mentality of the “fat farm”. The dietary connection to health has been overshadowed by the pharmaceutical one.

Think about this: Drugs are known for their side effects — two common ones being death and suicide — and yet the idea that diabetes, heart disease, and cancer may be side effects of improper diet — is given little credence — this in an age when childhood diabetes is on the rise, obesity is common, and so few people actually look good that good looks are considered a divine gift, like talent, rather than a sign of health. I guess that’s not surprising, since in TV commercials, we are taught to overlook side effects; the side effects of drugs are stated and then quickly overridden by the endorsements of the fictitious characters/customers (drug users) they feature — in other words, side-effects are glossed over.

I’m going to take a moment and endorse a couple of books for you to read. The first, a groundbreaking book on the connection of diet to health, is called, The China Study, which is more than about China, but world-wide dietary studies brought together. Written by a highly credentialed surgeon and university professor who has testified in Congressional hearings, T. Colin Campbell, The China Study is a well written summary of the results of many independently conducted scientific surveys and laboratory studies whose evidence is so overwhelming and conclusions, so persuasive, that the meat and dairy industries have actively suppressed it (acting much as the tobacco industry did in decades, past). The second, a recently released book, The Engine 2 Diet, was written by the son of a colleague of Dr. Campbell’s and contains essentially the same message, crafted for a more popular audience.

These aren’t “weight loss” books, although weight loss is one of the effects of the dietary adjustments they advocate; they are “healthy diet” books. They appear to have major implications for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity — a range of conditions with something unrecognized in common, something these books talk about with scientific backing.

I’m not big on “What goes in your mouth can save you” thinking, but I believe these books merit your attention.

Having said that, I’m going to point out that other avenues exist for getting things inside you other than your mouth: your eyes, your ears, and your body sense. The thing they get inside you is information, and not just information for your thinking mind, but information for your functioning body. I’m leading up to something.

Our medical system is overburdened with heart disease, cancer (breast, prostate, colon), and a disease condition of an entirely different category, chronic pain.

Chronic pain isn’t something you can cure with something you put into your mouth. It doesn’t result from a deficiency or excess of something chemical; it results from an excess, generally, of the accumulated memory imprints of injuries and stress. Though people try to mitigate stress with things they put into themselves through their mouths, noses and lungs — sleep aids, alcohol, tobacco, food, and various recreational drugs — it’s not the passage into the body through the stomach and lungs that holds the promise of relief; it’s the passage via your senses, through your brain and your nervous system, into your sensibilities, deep into the subconscious and unconscious processes of your bodily, feeling and thinking self-regulation.

Stress-related disorders are related to overwork, repetitive motion, physical injuries, and bad relationships. They include back pain, headaches, depression, breathing difficulties, bad digestion (totally apart from food), chronic fatigue, hemorrhoids, and a host of other conditions commonly “treated” with drugs. Drugs are not the answer; they are, generally, a mask. They interfere, but they do not resolve. Symptoms may abate, but the damage continues.

I’m not going to undertake to discuss the range of stress related disorders, here. That I’ve named some of them, here, is sufficient; the more descriptive writing about their nature and revolutionary methods of relief based on newly developed principles, exists elsewhere.

Suffice it to say that, in the time of “health care crisis” and “bloated healthcare budget”, a solution from a new direction, one that is far more effective and cost effective than a drug or anything you can put into your mouth, exists. You don’t have to pay through the nose; you just have to pay attention. If you pay attention, you will end up paying far less, financially. Of course, you’ve got to want to, and I’m going to leave it at that.

Free instructional Video: First Aid for Back Pain | Emergency Back Self-Care

What is that “doing”? It’s muscular contractions in the neighborhood of the sciatic nerve. The sciatic nerve gets entrapped either between neighboring vertebrae pulled too closely together or between contracted muscular tissue.

The muscles involved are usually under voluntary control and relaxed when not involved in movements. The sciatic nerve doesn’t mind momentary compression, as in movement. However, in sciatica, these muscles stay contracted in the grip of habituated postural reflexes — on autopilot, out of the control of the sufferer.

To end sciatica, then, involves freeing oneself from the grip of those involuntary postural reflexes. That gets done by a certain kind of movement training, about which I will say more, shortly.

That’s the simple understanding that explains most sciatic back pain and how to stop it. (The other kind of sciatica results from rupture of intervertebral discs — a much rarer and more difficult situation. I’ll say more about that at the end so you know which version you (presumably, it’s you) may have).

Now, more detail.

Two most common forms of sciatica exist:

* lumbar sciatica
* piriformis syndrome

LUMBAR SCIATICA

Lumbar sciatica consists of two habituated muscular contraction patterns at once:

1) low back muscles producing excessive lordosis (spinal curve)

2) waist muscles producing a side-tilt to one side

The combination of these two muscular actions compresses the sciatic nerve where it exits the spine at L3/L4 – L5/S1 (basically, the low back).

PIRIFORMIS SYNDROME

The piriformis (or pyriformis) muscles are buttock muscles. When tight, they turn feet toes-out. The sciatic nerve passes around or sometimes through the piriformis muscles and can get trapped and squeezed between the piriformis muscle and neighboring muscles.

Piriformis syndrome is the rarer and simpler form of sciatica.

HOW TO STOP SCIATICA BACK PAIN

While words have explanatory value, a video clip shows the process. This clip shows the first of two procedures needed to stop sciatic back pain and deals with the “back pain” part of the problem; another procedure deals with the side tilt. These procedures are called, “somatic education.”

Now, a word on other methods of dealing with sciatica — and that includes muscle relaxants, surgery, and any kind of therapeutic manipulation. If they don’t address the muscular activity behind sciatica and if they don’t teach a person control of that activity, they can’t be effective in the long term. It’s as flat as that.

Finally, words on sciatic back pain from a ruptured disc.

RUPTURED DISC or MUSCULAR ENTRAPMENT?

When a disc ruptures, its pulpy center squeezes out of the rupture site into the neighboring space, where the nerve is. The pulpy center (“nucleus pulposus”) squeezes on the nerve root. In such cases, the approach I have outlined doesn’t work — but it also doesn’t hurt.

If you don’t get rapid improvement (two clinical sessions or a week of somatic exercises), it’s likely you have the disc problem. That’s usually a surgical situation, although some therapists claim to be able to get the disc material into the disc via the MacKenzie Technique. Even in that case, the muscles must be freed or the situation is likely to recur.

For more video on back pain relief click emergency back self-care.

For access to the Home Website on this approach, click here. For access to practitioners and self-help instruction, “stop sciatica”.

The mystique of technology as a fix for everything extends to back pain — in particular, as spinal decompression therapy, an offering that has gained visibility as among the latest in spine care (along with laser treatment — this article applies to that approach, too).

The method involves a mechanical device intended to separate vertebrae and thereby to relieve pain.

This approach is a higher-technology variation on a simpler method, inversion therapy, which involves a kind of treatment table that, by anchoring the user’s ankles and turning upside down, uses gravity to separate vertebrae.

Both methods are variations on traction, again, using mechanical force to separate vertebrae.

The premise of all three methods, spinal decompression therapy, inversion therapy, and traction, is that vertebrae are too close together and need separation.

That premise is good as far as it goes — but let’s look deeper. Why do vertebrae get too close together?

Understand that vertebrae are linked together not only by discs and ligaments, but by muscles that control spinal alignment. When those muscles tighten, vertebral alignment changes; twists, curvature changes, and compression of neighboring vertebrae result. Muscles pull vertebrae closer together; the discs push the vertebrae apart.

Muscle tightness of this sort is supposed to be intermittent and temporary, as required by the demands of movement and lifting; muscles are supposed to relax (decrease their resting tone) when these demands end. However, when, for reasons related to injury and stress, this tightness becomes habituated (i.e., quasi-permanent), problems (i.e., back pain) result: nerve root compression, bulging discs, facet joint irritation, and muscle fatigue (soreness) and spasm.

This habituation is a muscular behavior (postural reflex pattern) learned by and stored in the brain, the master control center for all muscles. Learning is a matter of memory; when either prolonged nervous tension, repetitive movements, or violent injury occur, the memory of these influences displaces the memory of free movement and habituation results; people forget what free movement feels like and forget how to move freely. They fall into the grip of the memory of tension.

Muscles obey the nervous system, with all but the most primitive reflexes stored in the brain as learned action patterns that control all movement. There is no muscle memory other than what is stored in the brain; muscle memory is brain memory.

Knowing that, consider approaches that mechanically stretch muscles or pull vertebrae apart. What do they do to habituated muscular behavior? to the memory of tension? The answer: they temporarily induce muscular relaxation but do not restore the memory of normal tension and movement, which is acquired “learn-by-doing.” We are genetically designed to return to our familiar movement patterns once outside influences end; we return to our memory of how we have learned to move and hold ourselves. Shortly after the end of therapy, our familiar movement behavior and muscular tensions come back because you can’t change learned reflex patterns stored in the brain by stretching muscles; you can only retrain those reflex patterns by new learning of movement. If you want a lasting change, that’s what you have to do, in most cases.

So, the typical experience of relief after manipulative therapies lasts hours or days.

For some people, whose habituation is not that deeply entrenched, manipulative methods are sufficient; you know for yourself whether this is true of your experience; now you know why.

Here’s a question: How could you relearn free movement?

The answer has two steps:
(1) Unlearn the habituated pattern of muscular tension.
(2) Relearn free movement.

The process involves recovering the ability to feel in control of the involved musculature in movement; it’s a learn-by-doing process, not a mental process, only, but a process that involves both mind and body.

Wouldn’t you prefer to be free of repetitive therapy? to be free of dependency upon a therapist and the involved expense? to be able to care for your own back? to be free and safe to do any activity you wish?

Those are good reasons to make note of the approach described, here (bookmark this page): getting back control of your own muscular tension.

Free yourself from the grip of the memory of injuries, stress, and repetitive movement, not merely at the mental level, but also at the bodily level.

Visit this page for first aid for back pain. See this VIDEO.

We all exist as consciousness probing into the kaleidoscopically changing field of experience.

More than that, we all exist as memory patterns — at core, the memory of self, and built onto and around that, the memory of a lifetime.

Memory is our sense of the past, our ability to recognize the content of our now-experience, and the standard by which we measure our developing future — our imagination.

Memory, perception-cognition, imagination — past, present and future.

Life has its insults and injuries.  The notion of “trauma” is tied up with memory.  Trauma is the memory-imprint of experience; it’s a lingering impression of a moment of life that persists and colors our sense of past, self, and future.

The field of somatics concerns itself with the memory impressions that create our experience of self, of other, and of past-present-and future.  Those memory impressions exist not only as mental recollections, but also as physical conditioning:   states of tension and the sensations of those states of tension.  States of tension are states of readiness to act in certain ways left over from the past, identical to our experience of the past, brought to the present as our sense of the present, but largely unconscious, subterranean, in the background, scarcely observed directly, but experienced indirectly as our interpretation of “what’s what” in our experience.

Just as the past doesn’t exist, except as a memory, the future doesn’t exist except as imaginings (given meaning by memories of the past), and the present doesn’t exist, except as sense impressions given meaning by memories. Our experience of the present is largely a variation of the past with a little novelty thrown in, which we assimilate by making it fit with our memories of the past.

People change very slowly because we are mired in memory impressions; and actually, our sense of ourself is a memory that we maintain by how we manage our lives.

Somatics is a way to sort out the memory impressions, largely by recovering awareness of them and then by dissolving their binding force by taking creative control of them and releasing them.

For now, I’ll point you to an article, Understanding and Overcoming Back Pain which describes somatic principles more effective than standard therapeutic options.

For more articles on clinical somatic education, see the website, Somatics on the Web.  The field of somatics goes way beyond clinical applications, but that’s a subject for another entry.