Somatic Mechanic

Relax your brainstem

If you have not experienced a Franklin Method workshop, you may think it strange to hear you can get amazing results for neck tension by imagining relaxing your brainstem.  What?  Your brainstem?!  Yep, that's where what's left of your reptilian brain lives.  It regulates stuff like blood pressure, respiration, consciousness and your sleep cycle and is located here:

 A skillful teacher of ideokinesis can help you take an image and apply it to your body to achieve release, power, flexibility, or strength.  Perhaps even all four!  One of my favorites is Eric's image of the brain, the brain stem, and the projecting spinal cord.  Imagine your spinal cord is soft and dangling from your brain stem.  What would that feel like?   Close your eyes, and imagine the spinal cord is long, soft, and floating like the tentacles from a jelly.  Watch the video and see how the jelly's tentacles are passively floating through the ocean currents.  Now go back into your own body and imagine your spinal cord floating passively in the cerebrospinal fluid. Do you feel the back of your neck relax and soften like warm butter?  Mmmmm!

This video was taken at the Monterey Bay Aquarium near where I live.  Normally jellies like to swim downward so the tentacles point up, but that didn't fit my image of the brain and the dangling spinal cord so I turned my camera upside-down.  Take THAT you jellies!

Dr Oz speaks out for Pilates

No matter what kind of tattoo might be adorning your lower back, it's not going to be all that appealing if you can't clip your own toenails. That's why now's the time to make sure your back has the strength to handle the load you ask it to carry - at work, on hikes, through the mall, while dancing on poles, all the time. If you want to stave off the crippling effects of a lower-back meltdown, the most important thing you can do is work the foundation muscles in your body's core. These muscle… Read More »

via ask.doctoroz.com

Dr Oz recommends Pilates! You gotta love a guy who brings an omentum onto the Oprah show.

 

Study Suggests Why Acupuncture Might Work | LiveScience Etc.

Study Suggests Why Acupuncture Might Work | LiveScience Etc.

An interesting study published in Nature Neuroscience has discovered one of acupuncture's mechanisms: adenosine. Naturally occurring in the body, adenosine inhibits pain signals after an injury, regulates sleep, and is an anti-inflammatory. Turns out that acupuncture triggers the release of adenosine by stimulating the nerves in the skin. The scientists also administered a cancer drug (deoxycoformycin) that makes it more difficult for the body to remove adenosine, and found that it tripled the amount of adenosine in the tissues and tripled the length of time of the acupuncture's benefits.
Since adenosine is naturally released in response to an injury, I suppose acupuncture is imitating an injury. This must be why my acupuncturist comes in and wiggles those needles. Yowch!