ONE OF THE PRIME CHALLENGES OF ANYONE WORKING with transformative processes, self-generated evolutionary processes, is the matter of Activation Energy.
The intensity of your impulse to change (cumulatively, to evolve) must be at least equal to the intensity of the tendency of things to stay as they are (the intensity of their integrity).
What that means in Earth language is that the urge to move something must be at least equal to the force keeping it in place for a change to be possible. That amount of force, in any particular case, we call, its Activation Energy. This much is obvious, upon looking at it.
Working at transformation with insufficient Activation Energy makes the going slow, at best, and one never really gets to the root. So, one keeps pursuing the root more and more. This takes time, but it does eventually result in your gathering Activation Energy and you will eventually get to the root and dissolve it.
SPEEDING UP, "EVENTUALLY"
Recognizing and not being satisfied with, "eventually", practitioners of certain approaches employ a measure to "charge up" Activation Energy -- everything from Bellows Breathing (pranayama) to Holographic Breathwork, BioEnergetics, and related approaches.
Other approaches use awakening and self-grooming practices: The Avatar Course, The Lineage of Don Juan's Warrior's Way, and numerous others. These latter teachings employ practices used to gather or recover the force of one's being from ensnarement by subconscious memory patterns. They are grooming processes, preparation for personal evolutionary (and maturational) changes.
Other practices involve wisdom-contemplations that lead beyond mind, leaving a trail of "clean-up" in their wake.
For my part, what I found, when confronted with dense activation patterns in myself, that felt like they would never change, was that the way that works easiest was to confront each such dense activation pattern, as felt (as an involuntary state of tension), to find in it the four operation sets of intelligence:
INTENDING, IMAGINING, REMEMBERING, ATTENDING
nicknamed, The TetraSeed.
Upon sufficient activation of that set of four operations, the denseness of one's condition is overcome and it starts to soften. It does so without any special extra effort to make it soften -- just by virtue of finding those operations in that item, that stress pattern, whatever it may be: the operation sets of
INTENDING, IMAGINING, REMEMBERING, ATTENDING
and their corresponding objective aspects, as shown, above (color-coded)
One might immediately wonder how one does that. There exist procedures that use those four operation sets in special patterns, patterns that produce specific kinds of changes to how one operates. In other words, they tune up your operating system, they debug you. They allow you to uncover mental viruses in yourself that are pervasive in these times, and to remove, dissolve, or tame them.
In other words, instead of them having you, you have them, and you discover the previously unconscious way you are keeping yourself that way, and then you can relax something in yourself and have those things simply dissolve away, commonly with postural shifts of shape.
The success of all of this depends upon your having sufficient Activation Energy available to match the intensity of the integrity of the item in yourself you want to change, upgrade, or dissolve. You've got to be equal to it -- and that's what the TetraSeed Transformation procedures end up doing.
That being so, these procedure would jet-assist other kinds of transformational procedures and processes from various transformational teachings.
It was never always one or the other. That's what he found. Things were too weird, too open-ended, as it were.
He never knew when it would start, when it would happen, when what he was used to wasn't that way, anymore, and there was no sign that it ever had been.
He called it, "side-slipping", his drift between neighboring time-tracks, experienced as mysterious shifts from one world to another similar, but different.
He wasn't a time-traveler. He wasn't even a space traveler, in the usual sense. He was an "across-time traveler" -- and sometimes that looked like space travel, in the usual sense. But it wasn't.
"He" wasn't traveling. It was as if the entire universe of worlds was suddenly a different one, one that felt reminiscent of something he had known before, but which, he had learned, was likely to contain quirky differences. He was always where he was. Things changed around him. The differences were sometimes dream-like, to him, and he kept his sense of humor and his wits about him.
There is a section of universe-space called, The Jewel Belt. Seen from interstellar space, it is extraordinarily beautiful. Stars of many many sizes and colors float, there, but at the great distances of separation, they all look like points of light of varying brilliance suspended in curtains of space dust, so that the stars illuminate them faintly with a nebula-like effect and they glow behind and around them. The stars look like gems strewn on dark, dark-grey silk seen in twilight.
Of course, he had seen it. On one of his side-slipping occasions, he had been dreaming he was enjoying a fantastic meal at an overladen table, when suddenly, he had detected in the dream-space to his left and behind him, a disturbance like the shaking of a tree -- but, of course, no tree, just the impression of something shaking.
He turned his attention, there, to view it, and suddenly dream-space itself started quivering and shaking and fragmenting with pieces getting smaller and spinning out of sight into an awesome, dense, enclosing blackness populated with stars. A great swirl of numinous light could be seen across the face of the forever night.
He had almost lost his lunch, and now he was there, feeling a bit dizzy as space seemed to rotate around him. He gazed at the field of stars in the backdrop of the always night and he knew that he could perceive only light coming directly at his eyes, He felt seen.
The silence was absorbing. He felt as if his mind was being pulled out of his head in all directions, except he had no head -- into an incomprehensibility in which all he could make sense of was the feel of his shoulders or something like them.
Soon, he fell silent and peaceful, and it was then that he heard the singing of the night, as if voices that surrounded his heart exulted in the beauty of the place in an anthem of joy. And he understood.
It was the peace of space, one with The Eternal.
All of this, side-slipping in a dream.
When he woke, the world was different. Again.
He was different.
He had been absorbed out until all that was left was the anthem of joy in the stars. When he awoke, what he took of the anthem of joy was a trace of seductive memory, but what he brought to life was different: he no longer saw his home world as his native familiar; he now saw it from a kind of outside perspective. They say that travel broadens one. He was broadened.
After that, the side-slippings became more frequent. Each one tugged at his insides in a different way. Each one required a new letting go.
He found that he was becoming more and more like the space between worlds, that undefined space, that Zone of Incomprehensibility. He did not fear it. He found it as himself, his natural state, more and more. He was falling out of self, just as he had side-slipped between worlds.
One time, he was invited to a party. People were there that he knew and that he knew not. But, as he approached the doorway to the room, he leaned in and took it all in and found himself wondering, "Which one am I?" When an enthusiastic couple pushed their way past him, he came to himself.
The side-slipping most often occurred during his mental practices contemplating the four-fold nature of reality taught to him by his mentor to exercise his intelligence. A peculiar dissolution of self and mind would occur during the practices during which he would find it difficult to remember which step of the practice came next or even what the focus of the session was. He would "come back" realizing that he had been gone without realizing it.
It seemed altogether different from having dozed off. There was always an enhanced clarity, afterwards, a sense of ready refreshment unlike the heavy dopiness of rising from sleep.
Eventually, he realized that his mentor hadn't told him all. His mentor had referred to them as, "mental exercises". What they really were were training exercises for the manipulation of the reality matrix. Side-slipping was just a sign of being a novice. Synchronicities were another sign.
So, he was still side-slipping -- a bit of a rickety bridge between the worlds. He'd get better.
His mentor had recently taught him an exercise for "stabilizing intelligence". That's what his mentor had called it, with a quiet, sly smile on his face.
you have found the information provided both by medical practitioners and "alternative" medical practitioners to be "thin soup" that doesn't make you feel particularly optimistic about your recovery from sacroiliac joint dysfunction and doesn't increase your understanding, much, but only leaves you feeling faintly hopeful -- hope perhaps tinged with desperation or despair.
you have found pain medications inadequate to deal with the pain.
you have tried therapies and/or surgery and are still in pain.
you want lasting relief and are willing to do the work to get it.
Clinical Somatic Education has a distinctive approach to addressing Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction (S-I Joint Dysfunction) that diverges from the conventional medical model. While the medical field focuses on symptom-specific treatments such as medication, surgery, or mechanical interventions, it usually overlooks the crucial aspect of muscle/movement memory. Even disciplines like chiropractic or osteopathy, which may address skeletal alignment, tend to neglect this vital component. Moreover, the field of "pain management" primarily aims to mask pain rather than eliminate its underlying cause.
In contrast, clinical somatic education employs action patterns to liberate and re-pattern the muscular tensions responsible for the pain and perpetuation of S-I Joint Dysfunction. These patterns play a pivotal role in shaping the pelvic region over time. This novel approach, rooted in the connection between the brain and muscles, eliminates the need for traditional methods like stretching, strengthening, or soft-tissue manipulation. By correcting muscle/movement memory, it achieves the lasting benefits typically hoped for from those techniques.
One of the key resources for people learning about Somatics is Thomas Hanna's book, "Somatics | ReAwakening the Mind's Control of Movement, Flexibility and Health," which delves into the formation and enduring resolution of tension patterns associated with injuries, chronic stress, and their symptoms.
ABOUT SACROILIAC JOINTS
What Do Your Sacroiliac Joints Do?
Your S-I joints allow the walking movements of your legs to move flexibly, through your pelvis (which flexes at the S-I joints), to your trunk. Your S-I joints lend "cushion" to your spine and pelvis, when you sit. If the joints are jammed or the muscles of your pelvis are tight, there's no cushion and sitting can be fatiguing.
These distortions affect the muscles of the trunk (primarily the back, the psoas muscles, and the quadratus lumborum ("QL").
What Happens to Your Sacrum in Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction
Your sacrum gets turned, usually jammed one side forward, one side back, commonly with a side-tilt and a forward or backward tilt. That causes your whole pelvis to twist, the side opposite the jammed side forward. (More rarely, both sides are jammed forward -- more about that, later.) In addition, one side may jammed downward (side-tilt), causing the appearance of unequal leg length -- even though the legs are the same length -- and the appearance of one hip being higher. You may have heard all this, before, from your health practitioner; now you understand it, better.
Distortions of movement and spine shape may follow, with pain as far as the jaws and down the legs.
The pain triggers muscles of the abdomen to tighten, especially when bending forward or turning over, in bed. It's often a very delicate situation -- as you may have experienced.
Muscular pulls where the legs connect to the pelvis (the psoas muscles, the inner and front thigh muscles, the hamstrings, and buttocks) interfere with walking and add pain. Pulling forces interfere with walking and sitting and affect the S-I joints. In the healthy condition, everything is comfortable; in the unhealthy, jammed condition, there's strain and pain.
How a Turned Sacrum Causes Sacroiliac Joint Pain
When a sacrum is turned from its home position in the pelvis, we call that, "displacement". It's out of place. With displacement comes distortion of pelvic shape, which puts strain on ligaments of the pelvis, puts pressure on internal organs, and generates pain. The brain senses those strains and pain, and, as a reflexive response, causes muscular contractions that generate a "gripping" sensation in the pelvis that gets worse with movements such as bending forward to put on socks or flush the toilet, rolling over in bed or attempting to stand up straight. The pain triggers cringing, in which muscles tighten up, potentially anywhere.
Non-spasm pain may radiate from the S-I joints into the pelvis, lower abdomen, groin, or sex organs. One person with whom I worked had a diagnosis of interstitial cystitis (intense bladder pain) -- and a twisted sacrum from falls from horses.
Therapists unfamiliar with the bizarre symptoms of S-I Joint Dysfunction may attempt to treat symptoms as if they originate where they appear. Such treatment attempts fail. They don't address the symptoms at their origin -- the twisted sacrum.
A CONSIDERABLY MORE DETAILED UNDERSTANDING of SACROILIAC JOINT DYSFUNCTION
In investigating sacroiliac joint dysfunction in myself, I came to understand the condition and its causes. At that point, I had an idea of what I could do to correct it: set up ongoing, symmetrical muscular forces to make my pelvis (sacral position) become symmetrical. I was the first "guinea pig"; I developed the exercises, in myself, and refined them based on the effects I felt. Remember -- I was qualified to do that, having been in clinical practice, since 1990.
As I stated, earlier, S-I joint pain comes from excessive and unbalanced forces on the S-I joints that trigger muscular reactions. Now, I'll go into more detail.
Most cases of SIJD start with an accident, such as a hard fall (athletic injury, fall from a bicycle or horse, ladder, tree, or rooftop); I told you what I think caused it, in me. Because the changes of muscular tension from an injury are asymmetrical -- meaning, the right and left sides no longer mirror each other, they keep the pelvis distorted. These muscular forces don't change in any lasting way with stretching because they're programmed into muscle/movement memory and so reappear, shortly after stretching or manipulation.
The brain recognizes the strains felt in the pelvis as an emergency situation: the integrity of the person's movement system is in crisis. Brain-triggered contraction patterns follow (as an emergency response) to reflexively stabilize the situation -- but it's a grip, not a correction to pelvic shape because the correct sense of pelvic shape has been lost in the injury.
The term we use in clinical somatic education is, "sensory-motor amnesia" (S-MA). These muscular contractions are so strong that they hurt and trigger pain-related tightening, throughout the body, but one isn't in touch with holding them tight because the tightness is "on automatic".
Radiating pain follows from the distortion.
Ligaments
What happens to ligaments chronically under strain? They get inflamed. Inflammation is nature's way of forcing fluids and nutrients into tissue that is strained (or injured) so it can heal. But under this kind of strain, no healing is possible -- basically because it is not a "damage" situation, but an ongoing strain-and-irritation situation. Suppressing the inflammation is of no help. The ligaments aren't the problem, anyway.
Muscles Triggered into Contraction by Injury
Isn't it true that injuries usually occur from one side, rather than exactly centered at the back or front?
What happens with any injury, then, is that a cringe response gets triggered -- a tightening centered at the injured region and radiating outward like the cracks in a damaged windshield -- but off-center, and the tightening isn't just momentary, but commonly lasts indefinitely.
The psoas muscles commonly tighten in reaction to a twisted sacrum. The video, below, tells about the psoas muscles.
It's common to misdiagnose tight psoas muscles as the problem causing the pain, when the psoas muscles are tightening in reaction to a twisted sacrum. When the sacrum straightens, psoas pain disappears.
Bi-lateral (two-sided) S-I joint pain is simpler than one-sided S-I joint pain. Bilateral S-I joint pain involves compression at both S-I joints.
One cause of bi-lateral SIJD is sitting too long, perched on the edge of a chair in a condition of high tension and stress, as at a desk doing work by phone or on a computer. That pattern of tension involves the groin, hip joint flexors and psoas muscles in front, and the back muscles. The combination produces strain on the iliosacral ligaments -- and soreness. Sometimes, it can be corrected by retraining the psoas muscles and hip joint flexors -- an easy "fix".
One-Sided SIJD
One-sided sacroiliac joint dysfunction is worse than two-sided SIJD and accounts for nearly all the chronic S-I joint pain I have seen.
Asymmetrical (off-center) muscle pulls and posture place more stress on one S-I joint than on the other.
Symptoms commonly appear at different locations on each side and people commonly mistake the locations of pain as the locations of the problems. Clinicians may also mistake groin pain as a sign of psoas muscle dysfunction, rather than as pain radiating from an S-I joint.
GET STARTED IN YOUR RECOVERY from SACROILIAC PAIN
TEST THIS APPROACH for YOURSELF, for FREE
If
you're used to exercises or therapies that produce such small changes
that you can hardly tell if anything is different, this isn't that. With
somatic education exercises, you can feel changes rather quickly
(obvious after two practice sessions). As, your movement and posture
change, the symptoms of SIJD fade out.
To get started with the
program, Comforting Your S-I Joints and to see a statement of the
expected result of each section of exercises, you may enter your
information, below.
Enter where to send "get started for free" emails with instructional video links.
A
quick-response email message will come to your email address requesting
permission to mail to you. Once you give permission, "Getting Started
for Free" emails will come to you with bite-size steps for Unit 1 of
Comforting Your S-I Joints.
Unit 1 is preparatory for the section of the program that causes
your sacrum position to straighten. Getting started will allow you to
evaluate how well these exercises work, for you, in general.
Clinical Somatic Education has a distinctive approach to addressing Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction (S-I Joint Dysfunction) that diverges from the conventional medical model. While the medical field focuses on symptom-specific treatments such as medication, surgery, or mechanical interventions, it usually overlooks the crucial aspect of muscle/movement memory. Even disciplines like chiropractic or osteopathy, which may address skeletal alignment, tend to neglect this vital component. Moreover, the field of "pain management" primarily aims to mask pain rather than eliminate its underlying cause.
In contrast, clinical somatic education employs action patterns to liberate and re-pattern the muscular tensions responsible for the pain and perpetuation of S-I Joint Dysfunction. These patterns play a pivotal role in shaping the pelvic region over time. This novel approach, rooted in the connection between the brain and muscles, eliminates the need for traditional methods like stretching, strengthening, or soft-tissue manipulation. By correcting muscle/movement memory, it achieves the lasting benefits typically hoped for from those techniques.
Comforting Your S-I Joints
is a system of action patterns to reprogram muscle/movement
memory. Improvements start almost immediately and accumulate over time. The entire system extinguishes pain
and restores mobility.
TO PURCHASE, CLICK THE IMAGE, AT RIGHT
OR GET STARTED, FOR FREE, BY ENTERING YOUR INFORMATION, ABOVE.
~~ Since 1996, I have offered a Lifetime Satisfaction Money-Back Guarantee ~~
Click the image, above, to find out about
availability of personal mentoring through the program
with me, Lawrence Gold.
One of the key resources for people learning aboutSomatics is Thomas Hanna's book, "Somatics | ReAwakening the Mind's Control of Movement, Flexibility and Health," which delves into the formation and enduringresolution of tension patterns associated with injuries, chronic stress, and their symptoms.
Lawrence Gold is a practitioner of clinical somatic education (Hanna Somatic EducationⓇ) in private practice since 1990. He has trained practitioners and developed of self-relief programs for special needs. A former sufferer of S-I joint dysfunction, he developed the program, Comforting Your S-I Joints, as part of solving his own problem and published it only after testing it successfully with others who had the same condition. Reach him by email, here.
copyright 2014-2018 Lawrence Gold
This writing may be reproduced only in its entirety, with accurate attribution of its authorship and contact information.
If you came to this page from a search and want to understand what's going on with you and what has to happen to clear it up, click to visit this page.
If you have two or more of the symptoms of sacroiliac joint dysfunction listed below and you want to purchase the program to clear them up, Comforting Your S-I Joints, click to visit this page.
This is a fairly comprehensive list of symptoms.
If you've arrived at this page from a search for symptoms of sacroiliac joint dysfunction, you may read the related article that explains sacroiliac joint pain more clearly than you usually find in published articles. Click, hereto see the article.
Because more than one condition can cause a symptom, we look for combinations of symptoms -- at minimum, two or more. When symptoms from a single cause appear in clusters, that's called, a "syndrome".
SYMPTOMS OF S-I JOINT PAIN SYNDROME
Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction
I have grouped these symptoms in terms of
SENSATIONS
SKELETAL ALIGNMENT CHANGES
MUSCLE/MOVEMENT MEMORY CHANGES
EMOTIONAL EFFECTS
Do you have two or more of these symptoms?
SENSATIONS
pain at the groin and waistline in back, same side - combination | tight psoas muscles, usually one side:COMBINATION OF MUSCULAR PAIN (reflexive tightening, felt in the groin) and RADIATING PAIN from the back
sharp, stabbing pain at the back waist area, on one side | LIGAMENT STRAIN
pain around the top rim of the pelvis,usually at one side or in back | RADIATING PAIN
a "deep pulling" sensation in the lower spine, like a taut wire | DEEP SPINAL MUSCLE PAIN
a tired feeling across the low back, both sides | MUSCLE FATIGUE, QUADRATUS LUMBORUM ("QL") and SPINAL EXTENSORS
buttock pain, one side, that doesn't respond to direct treatment (sometimes mistaken for piriformis syndrome) | NERVE IMPINGEMENT PAIN
deep pelvic/lower abdominal pain ("lightning"-like burning, or gripping pain), |UNNATURAL STRETCH OF THE LINING OF THE ABDOMINAL CAVITY FROM SACRUM DISPLACEMENT
pelvic floor disorder, one side more than the other, tailbone pain
thigh numbnessin the front orside| NERVE IMPINGEMENT
iliotibial ("I-T") band pain or numbness(sometimes mistaken for a tight gluteus medius muscle)| NERVE IMPINGEMENT PAIN
pain deep in one hip joint (sometimes mistaken for gluteus medius muscle pain) | RADIATING PAIN FROM THE S-I JOINT
pain at the attachment of hamstring(s) at the "sitbones" (ischial tuberosities) | RADIATING PAIN (hamstrings often tighten reflexively, as well, but the sensation of tight hamstrings would be at the back of the thigh)
inner thigh pain | MUSCLES IN CONTRACTION DUE TO PELVIC DISTORTION
sciatica-like paindown the back of (usually) one leg at thigh, back of knee, or foot | NERVE IMPINGEMENT PAIN FROM EXCESSIVE "FOLD" AT L5/S1
burning bladder | RADIATING PAIN WITH POSSIBLE NERVE IMPINGEMENT
pain along the thoracic (upper) spine, one side | MUSCLES IN "CRINGE" SPASM IN REACTION TO THE PELVIC PAIN
rib pain | MUSCLES IN "CRINGE" SPASM IN REACTION TO THE PELVIC PAIN
restricted
breathing or the sense that the breathing diaphragm is restricted |
MUSCLES IN "CRINGE" SPASM IN REACTION TO THE PELVIC PAIN
upper spine, neck or jaw pain | MUSCLES IN "CRINGE" SPASM IN REACTION TO THE PELVIC PAIN
a feeling of your head being jammed down onto your neck| MUSCLES IN "CRINGE" SPASM IN REACTION TO THE PELVIC PAIN
jaw pain | MUSCLES IN "CRINGE" SPASM IN REACTION TO THE PELVIC PAIN
a feeling like the pelvis is spread open, in front, jammed in back on one side
upper ribs and shoulders tight| MUSCULAR TENSIONS
SKELETAL ALIGNMENT CHANGES
pelvis rotatedaround a vertical axis
anterior pelvic tilt with twistaround a horizontal axis, one side forward and the other side backward
twistedsacrum, one sacro-iliac joint deeper
pubic bone misalignment/pubic symphysis pubis separation
low back archedmore on one side than the other
ribs and shoulder bladepulled down and back on one side
neck pulled to one side
one foot pronated ("flat arches")
MUSCLE/MOVEMENT MEMORY CHANGES
tight TFL (tensor fascia lata) and IT band
walkingwith legs/knees involuntarily turned out
inability to sit cross-legged with knees down
tight hamstrings
one knee"shaky" or weak
painful forward bending("tight wire" feeling down spine into pelvis)
impossible to stand fully uprightwithout "jamming" pain in the low back
abdominal muscles tighten protectively, when bending forward
EMOTIONAL SYMPTOMS (combined with two or more symptoms from the other two categories)
chronic anxiety
unremitting sadness
irritability
If you have two or more of these symptoms, you may do a manual self-examination of your own S-I joints, as shown in the instructional video in this article. It takes 2 minutes, or so to learn how to do it and to do it. If you find that one S-i joint is deeper than the other, you have a twisted sacrum, sacroiliac joint dysfunction.
The Gold Key Release is a psychoactive procedure that liberates the mind from the sense of predicament, in this moment, and liberates intelligence to receive new ideas.
Sciatica is commonly regarded as difficult to cure. It is,
when you take one of the wrong approaches -- the approaches most commonly used to stop the pain:
drugs, stretching (including an inversion table or spinal decompression device), adjustments or manipulation, TENS (electrical stimulation), surgery. If you do, your final relief may take
forever. None of these approaches gets at the underlying cause, so relief is partial, temporary, or may never occur to the point that you are free of sciatica and can move freely.
This article presents an approach that gets to the heart of the matter, one that can end
sciatica in a few weeks -- but there is a catch: you have to do the work.
YOUR CHOICE of APPROACH
Commonly, what keeps people trapped in sciatica is the entire approach they take to getting free of it. So, before I explain the condition, itself, to you, I'm going to address the approach that people (maybe you) take toward "curing" it.
There are two ways you can approach sciatica: as a
"consumer" of care and as a "do-it-yourselfer".
A "consumer" expects to pay someone for their
expertise and have them "do it for them". "Expertise"
includes the "expertise" of the pharmaceutical companies. The
consumer turns to experts, or to their products, to "fix" him or her. The consumer doesn't want to have to understand; that's what s/he pays the expert for.
A "do-it-yourselfer" learns about the
condition to the point of arriving at an understanding of its cause that
makes sense -- and then does what it takes to get the required result.
With sciatica, you can't be a consumer and get the relief you seek.
Sciatica doesn't work that way; it's not that kind of condition. It's not
caused by something external, so that you can do or take an
"external" approach and fix it. Nor, in most cases, is it a "spinal disorder" caused by a mechanical breakdown or deformation. (When those exist, they are an effect of the underlying cause) It's caused by something your body is
doing to itself. It's caused by muscular activity.
This article explains what your body is doing to itself
(really, what you are involuntarily and unconsciously doing to
yourself) to cause the pain and what you can do -- not to counteract
it, but to cease doing it.When you do, the pain fades out and everything is all right, again.
If you are going to get free of sciatica any time soon,
you're going to have to understand what's going on in you and be
a do-it-yourselfer.
If you doubt me, continue with the "consumer" way
of operating until you see its failure. Then, you may come back here, learn
what you need to learn, and become the do-it-yourselfer you need to be to end
your sciatica.
The word for today is, "pitfall."
Definition of PITFALL 1 : TRAP, SNARE; specifically : a pit flimsily covered or camouflaged and used to capture and hold animals or men 2 : a hidden or not easily recognized danger or difficulty
In this post, I'm going to deliver some strong medicine toward your relief of sciatica and also of sacroiliac joint dysfunction (of which sciatica is one symptom). I'm also going to provide a link to a post explaining who I am and my background. At the end, I'll point you to where you can do something for yourself, for free, and where you can get more, if you want.
THE PITFALL
To start, the pitfall into which most people with sciatica fall is not the pain of sciatica or of sacroiliac joint dysfunction. That's not the pitfall. The pitfall is the mood and approach you take to getting relief from these conditions -- possibly the way you approach your entire life.
The pain is just the emergency that drives you into your way of seeking relief.
The pitfall is the mood of "action without understanding".
Along with that may be a kind of submissiveness you may have to medical authority -- a submissiveness that obediently takes the pain meds or accepts the TENS unit or does the physical therapy stretching and strengthening exercises or takes massage, or uses an inversion table or spinal decompression device, or goes for surgery.
SUBMISSIVENESS, UNWARRANTED It's a submissiveness that is unwarranted because those measures don't work. They don't succeed at getting you free to move like a normal person. This submissiveness to authority may be the way you run your entire life -- the submissiveness of a consumer to medical authority that may also show up as skepticism or even aggressiveness toward anyone who claims a greater authority than medical authority.
A mood of submissive dependency on authorities is understandable, as long as you're not aware of anything better than what they offer. It's not understandable, rational, or responsible if the authority to which you submit isn't producing the result you need. In that sense, it's almost like a bad romantic relationship.
I'm here to remove the legitimacy of that mood of "action-without-understanding" by providing understandable, sensible, actionable information.
I recently joined a sciatica-relief group on Facebook. The first thing I did was to pose the question: "Who here understands the underlying cause of sciatica?" I got a response from one person whose stated understanding, "a spinal disorder", combined with "surgery worked for me", was the full extent of his understanding. This is no understanding, and it the exemplifies the submissiveness to medical authority that I am talking about.
Before I go into any of the explanation of the underlying cause of most sciatica, which you will find easy to understand, I'm going to address a general mindset of most people with sciatica, if this Facebook group is any indication, a mindset that is fostered by the approach of the medical profession. That mindset is, "Just get rid of the symptoms. Never mind the underlying cause." It's the mindset of expediency and acceptance of mediocre results, not of the uncompromising demand for final relief.
This mindset of expediency -- a mood, again, of helpless submissiveness -- is not one that takes final responsibility for results. It's the mindset of avoidance of pain, of avoidance of inconvenience, of assigning responsibility to someone else, or of adopting hopeful measures without real understanding -- not the mindset of identifying the real problem, handling it, and stopping the pain, that way.
Again, this is understandable, given people's indoctrination into submissiveness to medical authority, and perhaps even to all authorities simply because they are considered authorities -- perhaps based on lack of knowledge of something better, perhaps based on an upbringing (or educational experience) that demanded submission to authority.
However, it isn't adequate to solving the problem -- and neither is commiseration between people who have the same pain, although I can understand why one might do it to vent feelings.
While commiserationwithout an understanding of the underlying condition may lead to kindly suggestions intended to be helpful, suggestions-without-understanding are likely to lead to disappointment and to further despair. They commonly do. A mood of helplessness then prevails and the mood of submission to authority that can't produce the required result has been reinforced.
There's a point at which people have to take more responsibility or responsibility of a different kind -- the responsibility to understand. This is that point.
At one point, the one person who responded to my initial questions said, "I don't know. I am not a doctor."
The difference between you and a doctor is knowledge and training.
I am here to provide better knowledge on this topic than you can get from your doctor or therapist. What makes it better is that (1) it makes sense and (2) it points to an approach that works – that works relatively quickly and very reliably. I'm also here to point you to a kind of self-training that will get you out of pain in a space of, say, weeks.
To review, I've just indicated two approaches:
• one that works with understanding and gets consistent good results by addressing underlying causes
• another, that acts without understanding to seek symptomatic relief by addressing secondary effects, not the underlying cause, that doesn't work consistently, but which may be sanctioned by medical authority (because that's all they know) or recommended by someone trying to be helpful
You've tried one. Are you willing to try the other?
One might think that, having been searching for information about sciatica, you'd be on the lookout for something other than what you've already experienced, or heard about. I'm asking you to exercise your intelligence toward understanding, not merely to believe an authoritative voice (including mine) or a sympathetic one.
UNDERSTANDING SCIATICA
Most sciatica comes from entrapment of nerve roots of the sciatic nerve that exit the spine at levels L3 through L5 – the bottom three vertebrae of the low back.
There's nothing wrong with the spine -- unless one or more disks have ruptured. It's that the vertebrae are being pulled too closely together by tight spinal muscles that increase the lumbar (low back) curve, combined most often with a side–tilt caused by tightness of the muscles of the side of the trunk. These two locations of tightness change the curvature of the spine and trap (squeeze) the nerve roots on the inner side of the curve.
The tightness comes from a combination of (1) long-term stress, in which the back muscles tighten and stay tight, and (2) an injury to one side of the body at some point in life that prompted the muscles of the side of the trunk to tighten in a reflexive cringe response and stay tight. That's it. Read on, after you have absorbed that information.
By the way, it's that same tightness that over-compresses disks and causes them to bulge, herniate, or rupture.
A less common form of sciatica, known as piriformis syndrome, involves tightening of the piriformis buttock muscle, also usually triggered by an injury, e.g., from a hard fall onto the buttock. The piriformis muscle squeezes the sciatic nerve that passes through or nearby, and sciatica results.
Your job, should you decide to accept it, is to retrain your muscular control to relieve yourself of the tightness causing your symptoms. It can be done by almost anyone and can be done relatively quickly, with the right technique: pandiculation.
As I said there's probably nothing wrong with your spine. It's an ongoing muscular activity that you can retrain, that causes most sciatica.
You can't change that ongoing muscular activity with drugs, surgery, or stretching. Strengthening, a common strategy of therapy, is altogether out. Think about it. How can strengthening cause a relaxation of too tight muscles?
Those are the two most common forms of sciatica. I've written more at length on two other causes in the article linked below, but this is essentially all most people need to know.
In case you still believe in the usual methods of physical therapy and bodywork, here's another video entry, The Three Biggest Mistakes Made by People Who Are Trying to Get Out of Pain.
I've explained the pitfall into which you may have become trapped: going for relief of symptoms without addressing the underlying cause -- and the related pitfall of dependency on drugs, surgery, and manipulation and the hope that something somebody does to you or for you will get you out of pain. I've explained the origin of that pitfall: your indoctrination into dependency on others -- and failing to take "won't take 'no' for an answer", personal responsibility for results. I've provided information by which you may understand your condition and the means of your taking responsibility for getting yourself out of pain.
The final obstacles may be that people's attention tends to be superficial -- sometimes, new information doesn't penetrate enough, but bounces off -- and some people don't want the information just because to change requires something of them. That's what sometimes makes learning, in general, difficult. (Did that just bounce off or did it sink in?)
I've identified what I call the prime directive of my field, clinical somatic education: "You gotta wanna". It's up to you. I ain't just whistlin' Dixie.
BACKGROUND
I have been practicing as a clinical somatic educator (Hanna somatic education) for the final relief of pain since 1990, with two years' experience on-staff at the Wellness and Rehabilitation Center of a hospital in Northern California. Since 1996, I have had a money-back guarantee of satisfaction that has rarely been invoked. Learn about my professional background, including published papers, radio and TV appearances, and public speaking appearances, here.
The following explanation makes sense of Hanna Somatic Education and gives people a way to talk about it that makes sense to their friends. To begin with, it helps to understand why people get stuck in pain and discomfort. Then, you can understand what Hanna Somatic Education "handles" and how it handles it.
About 50% of chronic, severe pain can be traced to the effects of muscular contractions formed by physical injuries and high-stress emotional states. What follows, below, applies to that kind of pain -- and not the pain that results from organic diseases.
Here are the key terms:
muscle-memory (muscle:movement memory)
sensory-motor amnesia
Muscle memory is what you formed when you learned to walk, to ride a bicycle, to ski, to touch-type on a keyboard (as speed-typists do), or hunt-and-peck type (as in everyone who uses a smart phone or operating-system based device with a miniature alphanumeric keypad, does).
Sensory – motor amnesia is what happens when a high-intensity memory forms, either from a high velocity experience or a prolonged one, a high-intensity memory that interferes with muscle movement memory of how we are, when we are free to move. Sensorimotor amnesia occurs, generally, in a state of activation triggered by something that's happening. When a triggered state of activation becomes a remembered state of activation, a remembered state of activation becomes a general state of activation.
"General state of activation"means an ongoing state of activation, a kind of readiness for experience based upon learning about experience.
Much of the pain that we endure in life has to do with generalized states of activation that have become submerged in the obliviousness of familiarity. In other words they are there, still activated, but, our awareness of them has become subdued. We may intuitively feel how that is so.
Because our awareness of them has become subdued, our control of them has diminished.
That's how a personality forms. It's how a tension set forms. It's how a chronic feeling state forms. It's how our condition forms. It's how our complaints form.
It's memories affecting how we move.
Movement involves the muscles -- and of course, other systems.
Let's talk about the muscles.
Any talk about action involves talk about muscle tension and relaxation of tension. Every state of readiness involves a heightened state of tension.
Memory shapes readiness.
Memory shapes muscular tension.
Injuries form intense memories.
Memories are states of readiness. Always.
Injuries form intense states of readiness, heightened tension, ongoingly. Heightened tension, after a short while, becomes painful -- not just psychologically, but also bodily.
The key to the pain are the memories.
Hanna somatic education cleans up muscle movement memory. By cleaning it up, we eliminate unnecessary states of readiness, unnecessary states of tension, unnecessary discomfort, unnecessary limitation of movement.
The pain people bring to a Hanna somatic educator is the pain of residual conditioning by experience in which they hold and stay tight, habitually, but without recognizing they are doing so: sensorimotor amnesia.
So, in a roundabout way, we've just covered "what" Hanna somatic education handles.
Now we start on the "how".
Sensorimotor amnesia is another term for the muscle-movement memory of natural maturation "influenced" by the muscle movement memories of injury and prolonged stress. Hanna somatic education is a way of teaching people to take back influence over themselves, or to throw off the lingering influences of past experiences -- in this case, the lingering influences of past injuries and stress periods that lead to cumulative, muscular tightening up that "becomes who they are" (but are not).
What we need to do is to delete the automatic impulse to tighten up, to make "starting from rest" the default or customary disposition. The first way of doing that is to make them aware of the impulse to self-tighten. And then teach them to stop tightening themselves up -- not by effort to remember not to tighten up, but simply by not tightening up, in the first place, unless they mean to. They start at rest instead of from a an automatically-disturbed state of readiness. (Consider the mind of such a person.)
That's what the techniques of Hanna somatic education, and the intention behind their use, is. It's to teach people how to free themselves of conditioning influences, so they can feel more like themselves.
That, by the way, is the stated intention of many disciplines, but is most clearly stated as the intention of bodywork and somatic disciplines, in general. Some approaches are more effective than others.
When it comes to muscles, it means to awaken better control over our own tensing and relaxing of our muscles, of ourselves.
What Hanna somatic education does is clean up muscle movement memory so we can feel more like ourselves, when we are all right.
Hanna somatic education cleans up muscle movement memory and then improves it.
Result:
movement, better
pain, gone
ability restored and enhanced
Hanna somatic education cleans up muscle movement memory.
Everything else that may be said would be the particulars of techniques and of somatic education exercise patterns – details that you might try to liken to therapies or exercises you already know. That might give you the wrong idea, if your ideas are based on approaches that work from the outside in, “on” you.
Hanna somatic education doesn't involve techniques that someone applies to you. It involves techniques of teaching you to get back influence over yourself. It's an outside-in AND inside–out job. That's why it works. We use an action or movement pattern "hard-wired" into us, programmed into everyone (and their dog), one related to yawning, called, "pandiculation". Yawning is pleasurable because it releases some of our tension. Hanna somatic education applies this "hard-wired", natural action pattern to clean up muscle-movement memory.
And by the way, because we're working with the programming side of things, meaning our memory conditioning, it works quickly and efficiently, in harmony with our influence over ourselves. Because it works in harmony, it works far faster than approaches that attempt to counter muscle-movement memory instead of dissolve its grip and then organize it. Being "worked with" works far faster and better than being "worked on".
Hanna somatic education works by cleaning up muscle movement memory that influences us in how we move and how we feel.
Muscle movement memory.
That's how Hanna somatic education works and what it does.
