Intelligence in Action
Un-Learning Arthritis
by Graeme Lynn, GCFP, CSTAT, CHP, AHSE
Thomas Hanna, one of the great contributors of the twentieth century to human well-being, once said that he had never in his many years of experience come across a case of osteoarthritis. When I studied with Hanna, he had a waiting list for his work a year long. People with arthritis and with many other kinds of sensory-motor ailments came to him from all over the United States for treatment. After his tragic death in 1990, I had the opportunity to work with some of his patients who traveled from as far away as the Eastern seaboard for lessons with him in California. In his time, he had been instrumental in establishing somatic education as a clinically viable field of holistic healthcare whose influence continues to grow in the larger world.
Tom said that, instead of 'osteoarthritis', a better word was 'rackafrack'. 'You've got a touch of the rackafrack.' 'What is this pain here, doctor?' 'It's a bit of the rackafrack.' Tom, like two great somatic educators before him, F. M. Alexander and Moshe Feldenkrais, was prone to exaggerated speech, in order to make a point which most of us need to hear repeatedly: the point being, it is not something you have, it is in the way you do. In spite of this, such terms as fibromyalgia, regional muscular syndrome, and other such vague nomenclature have become popular to identify unidentifiable patterns of human pain.
Even when a person is suffering from arthritis or chronic or acute musculoskeletal, myofascial, or neuromuscular problems, it is only in the most unusual of cases that a person can do nothing to significantly improve his or her condition. In fact, in the vast majority of cases, very significant improvements can be made. And one of the most effective approaches, which is not merely palliative like drugs, and not invasive, risky, and only symptomatic like surgery, is sensory-motor learning or somatic education, conscious refinement of self-sensing and movement. The Alexander Technique, the Feldenkrais Method and Hanna Somatics exemplify somatic approaches of this kind. ('Sensory-motor' means pertaining to self-sensing and movement capabilities; the 'self-senses' are the senses of balance, articulation or shape, felt movement, tissue pressure, tissue tension, and pain, which tell us about ourselves, to be distinguished from the senses of vision, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, heat, and cold, which tell us about the world.)
The essential cause of all human pain that is not organic in nature is undue muscular contraction. Whether there is misalignment, compression, wear and tear, imbalance, over-use, under-use, shearing, stiffness, rigidity, ischemia, or hypermobility - the root of them all is muscular contraction that is superfluous, inappropriate, or 'parasitical' to effective movement and responsive posture. This is really so. And it can be remedied, because we are inherently healthy, and because, when things go wrong, we have the greatest of resources to which to turn for renewal: our conscious intelligence - and somatic methodology, which has outstripped in the last century the benefits offered by mainstream medical approaches.
It is entirely possible to re-learn what we have forgotten in the course of our lives, which is relaxed and flexible efficiency and resilience in the process of everyday action, whereby the way we move is harmonious with our physical structure (thereby, by-passing the creation of pain) and conformed to the mechanical requirements of the surrounding world (and so, maximally effective).
Alexander, Feldenkrais, and Hanna were brilliant educators. The essential nature of their teaching work is the same. Each of their methods is the facilitation of improved self-sensing and movement through sensitive and skilful manipulation and instruction. ('Manipulation' here indicates the strategy of touch and handling and in no way implies brusqueness, force, or psychological coercion.)
By improving the range and acuity of your ability to feel how you are doing what you are doing - and, in any of these methods, what we typically work with are fundamental movement patterns which you then generalize to the more complex life activities outside the treatment lesson - you can un-learn those habits of movement and coordination which are patterns of undue muscular contraction, and re-learn a manner of self-organization that is more integrated and effective, balanced and easeful, and that undoes the stress on the joints and tissues. Then, if there is, in fact, any organic deterioration, the body can begin to heal itself.
Cartilage (in the joints and disks), fascia, and bone are connective tissue, the tissue that quickly and effectively regenerates itself. Many people wrongly believe that, once so-called degenerative what-its-itis or whatever-algia has begun, it is the start of a long decline. In fact, once true healing via consciously directed sensory-motor learning has begun, it can be the beginning of a relatively short recovery period.
The medical field has too long focused on disease and its influence suggests that disease is inevitable. In fact, with a culture of positive expectation and the application of practical wisdom, health is inevitable.
When someone comes to me suffering from some limitation in function, whether its apparent cause has been named or not, I look at and feel the way that person moves and coordinates him- or herself, and, from that, I can understand how and what he or she is sensing and not sensing. I then begin to build up a 'picture' of that person's sensory-motor process. From there, I can facilitate, through the teaching techniques at my disposal, their learning improved self-sensing and improved quality of movement in the ways that are pertinent to their limitations.
Each of us receives thousands of 'bits' of sensory 'feedback' into the central nervous system at every moment. For many reasons - injury, surgery, disease, lifestyle, traumas of every kind, emotional patterning, character strategies, core beliefs, poor nutrition, faulty development, imitation in youth, reflex responses to stress, and other factors which instigate faulty patterns of doing (or movement and coordination) and thus, feeling (or self-sensing) - some sensory information is distorted or blocked and not accessible to attention. You cease to be able to feel all of yourself and exactly how you are moving. Your self-sensing thus becomes imbalanced, inadequate, and incomplete. Then, because of the inextricable impact of self-sensing on movement in the sensory-motor nervous system's functioning, which is organized as a cybernetic-like feedback circuit wherein self-sensing impacts movement and vice versa, the quality of your movement necessarily becomes habitually imbalanced and inadequate. And these inadequate habits of self-sensing and moving, without right re-education, remain. That is to say, you come to be chronically moving with imbalanced, excessive, or undue muscular contractions that cause compression, misalignment, imbalance, wear and tear, hypermobility, shearing forces, ischemia, over-use of some parts, under-use of other parts, stiffness, rigidity, and so on: the precursors of joint and tissue inflammation and pain. And that is why Tom Hanna said that arthritis is not something you have, but in the way you do. And that is remediable. And therefore, arthritis thus caused is remediable, by improving the way you move or, as Feldenkrais said, your self-organization, and by improving the clarity of your self-sensing. Facilitating this improvement by skilful intervention is the expertise of the somatic educator.
The manner of such intervention in the Alexander Technique, the Feldenkrais Method, and Hanna Somatics is curiously different. Each has its appropriate application. As a Feldenkrais practitioner, I use primarily gentle passive movements and mirror, 'go with', or support the client's habitual pattern of coordination (a strategy Feldenkrais drew from Judo of which he was a black belt master). By thus sensitively reflecting to the client his or her own characteristic patterning, I enable the person to become aware of, and thereby think and feel through, and so release, those very sensory-motor patterns that limit the quality of movement. This growing awareness is the foundation of coming to sense yourself better, and thus to move better, and thus to free yourself from undue muscle contractions, and thereby obviate the creation of inflammation and pain.
As an Alexander teacher, I guide the client through primarily gentle active movements while always finding the easier way, by skillfully and sensitively working to rightly coordinate the person's core dynamic around which all movement is organized. At the same time, I enlist the person's innate capacity to attend to him- or herself and become aware of habitual patterning and, through gentle manipulation and instruction, stimulate the person's sensory-motor self-exploration and capacity for freedom and control of the physical mechanism. Such freedom and control are the essence of ease, movement health, and freedom from functional problems.
In Hanna Somatics, I use primarily vigorous active movements, sensitively directed, to re-awaken held areas deadened to sensing, feeling, and movement, thereby re-awakening there the capacity for conscious sensation and voluntary control.
Each of these methods has its appropriate application depending on the presenting limitations and their nature and severity. Many people need to re-acknowledge the body's necessary value and to re-awaken curiosity therein. Many need to realize that they can grow again and that they can be responsible for that growth. When we begin to make improvements in function through the work in our lessons, we open ourselves to positive transformation. Then sensory-motor learning takes on a conscious, intelligent direction, and we can take a participatory role in our own improvement. In time, the inherent healing force of Life together with that of conscious intelligence re-institutes the pleasure in bodily being and empowers us towards our dreams.
To schedule lessons, please contact Graeme in Toronto, Ontario, at 416-964-7026, or click to email.