If mental floss prevents truth decay then what will cleaning between your muscles prevent?

By Aric Spencer | Published Summer 2007 Living On the Peninsula Magazine

Renowned for its ability to revitalize visitors and residence alike, the Olympic Peninsula holds a special promise to keep the mind and body youthful. Our varied and inspired ecosystem and all its interconnectedness is a living symbol of vitality that literally ties us all together in awe, wonder, and a shared urge to go rent a bear-safe container and hunt for wild blueberries up in the high country. Or maybe that part is just about me.

Whatever an active lifestyle means to you, there can be a challenge to staying youthful in paradise: How do we stay active when youthful pursuits turn out to be tough on the body?

How do we find effective, long-lasting relief from chronic pain and that feeling of knotted muscles throughout the body? When physical performance suffers, why is it often difficult to get the body back on track again?

The iconic Mr. Rodgers once said, “Often, problems are knots with many strands, and looking at those strands can make a problem seem different.” Good advice, lets do that, lets address this challenge to staying active by looking more deeply into the strands that constitute knots. This will help explain why people get and remain tight, how they develop long-lasting pain, and why well-known therapies often do not fix these problems. Once you understand knots, you can have greater control over your life and how you feel.

This information is scientifically proven and based on an approach called Structural Integration or “SI.” In a moment, I will explain the SI approach, how it works to “fix” the problem and often more effectively than other more well known therapies.

Knots, often called “scar tissue,” are shortened, scrunched-up and matted-down soft tissue. The soft connective tissue is a fluid, gel-like, network—a tissue with threads woven into it (they act similarly to the rebar in concrete.) This network of soft tissue is “the soup” which every muscle cell in your body swims in. It “bathes” muscles, groups of muscles, bones, nerves, and joints as well. It creates the shape of the whole body. This tissue forms a network that literally connects all our movements into cooperative effort; head to toe it allows us to move in a fluid and flexible manner. Muscle fibers create waste and require oxygen and food as fuel to function. Muscles are cleansed, hydrated and nourished through the exchange that passes through this network! Now that’s valuable real estate.

Over our lives, injury, stress, poor body mechanics, and high-impact repeated movements compact the soft tissue’s fibers and thicken the gel part into a shorter, tougher wrap. This occurs all over the body and might not cause any pain except where all the pulling becomes the most focused. This is why people get and remain tight and how they develop long-lasting pain— muscles get bound, dry, starved of oxygen, and toxins amass irritating the nerves. Losing their naturally balanced elasticity, muscles are unable to fully relax or competently create proper posture and gait. Shortness along the connective network torques the body out of shape and diminishes our muscles’ health and performance, and eventually leads to chronic pain conditions including carpal tunnel syndrome, budging discs, plantar fasciatis, sciatica, scoliosis, and sleep apnea.

This pain and tightness is often not satisfactorily resolved through massage, chiropractics, physical therapy, or surgery because these systems usually do not re-lengthen the accumulated shortness in the connective tissue system. They do not change he shape of the body. Often, the wonderful results of these modalities are short lived. The twisted shapes that bodies take on build-up over decades. SI was specifically designed to address decades of accumulated shortness using special hands-on technique of spreading and the knowledge of how to sequentially unwind a body’s inter-connected shortness —in a matter of hours, decades of shortness can be spread out and returned to proper length. Once this is done, the muscles will respond much better to massage and other manipulations.

Youthful attributes like flexibility, agility, strength, balance, endurance, easily controlled movement, quick healing and recovering, full emotional and physical expression, playfulness, and a good relaxed posture are the cumulative effect of coordinated efforts by healthy and well- organized connective tissue. People prize these attributes in others and strive to protect them in their own bodies and minds. What is key from the structural integrator’s point of view is this: these attributes are rendered inefficient and painful by shortness accumulated in the connective tissue throughout one’s life. This accumulation of soft tissue damage, which is also called “somatic retraction,” is what many people commonly experience and label as “aging”—it is a complaint from the body saying, in effect, “I can’t thrive here!”

Structural integration is a type of bodywork I have been practicing for eight years in Port Townsend. Nationally, more and more people are learning about the benefits of “SI”—In April this year, SI earned a coveted spot on The Oprah Winfrey Show. SI also was chronicled in the March issue of Vogue magazine. Who would have thought—SI is in vogue!

This means many people are learning about leaving their pain behind, and getting into better- working bodies. Structural integrators have been successfully addressing inefficient physical performance and chronic pain for more than 40 years. More than a million people have already chosen this unique integrative approach to well being — Professional and Olympic athletes, elders, children, people with stress-related issues, survivors of accidents, and those recovering from surgery.

Worldwide, 14 different institutions train and certify SI practitioners. The Rolf Institute®, Hellerwork® International, and The Soma Institute for Neuromuscular Integration® are examples of SI schools with local practitioners. Clinically proven and scientifically developed, the SI approach is the cumulative result of sixty years of research into gravity’s effects on the body, the mechanics of the soft connective tissue network, and somatic and movement theory. SI also has roots in yoga and Alexander Technique®.

This special hands-on technique and knowledge is not part of the regular medical curriculum but many MDs, DCs, acupuncturists, nurses, psychotherapists, and massage practitioners have chosen this approach to resolve chronic pain and inefficient structural performance. Ask your health care provider if they are aware of the structural integration approach.

How does SI, and specifically my practice of SOMA Neuromuscular Integration®, attend to the “fixing” of inefficient physical performance and chronic pain? Soma® is designed to sequentially, session by session, re-lengthen the accumulated shortness in the soft connective tissue network, positively effecting the nerves, joints, and muscles. SOMA® consists of 11, 90 minute sessions of hands-on bodywork, movement education, journey notebook writing (personal logs), and of course homework in the form of exercises and stretches. For some, the process can be intense, emotionally or physically, because of long-term fixed resistance to accepting change, especially within the emotional body.

Three specific benefits of SOMA® Bodywork:

A posture that looks and feels comfortable:

Soma® opens up the range of motion in the joints for better alignment and balance within the pull of gravity—creating a more naturally stable, upright, and comfortable

posture.

A productive, active muscle system:

Soma® decreases scar tissues for a more relaxed faster recovering muscle system. This creates more elastic, powerful, and efficient muscle contraction.

A sense of embodiment:

Soma® gives nerves options by decreasing habit-formed patterns that block the intelligent feedback needed for smooth coordination, proprioception, and healthy sequencing of movement—creating a sense that the body is alive, dynamic, graceful, and more aware of itself in the ever-changing present moment.

Soma® was the first of 12 different offshoots of Structural Integration. Certified Soma practitioners are trained at the Soma Institute for Neuromuscular Integration® in Buckley, Washington. A distinct form of SI, the goal of SOMA® is to enable adults and children to have a profound connection to self through rebalancing their structure

Why do I choose to do this work?

It is a “systems approach” that makes sense and personally it has made my body work smarter; I have participated in sports all of my life, and I sustained injuries that seriously inhibited my ability to breath, thrive, express my self, and feel my body. Flexibility-wise, my body was super stuck. I was getting old before my time. My body works with me now; stretching feels good as does dancing and singing. I find I have a newfound emotional connection to my life—a strength that drives me to create a much more exciting life.

Recently, two woman from Port Angeles and Port Townsend wrote of their SOMA® experience,

1) “Aric and the Soma Series caught me by surprise with the depths we touched, and the healing that continues to unfold from our work. I found myself, or maybe it was my body, remembering long forgotten moments. Visiting those memories of sadness, anger, and grief from the past and feeling their presence within my body allowed a deeper layer of letting go, and brought a

new alignment based on ease rather than contraction. For me it was a great exploration of mind, body, psyche and the power of breath to bridge these realms, and heal. “ 2) “My quality of life has been enhanced on a far greater scale than I can describe. The benefits are both tangible and intangible. I know my attitude towards everything has improved since beginning my sessions with Aric.”

To me, SOMA® is about improving a person’s quality of life by removing specifically what is exhausting them from within their body.

If you want details about the SOMA® 11-session series, single sessions for specific injury treatment, SOMASSAGE®, fees, or to read more testimonials, please call (360) 385-5822 or visit the BodyAlive! website at www.BodyAlive-Center.com

Aric Spencer is a Certified SOMA® Structural Integrator with eight years private practice in Port Townsend and four years as a faculty member instructing kinesiology at the Port Townsend School of Massage.