Integration of skillsets for the highest good
How I have used my total arma-mentarium for a better outcome and a patient who could not look over her shoulder for 10 years
FIRST OBSERVATIONS
“Common Sense is where Consciousness Originates”I was asked by a fellow practitioner how I integrate the modalities I have learned along the way into my practice.
I had to think about this for a bit. In a way it like stopping to see how a car runs from when we turn the key (or push button today) and start the engine. So many moving parts though they just seem to work with some fine engineering and effort in time.
To start the conversation, here are few notions that I consider.
Set the Setting. Promote a balanced and non threatening physical space to take in the nervousness of a new experience for them. Inviting and calming, everything in its place, well curated and with great intention and affect of uplifting energetics.
No Agenda/Ask for an invitation to enter the conversation. Begin with an empty space in the relationship for the patient. Clear your professional mindset of “knowledge is power.”
Create space within you to be filled by their story. Allow yourself to put your story aside and listen.
Ask for permission to begin. Set your frame of mind prior to seeing them. Equanimity (of evenness throughout).
Our First Observation is in the beginning to build a foundation watching bodily movements/postures in relation to gravitational forces; listening to their tone and volume of voice, their intonations. I am watching everything about how they engage the world around them. I am looking for patterns, ones that act as guide posts to the roots of the painful condition.
Shorten up the initial interview if it feels like it may not be fruitful in the moment and jump into assessing movement. I am building on intuition and patterns I have seen before and trying the waters expertly as I go about working with client/patients. It does take a bit of time and with good repetitions you will see the patterns and will be able to jump right into teh mix with them and will prove to be enlightening experiences.
A P a t i e n t E n c o u n t er
Claire W.
Dx: Chronic Cervico-thoraco-lumbar strain
Occupation: Nurse of 32 years
Initial visit 2017.
“I hurt my upper back again. Last time was a few months ago. I have chronic issues with my low back. I cannot turn my body without it hurting a lot." She points to all the areas of pain in her back and neck.
She was clear and succinct and right to the point. She was a charge nurse. I was not interested in asking how it happened at the moment as I got the impression that she has had to tell a story more than once how she was hurt and is now having to live with chronic pain and now with an acute overlay of injury. And btw I have her whole Hx in the computer so that helps alot.
Right off the bat I ask her if she would be willing to try something now to help her back pain.
This is an invitation to treat her.
We walked out to the gym and she mentioned that she has not been able to rotate her back for almost 10 years. this was a clue to go here first. I almost always start with working on rotation as it is an important primitive movement for safety and efficiency.
I start with standing and walking observation. Weight distribution under her feet-balance.
Next step
A walking Cortico Field Re education lesson using simultaneous multi-planar movements in a locomotive activity. A mouthful. I simply had her walking arms crossed rotating her trunk one wya or the other with a steady head.
Initially, she is unable to perform the lesson with fits and stops and awkward coordination in rotating to one side as she is walking. Eventually she starts to crack it open with some minor adjustments in her hand position and posture presentation and awareness not to over rotate in the position before she starts walking.
Not to over effort is what we to notate here.
We play for a few minutes and I let her rest for a few minutes and catch up more on her history.
I then ask her to stand from sitting and notice her weight distribution and then walk up and back and notice if there is any change she is feeling from the beginning of our session
When she returns she has a soft face and a smile.
I then ask her to look over her left side. She has near full trunk rotation. She is quiet and begins to become teary eyed… I wait patiently and listen to her for she just revealed something most grand, a nugget of healing is being resolved, freed from her tissue.
“Whats coming up for you?”
“I never thought I would be able to play golf and rough house with the grandkids. I thought I was broken. I was told never to do more strenuous activities or I would end up in a wheel chair. My doctor scolded me.”
Salience. A sense of loss in independence and freedom to move freely without worry. This was locked into her tissues, this was told by her Doctor, Nocebic languaging.
I asked her to walk again and then rotate her body as she was walking backwards. We did it backwards or backward walking to confabulate the brain which is novel to the brain.
We did this a few times and then we rested for a few minutes and I asked her to rotate her body once again. The motion was approximately the same however the ease and flow of the rotation had shifted greatly into a preferable new pattern, painless mind you.
With agreement we stopped the session there. It was plenty. There was novelty, success and a beautiful smile. This was the perfect way to end the session.
I saw her a few times and with each visit she looked lighter and walked with greater ease. The important pieces to her story is that she was abused as a child and teen, and found herself in difficult relationships with co workers because she was rigid in her ways. ( rigid neck, inflexible spine). She worried tremendously about life and dying a painful death and never felt like her body was ever free of pain. Truth be told, the first visit with her had me moved to tears, for it was more a felt shift in the energy around her when she jumped full track onto her own healing path. It was palpable.
A t t h e H e a r t o f a W i s e P r a c t i t i o n e r
is the work toward ending conflict and suffering. You don’t have to be a person who lays hands on , you can listen as a psycho-therapist/counselor may do.
It is no longer an original physiologic loop cycling under the nose of the Brain. It breathes up northward and southward bending from the spinal cord and into the cortico-limbic infrastructure and begins to set like a tarry asphalt on a hot day to creating pathways that are influenced by thought and emotions and feelings that then influence the felt sense in the pain body. We may become immobile.
A jumbling of the frontal cortex where executive decision skills are developed, moral and ethical notions are honored, a part of our reasoning space is being cleaved together when we begin to let go of old stories and limited beliefs given by others.
What was once hot and concretized becomes more malleable and we are able to transform these internal conversations that prevent us from healing and moving on.
It is a heady matter and connecting the conscious mind of the brain to the unconscious mind of the body is key to healing and this pathways leads to less discomfort in life, less suffering in our livelihoods.
I n t e r o c e p t i o n
In this we are asking our patients for a radical shift in the mind. The way in which one see’s their world and how they interact in it. We are serving up some level of truth building for themselves and sovereignty over their healing pathways. Sometimes this embarkment may have life altering consequences. The main take away is:
We develop traits through modeling and programming from others and we take cues from our world and in our way create operating instructions on how to navigate life as we grow up.
When there is a persistent pain condition that is not freeing itself from the pain body then we need to help our clients and patients to navigate into the interoceptive realm: self reflection and clearer knowing of the sense of emotions that have entrained a life susceptible to states of chronic dis-ease.
This pathway cannot be done without a working of garnering knowledge of the self. Looking inward and being in touch with the sensorial experiences and learning to encode and better understand what is given salience to attend to and what is not.
This is a major facet in healing painful states. It is this capacity to learn Interoceptive Comprehension as a practitioner.
Blessings and Namaste,
t
I love the intuitive and graceful approach. To guided healing I have been using phrases of being mindful of movement not fearful of movement Thank you TK for sharing your journey and continuing to guide this dinosaur
Claire’s story resonates with me. My own hx of back pain has led me to the realization that a fair amount of it was due to my own anxieties and the conditioned responses of my nervous system.
As a practitioner, I find the first 2 notions of great importance. Without trust and a welcoming, caring environment, healing cannot take place (physically and spiritually)