Connective Tissue - Easing the Ties that Bind

Rebecca and I have been getting our house ready for sale in the last couple of months. And, of course, I’ve been spending lots of time fixing those things that I never seemed to get around to. I think about how those new owners will never know how hard I worked getting the place ready for them as I get out of bed in the morning with the aches and pains that come from spending unaccustomed time laying flooring, attaching new screws into loose hinges or moving wheelbarrows of earth. I have some empathy for Jonathan Swift’s character, Gulliver, who awakes in Lilliput to find himself anchored to the ground, bound by the ropes the nation of diminutive people have laced across his body.  

I know that what’s going on inside my body is not too different from Gulliver’s experience. Little strands of connective tissue are slowly but incessantly binding the different parts of my body together so that the shape of my constant bending and kneeling makes it harder to stand straight and move with ease.  

Connective tissue is everywhere in our bodies. It is the cartilage in our nose, ears and deep on the sliding surfaces of our joints. It creates nets that hold our fat cells, intestines, nerves and vessels in place. It forms sheets that cover bones and muscles spinning the cables of tendons that connect muscles to bones and the tapes that hold joints together.  

Of all connective tissue, these sheets, called fascia, have the greatest effect on our movement. From the smallest bundle of muscles cells to the largest muscle masses, fascia helps create not only the shape of muscles but also allows a sliding of each bundle against those around it. They are instrumental in the dynamic strength of muscles that allows subtle responses of the smallest bundles while at the same time binding them together for focused action. With that strength they give our bodies an essential sense of its limits so that we don’t over-reach the range of motion of our muscles and joints. Fascia doesn’t just help shape the inner landscape of our bodies, it shapes the way we move.    

Connective tissue draws its amazing adaptability - forming itself to the needs of each part of the body - through a unique combination of two components: 1. fluid and 2. long, rope-like strands. The fluid, called ground substance, is the basic ingredient of gelatin. Like Jell-O, it is able to respond to temperature changes, moving from liquid to gel as it cools. The strands, known as collagen fibres, are the longest molecular formations in the body. They are also the strongest, with higher strength than steel cables of the same size. Collagen fibres get a lot of that strength from being twisted together like ropes and bound with hydrogen bonds that hold the strands together with Velcro like strength.  

Our most direct and dramatic experience of connective tissue at work is when we injure ourselves. The ground substance of connective tissue helps to create a thickening of the fluids in the wound while the collagen fibres throw themselves across the wound, binding it together and creating scar tissue.  

On the inside of the body, when not called to emergency duty, the fascial sheets adjust themselves to the strains that go through our muscles, tendons and ligaments, thickening themselves to help carry greater load and shaping themselves to the limits of our movements.  

This is exactly what has been happening as I work. As I hammer a new baseboard or lay paving stones, my fascia begins to thicken in my quads and calves. My chest muscles shorten with the load of carrying boxes full of books into storage and the fascia begins to shrink-wrap itself to the new shaping of my body. The deadlines and long hours I require of myself mean that my body isn’t given range of movement experiences.  Not using my full range of movement between the muscles means that the Velcro of collagen fibres begins to create stickiness between the surfaces of muscles. At night these adhesions throw down even more strands so that, like Lilliputian ropes, each tiny strand contributes to and causes the profound limitation of movement and achiness I feel when I wake in the morning or try to stand erect after a long time spent bent over.  

Thus, several weeks later, when I finally appear in yoga class, my hands can barely reach my feet in sitting forward bend, paschimottanasana and my heels cannot find the floor in my downward dog, adho mukha svanasana. Where I might have once blamed “tight muscles,” I now know the truth. My inner surfaces are sticky, my fluids have gelled and my fascial sheets have thickened around shortened muscles.  

I know I have to travel slowly on my road of re-inhabiting my body. In its essential nature, fascia is like Silly Putty. Pull too hard, too fast, and it will pull back against you and maybe snap! But go slowly enough and it melts, giving way before a gentle, engaged stretch. The gel begins to warm, melting into its fluid nature. The Velcro begins to pull apart, allowing the surfaces to slide to greater length. The thickened areas become more flexible as the load is shared across my body through the wisdom of the asanas. I return to a deeper relationship with the life of my body as their busy Lilliputian work returns to providing strength and flexibility on the journey to embodied engagement in life. 

Originally published in the Fall 2014 issue of the "Yoga Bridge", the publication of the Yoga Association of Alberta. 

Resources:

Myofascial release balls such as those used by the Yamuna® system are an excellent way of working out adhesions and thickened fascia.  You can find more at https://www.yamunabodyrolling.com

An insightful (and very entertaining) video on the restrictive power of fascia can be found in anatomist Gil Hedley’s “Fuzz Speech” 

The Body's Story

The Body’s Story

Comment: This is a short article I wrote as an introduction to my Anatomy and Expression workshop series.  It gives a bit of insight into the intersect between body practice and our inner experience. 

As I am working through a twist in yoga, the instructor kneels beside me, and with gentle support starts helping me move deeper. As my ribs start to move and my breathing opens I am surprised to hear sobs emerging. I have been working on the tension in my ribs and restrictions to my breathing for some time, but this was new.

The transition from physical tension to deepened experiencing is not news to any somatic practitioner who has been working for longer than a year or two. I still remember my first experience with this deepening as it occurred on my massage table. My client and I had been working together for some time, but this time she had sheets of tension through her neck and shoulders as a result of a car accident she had earlier that week. As I worked with the tension, she dissolved into tears. She remembered having to move into care-taking mode when she realized that it was an elderly man is who had been driving the car that hit her, and he looked more shocked and bewildered then she felt herself. It was only as she was able to drop into her body that her own reactions began to surface and the tensions that it held them began to soften up.

Despite the frequency of these occurrences in massage therapy and other somatic practices, little education is available in entry level training programs.  The only training that is typically available for practitioners is through specialized trainings in trauma and processed centered therapies.  

 A first step in gaining access to this valuable information is looking at it through the lens of anatomy. In the early 1900s, Pioneer psychoanalyst and researcher, Wilhelm Reich, was already describing how particular muscles in the body formed distinctive patterns of tension that he called armoring. This led to the recognition of tension bands that form at typical levels of the body such as the neck or lower back. And more broadly, how patterns of tension will form as an expression of particular types of personality, often shaped in early childhood development.

Practitioners can benefit from the recognition of these patterns by responding more specifically to them. Slight shifts in techniques can be made through the recognition that the tensions showing in a person’s body are not just physical but have a story. Recognizing the signs of a stopped story in the body may lead to a referral to a practitioner who specializes in this area.  In addition, clients can benefit through education about how unresponsive tension patterns may be related to armoured experience.  

Where Softness Begins - Justin Stone and T'ai Chi Chih

Where Softness Begins

Justin Stone and T'ai Chi Chih

Matthew van der Giessen

I had positioned myself toward the end of a long row of workshop participants when Justin Stone walked into the room and sat himself down right in front of me. My placement of safe anonymity evaporated immediately. Justin sat there, looking at nothing and everything, while we moved through our set. 

I  had arrived in Albuquerque earlier that week with teachers and students from across the continent who had gathered to celebrate Justin's 94th birthday, and to take my first Intensive workshop.

When we finished, Pam Towne, who was leading the Intensive, asked Justin for his comments. The many useful things I'm sure he said disappeared in a blur for me when, at one point, he turned to me and said, "I don't know what you think you are doing, but that's not Tai Chi Chih." I had been warned by Gail Terriff, my teacher in Edmonton, that when I went to the Intensive I would receive at least one correction that would collapse my sense that I knew how to practice Tai Chi Chih.  Little did I know that it would come as such a sweeping critique of my practice and from Justin Stone himself! I continued to absorb the impact of Justin's statement as Pam led us into the next section of teaching.

Then, a window opened awakening me from my absorbed self reflection. Justin had become a bit antsy as he waited for Carmen Brocklehurst to take him home;  he was hosting a meditation later that afternoon. Finally, he got up and headed for the door. I waited for somebody to do something but it seemed as if in that moment time stopped and nobody moved. I felt myself step forward and open the door for Justin.

As I walked him out to the car, he turned to me with the second set of words he would ever speak to me. "Your technique is just fine", he said to me. "You just have to learn to relax." It was if, having fallen into a pit as the ground opened up under my feet when he had spoken to me earlier, he had now handed me a ladder by which I might be able to find my way out.

Later that week, amongst the many invaluable things I learned, Pam handed me an essential rung for my ladder. It was the basic principles of Tai Chi Chih practice: moving from the center with softness and continuity, yining and yanging with the focus on the soles of my feet, with polarity and circularity. Somehow, I thought I could never memorize this simple line. Yet, I immediately recognized that this was the missing piece that I needed to respond to Justin's challenge to me. Every evening after our class I went home and practiced it in my hotel room. Eventually it stuck.

In my work as a massage therapist, I am interacting with people through my body every day.  After 30 years I have learned that congruent interaction is an essential part of my practice. Upon taking my new Tai Chi Chih mantra home, I discovered that holding it quietly inside myself subtly but powerfully changed the quality of my work. New options opened up with deep and unexpected shifts for my clients. In the years since my meeting with Justin, my work has gone through what is perhaps the most significant evolution of my whole career.

And perhaps as important, I find that in my every day interactions with others, whether individually or in groups, my internal mantra helps keep me grounded, helps me hear how I need to be in this moment. I feel more comfortable in myself and, perhaps, more helpful to the fellow beings who inhabit my particular universe. While Justin may no longer be with us in person, his words are there in my ear to help guide me through the rest of my life, moving from the center with softness and continuity.

Anatomy for the Inward Path

Here's an article I recently wrote for the Yoga Association of Alberta. It gives a taste of the paradigm I use in my anatomy courses with yogis and other somatic practitioners. Some very good resources becoming available to support a somatics infused approach to anatomy, particularly those that approach patterning from myofascial or neuromuscular paradigms. As an integrationist, I am spending my time developing a multi-paradigm approach. In particular, I am looking at how an full understanding of somatic patterns draws upon pattern processing through all the systems in the body. That means an inclusion, for example, of fluid and energetic systems. While the following article draws mostly from the available neuromuscular and myofascial resources, the theme of "whole being" expression talked about here is an essential aspect of how I am shaping an evolution from a single paradigm driven perspective to one that describes the experience of the whole person. -Matthew

Anatomy for the Inward Path
by Matthew van der Giessen

Stepping out of his tent as the early morning darkness faded to the first thin edge of dawn, Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, was surprised to see an African tribesman unfolding his lanky frame as he too emerged from the low door of his hut. On a journey through Africa in the 1930‘s, Jung was captivated as he watched the man step forward towards the glimmering sun, spit on his hands and raise them, open and facing the rising sun.

In yoga, we move through the same archetypal movement pattern, raising our arms from Tadasana and then bending forward into Uttanasana. We correct these poses externally and look for the energetic organization internally as we align ourselves with a way of being that has moved human beings across the world for thousands of years.

The journey into embodiment opens up a world that is, at first, enshrouded in fog. We have vague ideas of muscles and bones, joints and organs. Somewhere in our consciousness is an idea of fascia, interconnecting the landscape of our body through sheets and strands.

Travelling the inward path of embodied awareness needs a map that helps guide us through the universe of the body. Anatomy gives us that map, helping us understand our body’s language of communication, and its patterns of organization. Using the map of anatomy, we discover how an engaged shortening of the abdomen and hip flexors in Uttanasana helps the back know how to intelligently lengthen. Our understanding of patterns called kinetic chains helps us problem-solve a discomfort in the lower back when coming out of a forward bend by knowing that the engagement sequence has to move from the floor upwards, engaging the hamstrings so that a ground supported pelvis can, in turn, properly support the load on the straightening lower back.

One of the most surprising anatomy insights for yogis is that most muscle fibres in the body move diagonally, lending their individual fibres to interconnected spirals that flow across and through the body. Through the insights of anatomy we can connect points of awareness from muscle attachments deep in the soles of the feet, spiralling from the inside of the arch to the knee. From here, the spiral line follows a diagonal line across the outer quadricep, through the gluteus maximus and into the edge of the sacrum. Once we understand this connection we can feel how the engagement of the arches creates a dynamic connection that aligns the legs and connects them to the core of the pelvis.

All of these movements are contained and supported by webs and strands of fascia that, when they thicken or shorten through misuse or injury, limit a muscle’s capacity for response. Understanding the effect of fascia in restricting range of motion can move the focus of a yogi’s work away from a fixed focus on muscle lengthening. We can learn to engage the fascia and reduce the chance of strain and injury.

Each interaction with the world brings us a choice. We either awaken our instinctual responses to the natural sense of wonder that moved Carl Jung and the African tribesman, or we create another layer of habituated response that distorts and limits the expression of our essential being. Each movement towards natural expression is a response of the whole person. It draws each bone, muscle, fluid and organ into a song of praise to this moment. Through the insights of anatomy we create a channel through which the mind, so often distracted by the “things” of this world, can join in that chorus of community, and more fully take our place in creation.

Matthew's Internet Radio Interview

On April 15th I had an invitation to talk about the SomaLab, the blog and somatics related stuff on Somatime, a program on Blogtalk Radio, an internet radio service.  

Somatime described the event this way: 

"It's time to turn the mirror around and take a closer look at how this 'somatic paradigm' gets communicated in the real world. Joining us is Matthew van der Giessen from HEALING-CONNECTIONS.CA who has taken on the challenge of documenting the learning curve of building somatic awareness on his blog, SOMALAB.BLOGSPOT.COM  

We'll get a frontline perspective of how the training program at Healing Connections impacts both the clients and the practitioners and get into some of the nuances of what makes somatics such a unique science."

The interview was, as the host, Dr. Mark Fillipi, described it afterward,  "a spirited discussion."

You can listen to the program at this link .  The interview starts at the 13:40 mark. 

Enjoy!

The Essential Questions of Somatic Practice

1. What is This?
Open your awareness to all possible sources of sensory information including:

• Surfaces
  
• Movement
  
• Breath
  
• Moods
  

2. How Does It Want to Go?
Give your body the fullest possibility to make movements that use all sensations available in the moment.


3. Where am I Using Unnecessary Effort?
Watch for two kinds of tension:

• Working too hard
  
• Stopping movement that would like to be included
  

4. How Can I Inhabit This Movement Instead of “Doing” It?
Be curious, explore
Let the sensations soak in.
Use the practices to make friends with your body.
Feel yourself move as an organism that inhabits space.

You could post this on your fridge, at work...  

Let me know how you do with using these questions by contacting me at matthew@somaticsinstitute.com

Practicing in the Dojo of Everyday Life

Richard Strozzi-Heckler tells a story about coming out of an Ikido dojo and almost getting run over by someone running a red light as he crosses the street. But what caught his attention more than the car hurling itself past his body was his rage, and the way he was thrown off centre.

Strozzi-Heckler, an Akido master and psychologist, has been practicing martial arts since he was 12 years old. He is one of the original contributors to the surge of Western body-centred practices that emerged from the crucible of the 60's. With Robert Hall MD and Elissa Hall, he was co-founder of the Lomi School, an approach that integrated hands-on practices with psychology and mindfulness back in the early 1970's.

Experiences like his lesson on the street corner began to move Richard Strozzi-Heckler away from traditional, table based forms of bodywork, and out of the traditional dojo. He began to understand that hands-on bodywork was limited in its ability to integrate body awareness with social interaction, and as he was discovering, the traditional dojo had its own challenges helping its practitioners integrate its ideals into modern Western life. These days, his business, The Strozzi Institute, works with organizations using a format he calls the corporate dojo. His corporate dojo learning environment has been used by organizations as diverse as Capital One, the U.S. Army Special Forces, Navy Seals, the Marine Corp (who put an extra week on boot camp to incorporate his dojo paradigm into training), and Los Angeles street gangs.

Participants might learn how to drop into their knees and breath into their belly when engaged in a confrontation. In my own practice one of my clients applied these principles in her work as a manager of a sales staff. She found that sales team members who incorporated simple neck and shoulder massage into their team culture became the highest producing sales group. And performance reviews became more successful when she coached participants to drop their breath into their belly, and to feel for the sensations of the chair they were sitting on and the floor beneath their feet.

As our bodies learn to locate themselves in the moment we gain increased access to the strategies of de-escalation and appropriate response. The training of the dojo emerges as a functional piece of organizational life.

The dojo, Strozzi-Heckler says, is a Japanese word that means, "place of training." It comes from the Sanskrit word, bodhi manda, which means "place of awakening, or enlightenment." A dojo creates a different educational environment than we are used to in most Western education systems. In a dojo you develop a practice, and you practice with your body.

Most Eastern somatic practices use the dojo approach to training. When you practice yoga or martial arts you start with the basics but as you advance you never leave the practice of fundamentals behind. Your competence as a practitioner is not just assessed by how much you know but on how much you have deepened your knowledge of the simple things that you share with every beginning student.

Richard Strozzi-Heckler's curbside epiphany points to a weakness in the dojo system, at least in the way it is practiced in the West. When we go to our yoga class we step into the dojo paradigm. We remember our underlying functionality as the practice helps us realign ourselves with the natural patterns of our being. As we leave we close the door behind us and slowly lose the lingering effects of the practices as we re-enter the habits of everyday life. The dojo becomes a pitstop in the race of everyday life.

But the disconnect of modern dojo practice is increased further when we look at the challenge facing hands-on somatic practitioners - the lack of a professional practice that is integrated with a personal practice.

When I step into a dojo environment, I am met by a teacher. In a yoga ashram that teacher might be called a guru - one who points the way. In a martial arts dojo that person might be call a sensei - one who has gone before. In each case these titles allude to an essential part of the teacher's role - practicing what they teach.

Western hands-on somatic approaches are notable in that they don't have an underlying personal practice. Your practitioner could easily have spent less time than you on a treatment table and is certainly not required to have a personal practice that would be congruent with the intentions of the work they do. Massage practitioners, for example, leave the profession in droves with sore backs, aching arms and repetitive strain injuries, largely because of the lack of personal practice that would support the work they do. I explore this issue further in two Massage Magazine articles titled, "Finding Ourselves" and  "The Trouble with 'Doing' a Massage."

Recently, I have been working on the disconnect between personal practice, professional practice and everyday life through a class that runs parallel to the SomaLab. I call it Somatic Patterning. The Somatic Patterning class is open to anyone and has a diverse participation ranging from clients at our clinic to hands-on bodywork and yoga practitioners.

The class has three focus areas:

1. Fundamental developmental patterns that organize the functional organism. I use techniques drawn from sources such as Thomas Hanna's Cat Stretch series, ideas from Feldenkrais, martial arts and the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen.

2. Sensing approaches that work beneath the constraints of habit to recognize and release movement habits that contribute to chronic tension and discomfort. Here I draw from the sensing work of Elsa Gindler and Charlotte Selver, and that of F.M. Alexander.

3. Translation of these approaches to awareness and movement into practices that can be done anytime, anywhere. I call this practicing in the dojo of everyday life.

These practices run parallel to the SomaLab because they share similar intentions. In the SomaLab we are interested in developing professional practice that is shaped by the experiences of personal practice. In the Somatic Patterning class we create an environment where anybody can have access to the ground language of the human organism as it brings awareness to sensation and creates response that are continually reshaped by the experience of the moment.

Let me attempt the perilous task of describing a physical example. Let me know how I do.

We may start a class by exploring the cross-crawl pattern, moving across the room on hands and knees with one arm and the opposite leg moving together. A quick experiment will show that if you try the other option - moving the arm and leg forward on the same side - your crawl becomes very unstable. Then, we might lie on the floor (with knees bent) pushing one shoulder blade and its opposite hip into the floor. Finally, we could end the class sitting on an exercise ball with our hands gently pressing against the wall in front of you (you could get the same effect sitting in your chair as you gently pressed your hands against the edge of your desk).

You might want to try this movement. Slowly slide one knee toward the wall (or desk) while drawing the other one back toward you.

Although you will find this practice works with less effort on the unstable surface of the ball, try a few exploratory movements back and forth with your knees. As one knee moves toward the wall try adding an increase of pressure against the wall with your opposite hand. Gently explore this movement following the suggestions in "The Essential Questions of Somatic Practice" I have included in a separate blog.

Now, the pièce de résistance, practicing in the dojo of everyday life. The principle of contralateral movement says that each arm movement will be mirrored by a similar movement in the opposite leg. For example, as you sit at your desk working with your mouse try dropping a little more weight into the hip on the opposite side from your "mouse arm." You can emphasize this by very slightly releasing the pressure of your foot on the floor (Do Not Lift It Off!). You might find that these slight reorganizations of your body awareness will straighten you posture and let you drop into the shoulder of your mouse arm. It will also tend to take the strain out of your neck, lower back and working arm.

Playing with the contralateral principle of diagonal opposites can become quite fascinating. It can open your eyes to how much you distort your posture in everyday experiences of standing, sitting or walking. And, following your curiosity as you explore a movement shift can ease strains in your body without having to "fix" yourself. You just give your body the information it needs to make its own self adjustments.

As we move through the SomaLab, and its sister Somatic Patterning course, we are finding that participants begin to build sustainable practices built on curiosity, using sensation to engage the mind with body experiences in the moment.  It becomes possible to apply the principles of sensing and pattern organization to enhance dojo practices such as yoga, tai chi or Pilates that we are already engaged in. And we are gaining an enhanced understanding of how to soften the lock of habit while freeing the creative possibilities of how our organism wants to be more fully in this moment.