Problems Come Apart in Layers

LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TODAY…!

This client is dealing with a complex situation involving a Scoliosis pattern and a blow to the left top of the head sustained in a protest demonstration 50 plus years ago at the age of 21 at the hand of a policeman’s baton. The blow knocked her unconscious. The spiral that it put into her spine may have been the source of her scoliosis. A routine screening for Scoliosis as a teenager in school elicited no remarks about Scoliosis.

When we first began work 1 ½ years ago her upper cervicals were radically torqued to the right and compressed such that the base of her neck had no room to rotated to the left at all. Now her head sits on top of a much longer neck and the sub-occipital torque is a small remainder of a lifetime of patterning.

Shoulder problems almost always have a contributing source in the reciprocal function of the SPS. Lack of rotational movement in the upper thorax can cause weakness in one or both shoulders. Today we focused on the left shoulder restriction.

My client thinks this restriction is due to overuse at an earlier age due to bracing with that arm for her work. I don’t agree. I think the weakness and dysfunction in that shoulder caused the effort of a weak muscle to go rigid through use. Remember: Muscles that are weak become rigid and sore when used excessively, and do not respond to massage. Relaxing is not appropriate for muscles that are weak and overworked.

She has residual restrictions in her left shoulder joint and excessive holding in the arm pit area.

This problem has come apart in 4 or 5 layers: first the vertical support of the thoracic/cervical column; second the small muscles of the shoulder joint; third the big muscle support of the lateral shoulder such as tricep and lats and anterior serratus; fourth, deeper into the joint, the posterior deltoid has taken over for stabilization to the core (Rhomboids, Ant Serratus and Traps).

Fifth, we HAVE to make sure the rotations at the suboccipitals and those at the top of the thoracic column (Serratus Posterior Superior) are both reciprocally functional and not undermining one another. We’ve corrected this before so it wasn’t the focus of today’s work but it did have to be checked against all other inhibitions found today.

RULE of NMR: Remaining dis-coordination in associated muscles; those used for bracing a structure to get life’s work done, can trigger the body to reconfigure the whole coordination confusion. Next time you’ll have to repeat things. Once you get all muscle coordination coherent, that doesn’t happen. Could it really be that simple? In my experience YES, over and over again.