The other day a client brought in "The Knuckle" to see if she thought it would be a good thing for her to use between her sessions.
Actually before she even finished her sentence I said "absolutely not". The only thing this tool is good for is to use it as a book stand or a door stop.
I took a look at the instruction manual. 75% of the manual was how not to use is so you don't injure yourself! I tried one of their suggestions on how to best use this. It was awful, painful, and nowhere near helpful.
I am continually amazed at the crappy, trendy, useless tools that people are trying to sell to the public in hopes that it will relieve their pain.
Before you continue reading this, I will say that if you are personally a fan of aggressive, painful therapies, you will probably disagree with me.
But, if you are interested in learning more about how the body works as an integral system and that aggressive and painful massage and bodywork techniques are counterproductive to healing....
carry on...
You see, in my 23 years of doing bodywork, not once have I seen a successful result in healing by trying to beat muscle tissue into submission.
Here's why...
The Nervous System :: If your brain is receiving any signal that it is not safe, it will contract the whole body and especially the area that already has had injury. It is doing its job to protect you. So, if your are flinching, holding your breath, bracing the body in any way, you are firing up your Sympathetic Nervous System {fight, flight, freeze}.
The body can only heal if it is in the Parasympathetic Mode. Meaning.... rest, digest, heal.
How this works is that when the nervous system feels safe, with no risk of pain or further injury, all the attention can be directed by the brain and body to release tension in the muscle and fascia, increase circulation to the area, and repair tissue. This results in ease of movement and mobility with decreased pain.
2. Aggressive manual therapy to muscle tissue has the potential to bruise and damage the tissue.
Um..... I thought we were trying to reverse the damage to the tissue, right? So why are these therapies causing further damage to the area that is already injured?
3. The site / location of the pain, is rarely the actual cause of the pain. So if someone has plantar fasciitis for example, and a therapist spends all their time scraping and poking at the bottom of the foot, the plantar fasciitis will rarely go away. There needs to be an assessment of lifestyle, postural patterns, fascial web lines, past trauma... both physical, mental, emotional, and energetic.
Let's try to shift the paradigm of thinking about healing from one that is aggressive, myopic, and mechanistic over to working WITH the body and ALL of its systems in an integral way that is loving and understanding of the systems as a whole.
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