Sukie Baxter

June 20, 2010 Pain Relief

Simple Exercise to Increase Shoulder Flexibility

This video demonstrates how to increase shoulder flexibility using a simple exercise that anyone can do at home.

As we age, we tend to lose flexibility. This is due mostly to inactivity. The less you use your range of motion, the smaller your available movements become because these new, limited patterns become ingrained in your nervous system and it “forgets” how to move like it used to.

Additionally, fascia develops a “fuzz” like substance between sheets of tissue when muscles are inactive. This “fuzz” acts like Velcro, making sheets of tissue that used to be slippery stick together. A lot of people who think they have tight hamstrings, for example, actually have hamstrings that have become “stuck” to their adductors, thus limiting the range of motion of the hamstring muscles.

The more you expand your range of motion, the better your posture will be and the greater your flexibility as you age. If you sit in front of a computer or drive for any length of time, this shoulder flexibility exercise is particularly important. It’s also useful for yogis who want to open their chests and shoulder girdles and dancers and athletes who need greater range of motion.

Do this daily for optimal results. You will see improvements if you do this at least three times a week. Using a dowel is better than using a rope or yoga strap because it forces you to move the shoulder joint and not cheat, so you’ll get the full effects. However, if you don’t have a broom or long pole handy, a yoga strap, jump rope, belt or Thera-Band can work as well.

Want more secrets for a pain-free, flexible body?

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April 23, 2010 Uncategorized

Kettlebells and Soft Tissue Health

Kettlebells are well known for their ability to develop unparalleled strength and endurance minus the muscle bulk that goes along with traditional strength training methods. Additionally, kettlebell athletes have highly responsive and pliable soft tissue. Their tissue quality more closely resembles that of a dancer or yogi than that of a powerlifter or strongman, and response rates to bodywork are much higher, yielding greater results with fewer sessions. This is due in part to the forced relaxation that kettlebell endurance sets engender; it’s also related to kettlebells’ ability to stimulate the fascial mechanoreceptors, providing increased neurological input.

The tendency when lifting any kind of weight, whether it’s a bag of groceries, a toddler, or a kettlebell, is to tense the body in preparation for load. Humans have mastered the ability to tense their muscles. On any given day in your gym, you can find someone pounding out sets like there’s no tomorrow. Ask this guy to lie on the floor and relax completely and I guarantee you’ll find that he holds various body parts off the floor, unable to let go. We’ve become accustomed to tension and even value high levels of muscular tonus. Americans, in particular, constantly seek the “hard body look.”

Unfortunately, chronically contracted muscle fibers are detrimental to both physical strength and long term structural health. In terms of strength, muscle fibers that are already contracted have no potential energy; they cannot contract further, and thus, they cannot assist you in lifting a weight. This equals reduced strength. In terms of tissue health, healthy soft tissue is defined by its pliability and hydration. Unhealthy tissue is dehydrated, causing the ground substance (the fluid matrix in which cells are bathed) to become more viscous and loaded with toxins and metabolites. Contracted muscle fibers are not only constantly emitting metabolic waste, they are also unable to pump fluid into and around the cells. How easily nutrients are able to enter a cell is determined by the density of the fibrous matrix and the viscosity of the ground substance.

During a long kettlebell set, any unnecessary tension is eradicated through the sheer necessity of efficiency. It’s simply impossible to simultaneously hold onto chronic muscular bracing and perform a high number of technically correct lifts. As the athlete relaxes and learns to contract only the muscle fibers required to lift the weight, his tissue becomes more soft, supple, and fluid. Also, excess muscle tissue is atrophied, leaving only strong, functional fibers in place. In a kettlebell athlete, every single fiber of a muscle is functional – able to both contract and relax. This explains the lack of excessive muscle bulk.

You are probably familiar with the proprioceptors in muscle tissue called muscle spindle fibers. These smart cells communicate the length of a muscle to the neurological system and prevent injury due to over stretching. Recent research has uncovered four additional kinds of mechanoreceptors in fascia (muscle spindle fibers are the only proprioceptor not located in fascia), and I postulate that the dynamic, fluid movements of kettlebell training stimulate these. Because kettlebells are an integrated exercise, they provide sensory feedback from all areas of the body. Golgi tendon organs, located in joint capsules and ligaments of peripheral joints, decrease muscular tonus, preventing injury due to hyper contraction. Pacini receptors are sensitive to rapid pressure changes and provide proprioceptive feedback for movement coordination. Ruffini receptors inhibit overall sympathetic activity (the body’s response to stress, as in the fight or flight response), and interstitial receptors, when stimulated, increase fluid supply to the tissue region. Stimulation of all four of these mechanoreceptors would explain the unique tissue quality found in kettlebell athletes.

Kettlebells are the ideal tool for development of healthy, strong tissue. Using kettlebells for strength-endurance training creates tissue relaxation in chronically contracted muscle fibers, allowing greater fluid flow and enhanced cellular nutrition. It also pares down excessive muscle density that may be a block to strength and the local flow of fluid. Healthy tissue is imperative in maintaining longevity. Rigid, unresponsive connective tissue has been connected to chronic pain conditions. Additionally, kettlebells may stimulate the mechanoreceptors located in fascia. A 1993 article published in The Journal of Spine, the leading journal for the field of orthopedics, found that patients with chronic low back pain had almost a complete absence of sensory nerve endings in their low back. This was correlated to a plastic deformation of the area (twists and adhesions in the fascial tissue). The brain, with a lack of sensory input stemming from the low back, created an enlarged mental map of the area and the patients experienced pain. This is exactly the same process that happens with “phantom pain” in amputees. The lack of sensory input from the missing limb causes the brain to mentally map the area, creating a pain associated story. When amputees receive real stimulation through a prosthesis, however, the pain significantly decreases. Thus, including activities in your fitness regime that stimulate your sensory receptors is critical in maintaining a healthy body.

April 20, 2010 Pain Relief

The secret to fluid, flexible muscles is… pineapple?!

Overview:

When our tissues get injured, the cells send signals telling your body to produce proteins called Circulating Immune Complexes (CICs). These proteins rush to the scene of the injury and create the pain sensation – warning you not to further injure the area – and build up inflammation to protect the area.

Once the tissue has sufficiently repaired itself, the body sends proteolytic enzymes, produced in our pancreas, to “eat up” the CIC proteins and end the cycle of pain and inflammation. Unfortunately, during our mid 20s, our bodies become markedly less efficient at producing these enzymes, thus allowing inflammation to run rampant.

Systemic inflammation is linked to heart attacks, stroke, arthritis and dementia. The less inflammation you have in your body, the healthier you will be. But if your body isn’t producing the proper enzymes to combat inflammation, what can you do?

The answer is to get these enzymes from substances found in nature, namely papaya (for papain) and pineapple (for bromelain). For optimal effect, the fruits must be eaten raw, preferably between meals to maximize absorption. If pounding down the tropical fruit isn’t your cup of tea, you can purchase vegetable derived digestive enzymes at your local health food store. If taken with a meal, they’ll help you digest your food better; if taken between meals, they’ll help to combat systemic inflammation.

March 26, 2010 Pain Relief

Want Health? Move Your Body!

Movement is absolutely essential to health. It stimulates your central nervous system, increases oxygen flow to the brain, improves circulation, and flushes fluids into and out of cells, among other benefits. In fact, the flexibility of your body is directly correlated to the flexibility of your mind; after all, the body is an expression of your mental state. As Mary Ann Foster states in her book, Somatic Patterning,

“Mental constructs and cultural conditioning create physical fixations that support and maintain rigid beliefs and ideas about who and what we really are.”

In short, if you want to change your life, move your body!

Studies have shown that increased circulation (resulting from movement) contributes to the health of the mitochondria of a cell. Mitochondria are the power-houses of the cellular world; it’s where all your energy is generated in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). They are also active in other cellular processes, such as the control of the cell cycle and cell growth. They have been implicated as playing a role in the human aging process as well (hint: healthy mitochondria = healthy aging!).

Movement also enhances our sense of self and the space around us.

Physical movements are determined by proprioception – the perception of our bodies in space and gravity. There are tiny proprioceptors in the muscle cells of our bodies that gauge tension levels and make constant adjustments to keep us upright.

These mechanoreceptors are actually what determines the flexibility of a muscle, not the physical length of the fibers. When you stretch muscles, the proprioceptors initiate what’s called the “stretch reflex,” causing the muscle to contract once it reaches a certain length, preventing the fibers from tearing and injury. Consistently moving in new, innovative ways generates new neurological patterns through stimulation of the mind-body connection. A shift in self perception results in a change in movement patterns. The best way to shift perception is through playful, non- threatening activities that engage on both the mental and physical levels.

As far as your joints are concerned, motion is like adding oil to a creaking hinge. Repeated movement of the joint warms up the synovial fluid and lubricates the joint capsule. It also creates awareness at the level of your proprioceptors, so moving each joint fully and completely reduces muscle guarding, which translates into increased range of motion, reduced pain, and greater adaptability for your entire body. You will notice, as you begin to explore joint mobility, that your balance and coordination improve, and your reflexes may quicken.

So often, movement in our society is mechanical, industrial, and constrictive.

Rarely do we allow our bodies to truly open up and move in new and creative ways. We try to control the functions, measuring angles, range of motion in joints, and studying form to determine function. We look at a hinge joint, state how it “should” work, and then design exercise machines around this supposed function, specified to an “average” range of motion. We try to define proper function, try to dictate what’s normal for a body, and then we standardize exercises around these principles.

You have a map in your brain, called a Body Map, which determines your body’s potential for movement. Different areas of the body take up greater or lesser amounts of space on this map depending on how much sensory input the brain receives from any given area. The hands and feet, for example, take up a huge portion of your Body Map because so much information is received from them. This mapping system is plastic in nature; sensory input from manual therapy as well as movement serve to change and enlarge this map, giving you increased capacity for movement. The Body Map in your brain is not only limited to the space inside your body; it actually includes the space around you as well.

The potential within us is so great, and yet we imprison it with orderly, regimented movements. Emilie Conrad, founder of Continuum Movement Therapy, posits that the redundancy of our lives – endless repetition of tasks and activities with zero outlet for creativity – could be a contributing factor in neurological degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s due to the complete lack of neurological stimulation. Additionally, regimented movement creates compression, or muscle density, within the bodily tissues. Compression creates an environment of dissonance where fluid is not able to flow into and out of the cells; this kind of situation does not cause disease, but it creates a state in which disease can thrive.

For example, cells that do not have sufficient fluid flow to wash away waste products may become increasingly acidic, and cancer cells thrive in an acidic environment. Additionally, areas of the body experiencing extreme compression are functionally isolated from the whole organism, meaning the flow of movement in the body is blocked.

The surest way to create dis-ease – both mental and physical – is isolation.

With these thoughts in mind, it is imperative to our continued health and well-being to continually develop new ways of moving our bodies and stimulating our minds.

Want a little help figuring out how to get your shimmy-shake on? My Posture Rehab video course will give you step by step instructions for wiggling your way out of pain and restriction into a new, more flexible you.

February 12, 2010 Pain Relief

Pain, Pain, Go Away…The 7 Mistakes That Are Making Your Pain Persist

So often, pain plagues us for years, rearing its ugly head at the most inopportune times, like right before a sporting event, while we’re on vacation, or when the weather finally turns to sun and it’s time to get outside and play.

Even worse, it can be a persistent thorn in your side for years; you might find that you wake each morning covered in aches, stiff, and unwilling to move.

Those who suffer with chronic or acute pain don’t do so willingly. In fact, according to the American Chiropractic Association, Americans spend at least $50 billion each year on back pain, and experts estimate that as much as 80% of the population will experience back pain at some point in their lives.

Most doctors, if they are unable to find a direct medical cause of the pain such as a herniated disk or spinal stenosis, chalk pain up to “just a part of getting older,” leaving patients with little hope of long term healing. The truth is that aging does not have to be accompanied by the myriad aches and pains our Western civilization has come to expect.

In his lecture series, The New Physics of Healing, Deepak Chopra refers to studies done on indigenous tribes where the perception of a person as he or she ages actually increases in value. So, for example, a 30 year-old is much more highly regarded in athletic ability and mental wit than a 20 year-old, and so on and so forth. In this culture, the population did not decline as they aged, but actually improved in cardiovascular health and athletic ability (as measured by their ability to run long distances – their main form of delivering messages between tribes). Similar studies also invalidate the notion that aging necessitates physical and mental decline.

So, if pain isn’t a necessary part of aging, why are so many people plagued by chronic discomfort? Following are the seven reasons I see clients get stuck running in circles, unable to achieve the results they’re dreaming of.

Mistake #1: Continuing to do what doesn’t work

It’s common for someone to try a healing modality because a friend or family member had success with that path. Usually, clients will go to the same therapist that treated the referrer. This is generally a good strategy, but if you’re not getting the results you want, don’t keep flogging a dead horse. It may be that the therapist isn’t a good match for you or that you need someone with slightly different skills. Your body may respond better to a different modality. Don’t be afraid to end treatment if it’s not getting you to where you need to be.

Mistake #2: Assuming there is only one solution

In contrast, some people bounce from practitioner to practitioner, seeking the “miracle cure” that will banish their pain. They try one session of massage, two with an acupuncturist, and then hit up a Rolfer for three sessions, never sticking with anything long enough to evaluate whether or not they’re getting results.

When you set out to heal your body, you have to understand that there is no magic bullet. Accepting that fact will allow you to be proactive and engaged in your healing process. Ask lots of questions and educate yourself about the different therapies. If you’re getting results, however small the measure, keep working with the therapist or modality that is moving you forward. Slowly add additional modalities, one at a time, until you find two or three that have a symbiotic relationship for your body. And, most importantly, keep an open mind. Assuming that you know it all, have tried everything, and that you know what does or doesn’t work will tend to keep you stuck in a rut. You never know what new tidbit of knowledge will be the secret key to unlocking your vitality.

Mistake #3: Not working with the right mentors

Commonly, clients show up asking to be “fixed.” They say, “I just want you to fix me so I can get back to my old life.” I hate to break it to you, but a) you can’t time travel backwards – the body you have now is the body you have to work with from this point forward, and b) no one can “fix” you; it’s an inside job.

Healing pain runs deeper than just “fixing” a sore spot on your body. Pain is intricately linked with our mental and emotional states as well as our physical well being. At the very least, if you are stepping out on your healing journey, it’s essential to have the support of a body mentor, spiritual mentor, and counselor or therapist. You may find that you have several in one category, such as an acupuncturist and structural integrator for your body, or one individual may be ideal. Dealing with all aspects of pain will help you to change the patterns that got you into your current state, developing healthier habits that will support whole body wellness.

Mistake #4: Treating only the symptoms

This could be the most common stumbling block that I see my clients facing. Western medicine, in its endeavor to divide and categorize the body, has given us the false notion that we are some sort of soft machine, a marvel of engineering with interchangeable parts, where organs and tissues can be extracted and replaced with no effect whatsoever on the organism as a whole.

Please don’t get me wrong; western medicine has produced marvels in healing and definitely has its place in the world. Believe me, if I am in a serious car accident and need to be taken to the ER, I want the best MD in the world there to sew me back up!

But, when it comes to back pain, the tendency to want to pinpoint one tiny fulcrum of pain tends to leave the patient struggling and without solution. Here’s why: Your body is intricately linked together; each tiny, microscopic cell is connected to the one next to it, and the one next to that, and so on. Every joint in your body affects the functioning of the joints that immediately surround it. If you injure a joint, there is a ripple effect through the body, much like the rings in a pond when you toss in a stone. It is impossible to focus solely on a knee, a hip, or a facet joint of the spine without also looking at the joints above and below it.

Most treatments only focus on the condition or diagnosis, i.e. sciatica, herniated disc, etc. In reality, your body underwent many stages of misalignment before developing severe conditions and debilitating pain, all starting with an imbalanced physical structure. Treating only the condition equates to treating only the result of the imbalance instead of going directly to the root cause of the pain. And, if there is no medical condition, doctors will often tell you that the pain and discomfort you are experiencing is “just part of getting older.” In fact, it’s usually indicative of an underlying imbalance that will worsen if you don’t intercept it.

I highly recommend working with therapists who take a whole body balance approach to healing pain, such as a structural integrator. Your results will be deeper and tend to last much longer than treatment that only focuses on the symptom.

Mistake #5: Not dealing with pain the first time

We’re all busy, and no one wants to put a halt to their life just because of a little back stiffness, right? Even worse, we don’t want to sound “whiny” or get labeled as a hypochondriac. So, it’s no surprise that most people don’t treat back pain the first time it happens.

Barring any major bodily injury such as a bad fall from a horse or a horrendous car accident, back pain doesn’t come on suddenly or overnight. It’s a progression, a slow deterioration perpetuated by daily habits. If you are experiencing even mild discomfort in your back, neck, and shoulders, it’s a sign that all is not well and if you don’t get treatment immediately, you’re setting yourself up for a much more difficult healing task down the road.

This is exceptionally challenging for athletes to come to grips with as excelling in sports necessitates a tough mentality. If you quit at the first sign of pain and discomfort, it’s unlikely that you’ll make it very far as an athlete; therefore, I recommend that athletes find a solid core of body care professionals, set up a scheduled treatment program, and stick to it (no canceling appointments just because you feel healthy and well this week)! This will help to catch any minor imbalances in their early stages, reducing the risk of greater injury and pain later on.

Mistake #6: Not understanding that healing back pain is a process

In a world of quick fixes and magic cures, we all want to take the fastest road to health that we can. But, like losing weight, healing pain is a process and can take some time. The only way to get from A to B is to put one foot in front of the other, keep walking, and don’t let minor setbacks discourage you. Healing your body is a journey of self discovery, and it can be uncomfortable to say the least. It forces you to take a look at your life, at the areas that are serving you and those which are not. Just like losing weight means letting go of habits that are destroying your health, facing your back pain head on will mean that you must change the way you are living to some degree.

Pain is almost always correlated to an emotional state. There is absolutely a connection between stress and pain, in part because stress causes the body to emit certain neurochemicals that create inflammation and tension, and also because stress causes us to focus less on taking care of our well being (the economic downfall of 2008 saw increased work hours and a corresponding spike in computer related shoulder pain). Dealing with stress goes much deeper than swallowing a pill; it requires us to allocate time for self care and to incorporate practices that support a calm, relaxed state of being, like meditation, qi gong, tai chi, and yoga. All of these take time to have an effect on your body and life. Choosing a program of bodywork, exercise, and stress management and sticking with it is crucial to long term success in healing your pain.

Mistake #7: Not taking action

Making this mistake will most certainly keep you trapped and in pain for years to come. No one can take action on your behalf – no one! If you want to heal your body, you must become an active participant in your healing process, and that means making appointments with experienced bodyworkers, incorporating daily activity into your life, being proactive about stress management, and educating yourself about every single aspect of healing from pain.

Although it’s easier to sit on the couch and wonder why this happened to you, or even to just push through the pain, continuing to do all the same sports and other activities (weekend warriors, I’m looking at you on this one) until you just can’t bear it any longer, refusing to actively seek relief or taking refuge in pain relieving drugs that mask symptoms is the same as choosing to shorten the number of years that you will be physically able to remain active. The choice is entirely yours.