A million miles

I have been traveling a million miles a minute. Every day is go go go. Four weekends in a row of fun events and a change in work schedule has me spinning. So on Sunday I tried to recoup. I slept until "forever" (11am) and then spent the day sprucing up the yard. :-) I very much enjoyed my trip to get flowers and potting soil. Very therapeutic to work with your hands in the dirt. The bad part is I can now totally relate to many patients coming into the office with back pain. I really did not think I was working that hard. Anyway ice ice ice. The great part is the yard looks good. There are still many things to do and lots of weeds starting as seedlings that will need to be plucked soon enough. Cheers to dirt! and getting your hands dirty in it. :-)

Muscle Activation Technique

I've been working with a MAT specialist named Dave Reed. I met Dave at this years Multisport Symposium last month. He held a class on simple MAT exercises for the lower extremity and also for the shoulder. I have had three or four sessions and I think very highly of the technique. Before I started working with Dave I had been starting symptoms of plantar fasciitis of which massage and chiropractic care helped but I just kept aggrevating it with cycling, pilates, and running. I've noticed many improvements not only in my foot but also in my right upper back, left knee and hip pain which I had for years off and on.

Below is a brief description taken from wwwdavereedmat.com

What is MAT?

MAT is a revolutionary approach to the assessment and correction of muscular imbalances in the human body. It is a straightforward drug-free, non-invasive technique with proven results. First, the MAT Specialist identifies restrictions in motion, joint instability, muscular tightness, compensation patterns and muscle weakness. Then, carefully designed MAT protocols are used to "jumpstart" the muscles to get them working the way they were intended to work.

Who can benefit from MAT?

Athletes, fitness enthusiasts, active and/or sedentary individuals who have experienced any of the following conditions can benefit from MAT.

• Injury or pain in muscles and/or joints
• Limitations in motion or flexibility
• Impaired performance
• Muscular weakness or tightness

MAT's goal is to restore function to anyone who wishes to move and play pain free!

3/10/09

I love the deep blue purple color. I'm not sure what the color is actually called. It is warming and cooling at the same time. Very vibrant. One of the many pleasures of having sight.

My niece and nephew turn 2 years old in ten days. They are beautiful, growing, exploring wonderful little miracles.

Heidi

Inspiration

I spoke at an Endurance Symposium yesterday. This was the second annual event. Last year I only had a booth. I really enjoyed being a featured speaker. The topic was Nutrition Overhaul for the athlete. Being around people who are active and love adventure was sooo exciting and as the title says inspiring. Today I did some lap swimming which I haven't done in months. Something about being in the water is soothing. I was much stronger then last time I swam this is due to pilates. Pilates helps strengthen back muscles and evens out muscle firing patterns making a body more effecient in movement patterns while swimming. Anyway it was awesome and I am excited for summer to come.
The featured speaker was Sarah Haskins who was an olympian triathlete. She had a great story of being an athlete all her life growing up, graduated with a degree in education, started teaching, and decided to put teaching on hold and go for competing. Great story.
Today was spent researching gear like mountain bike, tent, sleeping bag, sneakers. Looking at kayaks, canoes, wall climbing facilities. Finding hiking trails and parks to visit. Lets just say I'm getting prepared for spring! and you can too!
So I hope my husband is ready for rock climbing on our next date. :-) I'm putting up pictures of a walk at Potter's bridge park, Jesse's new/used bike, and some from the symposium. Enjoy!

Healing

These are not my words but words I found to be inspirational.
"Healing is a total, orgasmic, synergistic response that must emerge from within the individual if recovery and growth are to be accomplished. Healing is creative, bringing forth patterns and connections that did not exist before." - Emmet Miller in Healers on Healing

It is important to understand that we all change and move at our own pace and in our own time. We have to be very patient with ourselves. As we make the journey of healing we can be likened to a chicken trying to emerge from its shell. For that young chick the shell around it must feel like cast iron, like a suit of armour that is has to prise its way out of. It is natural fro us to want to help by peeling away the shell and thus allowing the chick to be free. But if we do, the chick will die. It needs the strength it gains from breaking free of the shell in order to live, and it needs to do it by itself. We are like that chick. Our anger, guilt, fear, insecurity, shame and all our hidden monsters make up our shells, holding us back from experiencing true freedom. Breaking free is not easy, and no one else can do it for us. But if we have the courage to do it, then the stregth and understanding we gain is the true healing. - Debbie Shapiro The bodymind workbook

innner casing

Potter's Bridge Park Noblesville, IN submitted by: Lucy

I don't think inner casing is the appropriate term but it identifies the subject of this post. What I am talking about is the inner lining of the abdominal cavity. If can imagine your body as just a trunk, no head, arms or legs and envision a sheet of soft tissue on the inside of your bone structure from the top ribs down to and lining the inside of the pelvis. This is what I would like to term the casing.
Yesterday I spent time with a patient who has felt twisted up in pain. We've been working together for a couple months now "untwisting". This week we have discovered his casing is twisting to the left. So I've given him a pilates inspired exercise where he will sit on a physioball arms stretched out to the side and spinal twist to the right only. This is to re-educate what is twisting to the left. We'll see how he how much closer he is to being balanced at the next visit. I'm interested to find out. The other trouble is that the twisting is causing a pinched nerve. Cheers to him getting better and the nerve getting un-pinched.
Heidi

Wonderful Work

This weeks favorite patients cases
Someone who is suffering from being diagnosed as bi-polar, fatigue, irritability, and excessive weight gain. We've done a complete work-up on her current and health state and we found that she has gone through all the compensation patterns a body has
1. Improper digestion
2. Endocrine involvment
3. Lymphatic involvement
4. Cranial fixation

So we have to start from number 4 and heal things down to number one. I'll keep you updated on the progress.

Someone who is suffering from intense lower back and leg pain. Has had a disc fusion years ago. Has been told by the doctors that there is no option but pain killers.
He has healed a considerable amount in a short time. We have started him on enzymes that will decrease his inflammation, heal his stomach lining from heartburn, and help him break down the proteins, lipids and carbohydrates he is eating. Not being able to digest these foods has put a major strain on his body and kept him from healing.
Part one of the problem is he started with is he is taking a proton-pump inhibitor. Most people get symptoms of heart burn from stress or the inability to handle stress at that moment in time. (YES... We all have stress and many times its just too much and causes harm to our bodies. Which is why we need people like me to help find the weak link in patients caused by stress and heal that before it causes a major illness. Not cover up symptoms.) This inhibits the necessary secretion of the mucosa cells in the stomach lining. When the lining is healthy and moist the acidity from the stomach burns. BUT>>> instead of healing the lining he is taking a proton pump in inhibitor to inhibit the acid from forming, the acid he needs to digest food to get nutrition to heal his back!

Proton-pump inhibitors do just that they "inhibit" the H+ (hydrogen) from meeting the CL- (chloride). Your body has to have hydrogen and chloride meet to change the pH in your stomach to properly digest your food. If the proper pH isn't achieved then .... wha wha whaaaaa you are in trouble. This leads to many issues as your body then has to find a way of dealing with this un-broken down food. Awful Awful!

So anyway this guy is having considerably less pain and more energy.


More info can be found on this work by goggling Loomisinstitute.

Today
Breakfast for me: Luna Bar and coffee (enzymes for digestion and lymph support)
Church: Fantastic service on activly working on blurring racial boundaries set up by those who lived before us.
I surprised Jesse at noon at his work with a beautiful peach and pink rose. I asked him to be my Valentine. (he accepted)
We went to TGI fridays.
I had a gift card given to me by a chiropractor from Philadelphia who stopped by my office for an adjustment one random Friday night. I didn't let him pay so he mailed me a gift card. This guy is an ex-football player. Oh my... I ask you is it worth playing if you have a constant pain in the upperback from all that compression. For this guy it is. Along with being a chiropractor he coaches a team young team and loves it.


Healing is a wonderful thing. Happy Sunday.
At a later post I'll tell all about how we find what the patient needs to heal. Its specific for their biochemistry.

Craniosacral Therapy

Last night after the last patient was taken care of one of the massage therapists at the office agreed to stay and do some bodywork on me. Specifically Craniosacral work. The reason I requested this is that the with the Loomis system we gauge how well the lymph flow is moving by stress in the mastoid bone movement. Mine was not working well.

From Wikipedia:
Craniosacral therapy (also called CST, cranial osteopathy, also spelled CranioSacral bodywork or therapy) is a method of Complementary and alternative medicine used by physical therapists, massage therapists, naturopaths, chiropractors and osteopaths. A craniosacral therapy session involves the therapist placing their hands on the patient, which they say allows them to tune into what they call the craniosacral system.[1] By gently working with the spine, the skull and its cranial sutures, diaphragms, and fascia, the restrictions of nerve passages are said to be eased, the movement of cerebrospinal fluid through the spinal cord can be optimized, and misaligned bones are said to be restored to their proper position. Craniosacral therapists use the therapy to treat mental stress, neck and back pain, migraines, TMJ Syndrome, and for chronic pain conditions such as fibromyalgia.[2][3][4] There is no scientific support for major elements of the underlying model,[5] there is little scientific evidence to support the therapy, and research methods that could conclusively evaluate the therapy's effectiveness have not been applied.[6]

The therapist spent an hour and our session consisted of the me lying (clothed) on the massage table, face up. She monitored my cerebrospinal fluid rhythm first in my legs, then abdomen, chest, shoulders, and then head. At different points we did unwinding of soft tissue and other energy work and she commented that she was driving a bus down my spinal canal to feel what moving well and unblocking it.

I slept great and above all I felt great. Like, blissfully happy and drained.

I dreamed of being in Japan, dark hooded figures throwing harmless goo at me, Jesse and our friends, evil demons that came out at night, being safe with Jesse, having four people riding two bikes as transportation, being locked down in a skyscraper library that the top floor was detached from the rest of the building and carried by an army helicopter where we had to jump into a river and swim for our safety.

If someone could tell me what this dream means, please. If you want to post your own wacky dream please do.

Its all in the name of healing.

2/4/09

Today is my day off from seeing patients.
6AM alarm
Snooze twice (at least)
First thing was to warm up the car since its been below freezing for the last week.
Every Wednesday for the past year I have been the president of a Networking group that starts at 7AM. This role ends in April. Part of me is sad that I won't be responsible to keep the meetings on track since I feel I've done a good job of it. The other part is happy... no, excited to be done lugging around the supplies I have been responsible for, not HAVING to be present every Week and not dealing with the politics of keeping a group of type A entrepreneurs on track. I want to add to the chaos and have fun instead.
Responsibility is good but I'm over it... for now.
Next on the list is reading up on strokes and then mind body patterns. Later, pilates and cycling class. Lastly... watching LOST! :-)

The reason I started this blog is I frequently search the Internet for most of the information I seek. Questions about this and that. Todays question search was on Lymph cleansing/detox and emotions. I found nothing so I've decided to document my experience.

I have the pleasure of working and studying Enzyme Therapy. The system I use is through Loomis Institution / Enzyme Formulations.
(Hair club for men announcer voice)
"Not only am I a practitioner but I am also a participant."

Two weeks ago the doctor I work with and I started me on a program to support/clean my lymph system. I feel like I've been taken over my many of my past selves. I've had intense and interesting dreams and have been living in a constant state of more intense than usual emotions. Last week I was angry. Angry all week. This week I've slipped in to sad and wanting to be a social recluse (this is not normal for me). Here is the reason: our lymph system is our sewage system. It cleans all the muck from each cell. So though I've previously dealt with the things I'm currently feeling by body had walled off this energy to protect me and now that I am seeking to heal it is coming out. I'm healing... I understand but, it doesn't feel good. I'm constantly aware of how solemn I feel. I am not aware of what memories I'm dealing with only that I am dealing with them. Things that will help me through this are positive thinking. Reassuring my being that it is ok to deal with what is going on inside. Support is here. Love is here. Also, getting craniosacral work done, eating and drinking healthily, and breathing exercises to pump the lymph.

My second search was on Grief. I couldn't remember how many steps there were and kept getting them confused with the seven deadly sins and steps in AA. So here they are. There are seems to be an agreement on 5 or 7 stages of grief... each of which I think I might feel with healing. (oh joy!) I'm not exactly sure what the heck I'm healing from... but, its probably better that way. OK
1. Shock and Denial
2. Pain and Guilt
3. Anger and Bargaining
4."Depression", reflection, loneliness
5. The upward turn
6. Reconstruction and working through
7. Acceptance and hope