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bloomholistichealth · 2 years
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Why does worry make things hurt more? Can a belief cause disease, or even death? Does going to the doctor make you more sick? Loads of research is explaining how, when you accept the mind and the body are part of the same system, our beliefs and expectation can cause physiological changes - from pain relief to immune response, migranes to metabolism.  This series of readings from David Robson’s book, The Expectation Effect, helps to explore the new-to-us field of placebo and nocebo and how, critically, the information provided alongside healthcare professionals and products can influence our personal health. Postive approaches to health and wellbeing, empowerment and transparent support for the mental aspects of healing and healthy living are central to the Bloom approach. Get in touch today to find out more about our unique holistic physical therapy service.
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bloomholistichealth · 2 years
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HARD WORK SAVES LIVES
Welcome research from 5-5 regarding the general health benefits of "muscle strengthening activity" provides a clear link between regular use of our bodies in ways that are effortful and reduced risks from diseases. [https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/56/13/755.full.pdf]
For years, exercise therapy research has focused on the ways in which exercise affects muscles, joints etc. But this study provides us with an evidence basis for allowing people the freedom and opportunity to take part in an active lifestyle to protect against heart disease, generalised cancer and other lifethreatening and life-limiting conditions.
Gym tho?
What is "muscle strengthening activity"? Yes, of course you can bust a gut in the gym or race up and down hills to create a "strengthening" effect on your muscles, but the joy of these findings is that the benefits can be achieved by any activity that has an effect on your muscles. Housework, walking, playing with children, gardening, yoga ... the benefit comes from using your muscles in ways that are hard, there's no rules about what you do.
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Generally it's best to work under gravity and use some kind of resistance (so pull or push something).
Tech tho?
So, what does this mean for our future society? How can we use this information to help design heathy communities? One thing that seems clear is that reducing all physical labour to a finger press or voice command might have consequences for public health. Homeworking, a delivery economy, urban living, app-based everything - from switching on a light to feeding the parking meter - has the potential to limit the intrinsic opportunities for "muscle strengthening activity" for future citizens [https://www.gr0wing.com/howto-work-from-your-bed/].
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The future elderly facing increased risks of health problems due to removal of the necessity of movement and exertion will increase the load on an already strained health and social care system.
Design for life
Maybe one way out is to design for humanity - a future full of tech that perpetuates movement while increasing opportunity. Tech has great potential to generate inclusive societies and to enable those currently disabled by the physical demands of activities such as work.
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Let's be creative and find solutions that merge tech and movement for all at appropriate levels. Let's bring back buttons, levers, locations, lifting, pulling, pushing! Perhaps the hipsters have the right idea after all ... [https://www.usbtypewriter.com]
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bloomholistichealth · 2 years
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Do what you gotta do
Physiotherapists learn a real-world approach to rehabilitation is best.
Lets imagine your arm is broken. Or was, but now its healing. You go see a physio to help your recovery. Typically, a physiotherapist will issue you with a set of exercises to follow, usually 10-20 reps,  3 times a day of everything, forever. For most of us these exercises involve moving in ways that aren't like anything we would normally ask our bodies to do and rarely is there any follow up change the exercises as we get stronger.
But the underlying logic seems straightforward enough: Muscles that have been weakened while the bone was healing because they weren't being used are selectively strengthened by making movements again. Besides, the physiotherapist is an expert, right? They have the uniform and everything.
Except that it seems exercise programmes don't do much good for a lot of people. A 2017 review of the evidence found no conclusive support that typical physiotherapy exercise programmes helped people get back to using their arm normally following a fracture [1]. A year before a controlled trial found no additional benefit of exercise programme over advice alone in a group of 33 adults with forearmed fractures [2]. That physiotherapist may know a lot about muscles and bones, but do they know anything about you? Or what your body needs to achieve?
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More evidence, from a 2021 study, found that doing the things you normally do is way more effective than the classic approach of stretching and exercise for people recovering from upper arm fractures [3]. At this point is there any room left for therapists that churn out the '3 sets of 10 model' for everyone? All the findings and, let's face it, commmon sense show that recovery works best when it is targeted at real-world activities and people are treated as individuals with support to get on with the things that matter to them.
With Bloom, therapies always have and always be tailored to what you want to do and how you want to do it. So if you need support to get back to a favourite sport, recover from injury or illness, manage pain or improve fitness, you are at the heart of everything we do. We spend time getting to know you and constantly adapt our approach as you progress and respond to new challenges. Our sessions include massage, mobilisation, mindful movement, breath work, education and reflection.
It seems that this message is starting to be understood by our profession, with campaigns from the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) aimed at encouraging its membership to think about people's real lives when recommending fitness and rehab programmes [4]. If you are looking for a more effective approach to physical therapy get in touch on [email protected] and find out more.
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[1] Bruder, A., Shields, N., Dodd, K. and Taylor, N., 2017. Prescribed exercise programs may not be effective in reducing impairments and improving activity during upper limb fracture rehabilitation: a systematic review. Journal of Physiotherapy, 63(4), pp.205-220. [2] Bruder, A., Shields, N., Dodd, K., Hau, R. and Taylor, N., 2016. A progressive exercise and structured advice program does not improve activity more than structured advice alone following a distal radial fracture: a multi-centre, randomised trial. Journal of Physiotherapy, 62(3), pp.145-152. [3] Bruder, A., Shields, N., Dodd, K. and Taylor, N., 2017. Prescribed exercise programs may not be effective in reducing impairments and improving activity during upper limb fracture rehabilitation: a systematic review. Journal of Physiotherapy, 63(4), pp.205-220. [4] https://www.csp.org.uk/campaigns-influencing/campaigns/stronger-my-way
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bloomholistichealth · 2 years
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Your body will respond to your belief. Fact or fiction?
The relationship between what we think, or more specifically what we believe to be true, and what our bodies do and how they feel has always been at the heart of the Bloom approach to physical therapy. Fascinating work by Neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan explores this intersection in an article in online science magazine Nautilus (https://nautil.us/the-neurologist-who-diagnoses-psychosomatics-12180/?_sp=f9e75fca-b946-4342-b75d-9e0dd35f1517.1650724133419).
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O’Sullivan has made her career exploring those complex cases where physical symptoms arise from seemingly psychological consequences - such as the case of children seeking asylum in Sweden that descend into a comatose state. Known as ‘psychosomatic’ illnesses, we have often come to view such circumstances as ‘made up’ or ‘all in your head’, exploring extreme situations, such as those of the girls, can help us to understand how a person’s body can take such drastic measures without any identifiable ‘physical’ reason.
Mind or body = me?
For many of us raised in the post-enlightenment European traditions (and yes that is a thing), it is natural to consider the mind to be a separate, non-physical thing. Logically though, this is insane, and deeply ironic. To consider the self as having a non-physical aspect, a ‘mind’ that isn’t made of matter and interacting with the body as part of the whole, physical being relies on a belief in non-tangible aspects that simply accepting that our thought and ideas and beliefs are part of our physical body evades. Simply put, why wouldn’t our brain activity interact with the body’s other systems?
Making this leap - that mind is part of our matter - make understanding the relationships between our ideas and our experiences of pain, disease and ability to function on a physical level much much easier. As O’Sullivan puts it, “an illness is a perception of how one feels, and illnesses can be programmed though expectations in our brains”.
Mind over matter?
O’Sullivan isn’t the only scientist working in this area. Others, notably Ester Sternberg in her work on immunoresponse and perception of stress (https://esthersternberg.com/) are starting to create a foundation for using the power of perception and belief and cultural conditioning to support health and healing in those experiencing sickness and disease. So what does this mean for us, as individuals, living with pain, broken bones, cancers, chronic conditions? Should we just ‘think’ ourselves better?
No. No one is suggesting that you can ‘believe’ a broken leg to be unbroken and it will bear weight. Nor does is undermine the valuable contributions of medicine and clinical practice. Understanding how expectations of ill health, of disability and of suffering can interact with the bodies other processes, like circulation, immune response, hormone regulation etc. provide us with greater insight into the underlying causes of complex health pictures and they give us additional tools to promote wellbeing an recovery.
If it hurts, it hurts.
One of the problems with our treatment of ‘psychosomatic’ factors in healthcare to date is a misunderstanding of the relationship between the psycho and the somatic parts of the picture. The Swedish children in O’Sullivan’s study aren’t ‘pretending’ to be asleep, any more than a client with chronic back pain is faking the pain. Both circumstances are very real and very physical situations, but both may be caused or aggravated by information coming to the body from the brain. The brain is the body’s source of information about the world that we live in, predicts probably futures and provides guidance on what best to do when the body is faced with challenges through a process of experiencing emotions and storing memories. That guidance is 'heard’ by the rest of the body and influences the body’s systems and responses. Lorimer Mosely describes this best in his talk on pain Why Things Hurt.
Effectively, what people like Mosely, O’Sullivan and Sternberg are uncovering is how information from the brain, based on collective and individual memories and experiences, can create physical symptoms. Very very real physical symptoms.
Mind & body = me.
What does this mean for therapy? It means that by understanding the beliefs that are part of the body that is experiencing the symptoms, we can better create a healing, coping or recovery approach for the individuals we see. This is a long way from the way a lot of us were trained. Before this increase understanding of how the mind plays a role in the body’s experiences and behaviour, most clinical approaches were to identify a symptom and treat with a standardised generic method. In a world where bodies are meat and minds are magical, this is logical. A knee is just a knee, a back is just a back and a person who is sleeping should wake up.
Looking at each individual in a holistic way that understands that symptoms that are presenting are the result of things that are happening to the whole person - including their thoughts and beliefs - because we understand that the mind is matter, that the mind does matter, results in better targeted therapy. For physiotherapy this might mean exercise programmes that are easier for the client to complete, whole-body therapy that targets imbalanced biomechanics or adaptations, or even referral to appropriate psychotherapy or other services to unravel fears and expectations about injuries and their consequences.
Always individual, always about you
If you are looking for support or want to learn more about how holistic physical therapy can help you or your work, Bloom would love to hear from you. We can work with you in person or online, or take a look at the information on this blog to find out more about Bloom and our unique approach to rehab, recovery and wellbeing.
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bloomholistichealth · 2 years
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THE LIMITS OF EMPATHY
Empathy is an essential quality for effective rehab - all the books in the world won’t help to support an individual in their own personal needs: life and people are just too beautifully complex to be neatly fit into generic guidelines.
Listening to Harry Parker’s account of being a person with prosthetics (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00162m2) is an excellent resource for any of us working with people that use adaptive technology (and also so much more than that). He, and the other people with disabilities included in his account, share their experience of living with alternative physical attributes, whether the consequence of trauma during life or inherent since birth, that ‘fixing the problem’ isn’t always the goal, and their sense of identity as a users of assistive tech.
NEW SHINY TOYS
In places, the serialisation is pure geek-fodder, discussing high-tech rehab solutions like neurologically controlled exoskeletons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRbK6OGIdHk), but his angle adds the critical perspective of a user of the technology - this is something I understand from working for years as a usability consultant in the digital sphere - assumptions of and the excitement of product designers are often misaligned with end users wants.
In one example, Harry shares the response of a blind companion on assistive technology that aims to provide audio feedback or tactile information to augment the environment - something that, as a seeing person, seems like a good solution to a problem I don’t have. But, for Harry’s friend, the increased input to his remaining senses is not welcome and compromises the audio and tactile world he already comfortably has.
PATIENT-LED SOLUTIONS
Healthcare workers and clinicians are taught about the importance of empathy, and rightly so. But empathy and sympathy are different. I cannot empathise without listening to the experiences of people whose perspectives I don’t share. I need to ask and to accept the feedback of those whose lived reality is being supported by the therapy approaches I can provide, and accept if they aren’t appropriate. It’s an exciting new world, with digital and other tech becoming more integrated and available to everyone in society. We have much to learn and much to gain. Harry’s voice, and others, are the so valuable and I recommend it as a good listen for anyone interested or working in the field.
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bloomholistichealth · 2 years
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Motor learning - what is it and why do you need to know?
Ever found yourself saying things like "oh, it's muscle memory" to your clients (or self)? Or wondering why you poke yourself in the gums with your toothbrush? Our brains have a complex and efficient way of storing short-cuts to actions that we make frequently through a wonderful thing called 'motor learning'.
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Dive quickly into any information on the topic online or in text-books and it's easy to get overwhelmed by phrases like 'implicit and explicit', 'pre-cognitive, associative and autonomic' and 'feed forward / feed back'. But don't panic, we are going to walk you through the fundamentals and make the case for learning about motor learning if you work in movement, exercise or rehab. Or - like me - you just find that kind of stuff interesting :)
Babies and brain damage.
The simplest way to think about what happens when we go through the process of motor learning is to imagine the neural networks (or learned experiences) of a brand new brain. Our brains develop with an area for controlling our muscles - called the motor cortex. This is a headband-like zone from ear to ear that sends out signals down the spinal cord requesting the body’s muscles to move. So, if you bend your arm it's because your bicep (and some other bits) got stimulated to contract because it got zapped by a motor neuron (nerve cell) that got fired up by a signal from your motor cortex.
Sounds extremely straightforward.
Baby wants thumb in mouth. Baby's brain learns that signals from the 'bicep' area of the motor cortex make that happen quite well. Babies brain learned something it can reuse next time it has the thought 'I want my thumb in my mouth'.
But here's the thing. Even that simple movement actually involves careful and coordinated stimulation and relaxation of a gazillion individual neurons to control the power and speed of the muscles that bend the elbow and the muscles that stop the elbow being bent (the triceps and other elbow extenders). Without this careful coordination of movement, baby gets frustrated because the thumb missed the mouth, didn't get close enough or maybe bashed into baby's face.
Phew. That's a lot. We’ll get to the brain damage later, but it was a good heading, right?
Phases of Motor Learning
So actually the brain creates short cuts. The first time we make a new movement, it takes a lot of focused brain activity to get it right. We can't keep doing other things at the same time, our brain needs to dedicate most of it's effort to making the movement, getting feedback from the eyes and other senses on how successful it has been so far, tweaking the signals to the muscles. No surprise then that this early part of learning new or unfamiliar movements is called the cognitive phase ('cognitive' as in cognition or thinking).
During the cognitive phase, it's not just the brain that needs to practise sending the signals. The neurons that carry the signals may need time to develop or the muscles and other soft tissues might need to adapt to the extra work.
During the cognitive phase you can expect to make a lot of mistakes, make awkward movements, be unsteady. It's time to be patient and to let your body and mind adapt to the new things you are asking it to do.
'Look Mum, no hands'
OK. Let's move on from our 'baby sucking thumb' example and pick a slightly more progressed challenge. Baby is now child and is learning to ride a bike. They have understood the 'what' of cycling, can turn to pedals round and keep balanced and looking forward. That little brain is firing all sorts of signals to control the movement of the legs, make adjustments to the body position in response to signals from the eyes and ears (vestibular system) to correct their balance.
The mind and body go into fine tuning mode. Motor learning progresses from cognitive to associative and is less reliant on instructions from outside and feedback. Now it's time for 'feed forward' to kick in - the brain’s activity is less focused on waiting to see if the messages it sent out were successful and begins to cleverly learn to predict what will need to be done to keep the movement or task efficient and effective.
Maybe our little tike gets so good on the bike that they can even keep going without using their hands to balance the handlebars. We're so proud <3 At this point, most of the brain and body is still thinking about the act of cycling, or whatever movement or motor activity is going on, there's little free capacity for other stuff.
Downhill skiing while sipping a G&T
Eventually you can get good enough at a complex movement that it the learning stage is described as autonomous. This is credited as the ultimate stage in motor learning.  Little baby has graduated from the school of life and is out getting trolleyed on the slopes with enough experience of both things that they can do them without much thought, both skiing and drinking cocktails are tasks so familiar both can be done at the same time.
Not relatable? Ah well, then let’s take walking. Walking is an extremely complex motor function. Perhaps one day I'll have the patience to spell out all the joint movements and motor activity it takes just to complete one step, let alone lots of them over uneven ground in high heels while texting, but for now take my word for it: Walking is one of the most complex motor functions there is. And yet most of us are lucky enough to do it day in day out without even using much of our brain to do it.  
And all new skills start out as thumb-sucking. Only with repetition, relevance and fully functional neural circuitry can we progress from newbie to maestro. Over time and practice and positive experience our smart little brains create 'motor patterns', a sort of short-cut key for complex movements, so that we don't need to use as much of our brain's activity to do the task. Baby only needs to want to suck their thumb, child only needs to get on the bike to ride it, adult can happily drink while skiing, or something. We can talk and walk, climb and daydream, type and think. We can sit upright and eat without thinking about how not to fall off the chair. Clever old brains.
Motor patterns are not muscle memory.
Sorry, I just don’t believe in muscle memory. Everything I've learned, and I'm happy to learn more, indicates that there are easily run triggers for complex movements that can be created in the brain's tissues. I've seen or read nothing that suggests individual muscles and their combined muscle fibers are capable of 'remembering' a movement or specific pattern of contraction. I do believe that the neurons that stimulate the muscles can increase, can become easier to trigger, can be more efficient with repeated use. I do believe that muscle tissue can adapt to be better at quick powerful contractions or slow sustained activity, and that lack of use can result in challenges in mobility and active movement in the muscles etc. But, for me, that still doesn’t add up to a memory for the kind of complex, coordinated movement that keeps me upright and gliding downhill on snow while sipping from a glass with ice and a slice. Yes, my muscles can more or less prepared for something my motor cortex and motor neurons ask of them, but they can't 'remember' doing it.
The brain damage bit
Why does this matter to me? Well, because I'm interested in helping people move well and love the way they move and where they are at. I'm interested in supporting people to recover from injury and use their bodies in ways that are possible and efficient and ambitious. To do that I have to understand what part of the person to work with. It's clear that if I have a client (and I have) who has suffered a stroke that has affected their motor cortex (the bit in their brain), the path to recovering their walking is going to be different to a client who has degeneration in their motor neurons (the bits that fire up the muscle fibres) and different again from someone who has been injured or inactive and needs to develop their muscle fibres. They all need to walk. One needs to develop or reconnect with motor patterns through a process of motor learning, one needs to create new alternative motor patterns because the old one's aren't going to cut it (the connection to the muscles is lost), and one needs to work on strength and conditioning with the motor patterns that are already there and intact.  
A few more things about motor learning.
1 - it can be lost
As in the examples above, damage to the brain can result in damage to the cells that are involved in the motor pattern for any movement. All or part of the motor pattern could be affected.  
2 - it can be recovered
Brain and neural tissue is amazing and resourceful. Relearning from scratch patterns that used to be functioning is possible for some. Learning new patterns to complete movements (e.g. walking, skiing) is also possible for some.  
3 - it can fail
Even when a motor pattern is 'working' it can fail. Distraction, stress, and anything else that can affect the brain's activity can affect parts of the brain that are involved in executing a motor pattern. Like when you are dreaming of the delicious guy at work and your spill your tea down your face and miss your mouth ;-)  
4 - it isn't all at once
The way motor learning is described as three separate steps can be misleading because not all parts of the movement will be learned at the same rate - for example if part of the movement is often used in another motor pattern, it might be easier to integrate this bit, but a new movement that might need time to develop new neuromuscular control might lag behind. Like all things, everyone is different in every way on every day, so patience is helpful. And breaking complex movements into separate parts can help, but make sure to combine them as well or it won't all end up in the same pattern!   {ref: Kal, E., Winters, M., van der Kamp, J., Houdijk, H., Groet, E., van Bennekom, C. and Scherder, E., 2016. Is Implicit Motor Learning Preserved after Stroke? A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis. PLOS ONE, 11(12), p.e0166376.]
Hope this explanation of how I understand motor learning and use it in practice is helpful. If you would like to know more or to work with Bloom Holistic Therapy please get in touch x
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bloomholistichealth · 2 years
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Movement makes the heart grow ... faster?
Although I no longer have access to paid journal articles and am left wallowing in the admittedly dubious ‘why is it free?’ world of open access research, sometimes I just need to scratch that nerd itch.
This month I have read, evaluated, digested and synthesised James Fisher’s 2013 article looking at how feedback from skeletal muscles can influence the heart rate of humans via autonomic tone.
The festival of you
For those new to the idea of ‘autonomic tone’ a simple way of explaining it that I like is that the body as a whole is influenced by two types of ‘state’. There is parasympathetic state (the fluffy us, that is all zen and relaxed and open to new experiences) and the sympathetic (the active us, ready for anything, busy as a bee, full of energy and potential).  The ‘tone’ of each of these autonomic states is a bit like the volume on music you can hear. Imagine you are at a music festival standing between two stages. On one side you have some trippy, chilled dub beats and on the other is well… lets say there is gabba . If the dub stage is louder than the gaba tent then your are going to be more influenced by that. But if it’s the other way round, you’ll be a bit more ‘gabba’ right now than dub. Moving towards one stage or the other is like doing things to change your internal volumes. But sometimes that volume is controlled outside of you, like people turning up and down the sound systems, or the wind blowing in a different direction.
So, now that we’ve completely forgotten about muscles, activity and heart rate, let’s recap. According to Fisher, there is a well established link between skeletal muscle activity (like moving the calf muscles or flexing the wrist) and the autonomic system’s (parasympathetic or sympathetic tone) influence on heart rate. In short, if you use your muscles your heart rate increases to make sure you have enough blood and stuff to keep using your muscles and nerds have learned how this happens.
That isn’t the point of this article. What this article discusses, and what is interesting to me, is that there are apparently two ways that the muscles influence this and they are affecting different aspects of the autonomic system. So here’s my way of explaining the findings.
Movement = dub tent up or down.
When your muscles are moving, there are messenger nerve signals that are sent from the parts of your muscle that know that they are moving towards the rest of your body and these can influence the dub stage at the festival of you. They basically turn that sound system down. So it is less likely that your are going to be dominated by a parasympathetic tone overall, given everything else that is affecting your autonomic nervous system right now.
That’s step one. When you start to use your muscles, it’s mostly this.
Chemical buildup = techno tent up or down.
Then… over time… metabolites (ATP and the such like) start to build up in the muscle tissues and activate new, different neurons that signal that it is time to put pedal to the metal and turn up the rig on the, you guessed it, the TECHNO TENT. So now you have little hope of being at all ‘wafty’, because the dub stage is merely whispering now and the Gaba is turned up to 11. In human terms, this means you almost certainly going to tip into a predominantly sympathetic tone (alert state) and your heart is going to start pumping away to make sure you have the juice you need to keep dancing.
So as you keep on moving, different things start to get involved.
There is a load of other interesting stuff in the review, including how the central nervous system influences all this, and lots of reasons why this article needs more thought than I have given it before I declare myself and expert in the issue, but I liked it and it gives a welcome expansion on the “true complexity of reciprocal sympathetic-parasympathetic interactions” in one of our body’s most influential but opaque systems.
As a physio and movement worker, it’s helpful to me to understand how movement and exercise can contribute to people’s stress and relaxation states and how, even passive movement of skeletal muscle, can work to stimulate neurological pathways and body systems in my clients.
If you want to take a look, the full article is here https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23995102/ :-)
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bloomholistichealth · 3 years
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Sooooo ... If you are a fan of Bloom’s work, or if you are desperate to pay for one of our free services (yoga, massage, physical therapy) then please pop over to our crowdfunding page and pledge something. (https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/bloom-holistic-healthcare---physical-therapy)
All profits go toward supporting the work of Bloom Holistic Healthcare and our mission to break down the barriers to health and wellbeing in our community.
Ta!
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bloomholistichealth · 3 years
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We learned a LOT
wow, what a year.
So … COVID … hmm.
It’s been a little quiet here on the Bloom Yoga Coaching front. But that doesn’t mean that we’ve not been busy. Firstly, we have finally let go of the attachment to the (albeit profitable and quite handy)) “Yoga” part of the service brand. Bloom is now “Holistic Physical Therapy”, which honestly is a much better description of what we offer to clients, and escapes the knot-in-the-stomach issues of appropriation (and misrepresentation!) of what we do. The tradition of yoga still is a major influence on the techniques and approach at the core of Bloom, and there is no doubt that without all that the doctrine has provided to me personally and the global understanding of holistic health and wellbeing (and therapy and rehab and fitness), we wouldn’t be where we are today. So, it’s been a hard attachment to break - not least because Bloom owes a huge debt to the teaching and traditions of hatha yoga, it’s practitioners and it’s incredible teachers.
But yoga is not what we do. And it’s time to come clean and separate this from the broad influence. And to stand on our own two feet as a unique and distinctly western-European rooted path.
Two journeys, one destination
Blending the specificity of scientific study and ongoing research and teaching, with the values, perspective and accessible features of non-European derived is more important to us now than ever. Since the beginning of the outbreak, Bloom has been on the front line of respiratory and holistic care, researching and following the teachings of wiser souls across the globe through as the healthcare community head rushed into combining knowledge and skills and insight to crack the code of COVID, both on a global scale and at an individual level.
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And what a rush it has been. Big data, clinical laboratories, viral, respiratory and service delivery specialists, communicators, information professionals, logistics, community services, general practitioners, acute care, equipment supplies - everyone arriving on the scene. From https://rebelem.com/ to https://www.who.int/, the internet content providers showed just how much can be achieved through open access and fearless sharing. Historical paywalls for up-to-date clinical research were blasted open, making it possible for a ‘crowd-sourced’ approach to interpreting and reviewing findings to come up with a best-bet approach to critical care for this never-before-seen set of symptoms (my favourite moment was when the specialists in altitude sickness were able to identify the need to treat with breathing issues from COVID differently to typical pneumonia). Everyone came to the party.
And boundaries to participation just disappeared. Newbies like me were able to lead the way in providing guidelines based on the latest evidence to more established practitioners who were busy dealing with caseloads on the effects of long-COVID, and bring their skills to the front line to support the people in our care to free the more experienced to deal with the critical needs of planning and service delivery in a time of crisis.
You rock
And then there is you. People all over the world grabbing masks, avoiding infection risks, getting treatments they would normally avoid just to help out each other - willing to make sacrifices to their own lives to keep safe the souls that they live alongside. If yoga had taught me one thing that Western approaches to medicine couldn’t, is that we are all in this together, and that any notion of ‘God’ you might follow depends on compassion and recognition of yourself as part of a larger whole. Every one of us faced this emergency together: learning, acting and supporting not just ourselves, our families, or our local communities, but the whole of humanity.
When history writes these pages we will see the first evidence of truly global collective action. Messy, chaotic, well-intentioned and powerful enough to fight back against the threat of a virus that took away our most vulnerable, our most treasured and at times entirely unknowable people.
We are all
When I set out to write this post, I wanted to talk about the things I have learned about breathing, about immunity, about recovery and rest, about pacing activity — you know, the physical stuff of COVID and the work of the last year. As we reflect on the year past, surely we have learned more than practical skills. COVID has shown us what we are capable of when we break down barriers and work together. It has shown us exactly how much we care and how hard we are willing to fight, not just for our own lives but for each other. So as this chapter draws to a close, what better time could there be than now to say - this is new.
This is a new world. A world in which we bring everything to the table. A world in which we stand up and share our individuality without worrying if it is ‘worth’ something. Let it find its worth. Just like the mountain climbing ER specialists who cracked the COVID code and saved millions of lives by teaching others what they knew about ARDS, in any way they could, the importance is to contribute what you can.
Use what you have, do what you can, share what you don’t need.
Holistic physical therapy is unique. And we are finally here to say - thank you. Everything we have, we have learned in our experiences of the people that we work with and for. Everything we do is always within the  limits of what we can acheive, and that’s always more than we think. We don’t need to hold this knowledge, this experience, tight in our hands - we want to share it with you and hope that you will share with us you experiences so we can continue to learn, to grow, to bloom together.
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bloomholistichealth · 3 years
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We learned a LOT
wow, what a year.
So … COVID … hmm.
It’s been a little quiet here on the Bloom Yoga Coaching front. But that doesn’t mean that we’ve not been busy. Firstly, we have finally let go of the attachment to the (albeit profitable and quite handy)) “Yoga” part of the service brand. Bloom is now “Holistic Physical Therapy”, which honestly is a much better description of what we offer to clients, and escapes the knot-in-the-stomach issues of appropriation (and misrepresentation!) of what we do. The tradition of yoga still is a major influence on the techniques and approach at the core of Bloom, and there is no doubt that without all that the doctrine has provided to me personally and the global understanding of holistic health and wellbeing (and therapy and rehab and fitness), we wouldn’t be where we are today. So, it’s been a hard attachment to break - not least because Bloom owes a huge debt to the teaching and traditions of hatha yoga, it’s practitioners and it’s incredible teachers.
But yoga is not what we do. And it’s time to come clean and separate this from the broad influence. And to stand on our own two feet as a unique and distinctly western-European rooted path.
Two paths, one destination
Blending the specificity of scientific study and ongoing research and teaching, with the values, perspective and accessible features of non-European derived is more important to us now than ever. Since the beginning of the outbreak, Bloom has been on the front line of respiratory and holistic care, researching and following the teachings of wiser souls across the globe through as the healthcare community head rushed into combining knowledge and skills and insight to crack the code of COVID, both on a global scale and at an individual level.
And what a rush it has been. Big data, clinical laboratories, viral, respiratory and service delivery specialists, communicators, information professionals, logistics, community services, general practitioners, acute care, equipment supplies - everyone arriving on the scene. From https://rebelem.com/ to https://www.who.int/, the internet content providers showed just how much can be achieved through open access and fearless sharing. Historical paywalls for up-to-date clinical research were blasted open, making it possible for a ‘crowd-sourced’ approach to interpreting and reviewing findings to come up with a best-bet approach to critical care for this never-before-seen set of symptoms (my favourite moment was when the specialists in altitude sickness were able to identify the need to treat with breathing issues from COVID differently to typical pneumonia). Everyone came to the party.
Everyone is equal
And boundaries to participation just disappeared. Newbies like me were able to lead the way in providing guidelines based on the latest evidence to more established practitioners who were busy dealing with caseloads on the effects of long-COVID, and bring their skills to the front line to support the people in our care to free the more experienced to deal with the critical needs of planning and service delivery in a time of crisis.
And then there is you. People all over the world grabbing masks, avoiding infection risks, getting treatments they would normally avoid just to help out each other - willing to make sacrifices to their own lives to keep safe the souls that they live alongside. If yoga had taught me one thing that Western approaches to medicine couldn’t, is that we are all in this together, and that any notion of ‘God’ you might follow depends on compassion and recognition of yourself as part of a larger whole. Every one of us faced this emergency together: learning, acting and supporting not just ourselves, our families, or our local communities, but the whole of humanity.
You Rock!
When history writes these pages we will see the first evidence of truly global collective action. Messy, chaotic, well-intentioned and powerful enough to fight back against the threat of a virus that took away our most vulnerable, our most treasured and at times entirely unknowable people.
When I set out to write this post, I wanted to talk about the things I have learned about breathing, about immunity, about recovery and rest, about pacing activity — you know, the physical stuff of COVID and the work of the last year. As we reflect on the year past, surely we have learned more than practical skills. COVID has shown us what we are capable of when we break down barriers and work together. It has shown us exactly how much we care and how hard we are willing to fight, not just for our own lives but for each other. So as this chapter draws to a close, what better time could there be than now to say - this is new.
Everything is different
This is a new world. A world in which we bring everything to the table. A world in which we stand up and share our individuality without worrying if it is ‘worth’ something. Let it find its worth. Just like the mountain climbing ER specialists who cracked the COVID code and saved millions of lives by teaching others what they knew about ARDS, in any way they could, the importance is to contribute what you can.
Use what you have, do what you can, share what you don’t need.
Holistic physical therapy is unique. And we are finally here to say - thank you. Everything we have, we have learned in our experiences of the people that we work with and for. Everything we do is always within the  limits of what we can acheive, and that’s always more than we think. We don’t need to hold this knowledge, this experience, tight in our hands - we want to share it with you and hope that you will share with us you experiences so we can continue to learn, to grow, to bloom together.
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bloomholistichealth · 4 years
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Those of us on lockdown, and maybe working from home, are going to be doing a LOT of sitting and not much walking right now. Two weeks in and you might be finding you have pain in your back, hips, knees or some loss of pelvic floor control. No-one loves a squat (well, no normal person anyway) but they are a good way to boost up your hip strength and this variation focuses on a safe way to make sure you get some pelvic floor action in there too. Oh, and toooooooo many words, as always! Good for:
bladder and bowel issues
low back pain
knee pain
hip pain
Hope this finds you all well and optimistic xx Thanks to Sara for her inspiration to actually post some content for a change :D
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bloomholistichealth · 4 years
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How we achieve less when we go hard
It’s no new news that yoga-doers are prone to go as far as possible into poses. There’s an envitable sense that the further you bend, the longer you balance, the weirder and more wonderful your pose, the more ‘yoga’ you are.
So when would less be more? Actually, most of the time. And it’s not just for ego-reducing reasons. Often times when we go far, fast, we actually use an unintended part of our body to get the job done. This might mean we get the most extreme end position, but we could be missing the point. Let’s use my crunky spine and a classic cobra asana to illustrate. With a cobra, we want to fix our lower limbs (legs, hips and pelvis) to the floor and spread our weight between them and our palms, bringing the head up to the sky and curving the spine. Why is this good? Well in a world of sitting, pushing our pubic bones forward of our hips and opening up the chest and engaging the back of our shoulders and upper back is really good for counteracting our typical daily postures. BUT The spine is complex and it comes in different parts. If we forget about the neck for a moment and just consider the top half - that has all the ribs attached - and the bottom part - that carries most of the body’s weight and sits between the ribs and the pelvis, we notice that in normal standing etc. the two parts form an ‘s’ shape, if viewed from the side. The bottom part bends forward naturally, and the top half sticks out backwards. There’s a really good reason for this, and we don’t want to eliminate it. WE ARE NOT TRYING TO “STRAIGHTEN” OUR SPINES. That would be impossible and a really bad idea. That said, if we leave our spines in the same position tooooooo long, there can be problems so for a little while it might be a good idea to do something like a bit of yoga to move it about. SO Cobra pose helps us to get the top part of the spine to start moving in the opposite direction to the way it normally does. How far you can do this is going to depend on a lot of things, and going further than you can is pointless - that natural curve is there for a good reason. Here’s the thing though. If we think of Cobra as a way to create on opposite movement in our upper spine, its clear that if we move in a way that doesn’t achieve that, we aren’t getting the benefit from the pose. If we forget that bit, and just aim for the biggest possible pose, with our heads as far from the floor as possible, then we might get there, but not by moving our upper spine. Take a look... 
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Here’s me in a sort of high-ish cobra (I have a particular upper spine that doesn’t ever bend far, so it’s easy to demonstrate the effect). My shoulders are high, and my forehead pointing forward, but you can see MY UPPER SPINE ISN’T EVEN FLAT! All of the bending is in the lower part of the spine and that could cause problems if I keep doing it again and again. My upper spine isn’t getting the benefit of the change in position and my lower spine is suffering. So what happens if we just go for the lower pose ... 
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now, even though I’m might feel a little inadequate in the mat class, you can see that - for my spine at least - this is a much better position. The hard bend in the lower spine is gone and - even though my shoulders are much lower, my upper spine has begun to come out of it’s natural curve. So next time you feel like everyone else might be ‘better’ at yoga than you, just remember... When it comes to asana, less is often most definitely more.
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bloomholistichealth · 5 years
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Should we be turning our clients upside down?
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If you have been with me for a while, you’ll know my journey to headstand was both challenging and empowering. You’ll know that it is a symbolic marker for me, as it is for many, of accepting that the seeming impossible can be possible, to rewrite my own boundaries, to function around and beyond my fears.
This is a common story in yoga.
Frontline - what I love most about the yoga experience as an approach to health, fitness and wellness is this power - the way it allows us to discover and explore and ultimately astound ourselves with what is possible, and challenge our existing beliefs and behaviours about what we can or can’t do.
SO WHY NOT LET EVERYONE?
Your body is totally unique. Each day, every way, what you ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ do really is different. I can’t headstand every day. There are soooooooooooooooo many variables to what a human body can and can’t tolerate at given points in time that no one - not even the most experienced movement teacher - could anticipate them all.
Yoga is not a set of destination poses. Headstands, Dancer Pose, even Sivasana, which is essentially just ‘lying-down-and-not-worrying-about-stuff-for-a-while’, are not always appropriate things to do. Yoga is the process of attempting to do things and learning about what happens when you do. Not the outcome but the process.
Is this your experience of a yoga ‘class’? Did your teacher explain how to tune into and explore the sensations that are sent by your body to your central nervous system (your brain and spinal cord) when you put your body into different positions, direct your attention in different ways?
Or did you sit on a mat watching and trying to copy while an agile individual with lots of experience of moving in these specific ways made different shapes at the front of a group? Sound familiar?
SIMPLE IS EFFECTIVE AND SAFE
Inversions are extreme physical postures. The body quite simply isn’t designed to be upside down. I started to write this post after a class in which we focused on all the reasons why you shouldn’t place someone with their head below their chest in a clinical setting. There are lots. Lots and lots and lots. Even when putting them in that position could be really helpful to them in other ways, such as assisting with clearing their lungs.
The tedious truth, as always, that the most effective things are the most simple - and probably the least impressive from the outside. Yoga is a process that begins way before you even hit the mat. Can you curl your toes with control? Can you stabilise your trunk while moving your limbs? Can you intentionally slide your scapula down your back? These things are actually pretty challenging to most of us. And they should probably be mastered before you attempt to place yourself in an inverted position for a prolonged period of time.
WHAT IS YOGA IF IT ISN’T HEADSTANDS!?!?
Well. Yoga is a series of sequences and methods that will help you, as an individual, become more aware of your body’s unique abilities, and limitation, and to gain control over your movement, actions and thoughts. This is what we teach. An outcome of yoga might, like it was for me, be the ability to take your body into a position that is improbable and find comfort there.
And there are lots of benefits to inversions, lots.
But as teachers we have a responsibility to educate people on the process, not just demonstrate the outcome, and mentor them on their own individual journey into their physical, emotional and spiritual self.
Yoga is a process.
I can’t say that enough.
Yoga is a process.
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And it’s yours to own.
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1 - Toe curling. Can you? Neurological control and awareness of the feet is a great way to make sure that you have the ability to engage fully with all the muscles in your body. Practising this movement for an extended period of time will increase the circulation of blood around the body and that’s important if you are going to be upside down. If you have any issues with circulation then inversions are not a good plan. Alternative positions such as https://www.yogajournal.com/poses/legs-up-the-wall-pose might be a good option for you. If you want a balance/strength challenge try something that will reduce your base of support such as https://www.yogajournal.com/poses/eagle-pose instead.
2 - Trunk stability is the foundation of an effective headstand in order to protect the spine and avoid placing pressure on the organs. working on the ground first to ensure that you can engage appropriately ALL AROUND the trunk is important. Headstanding without creating stability is possible but potentially very problematic. Work on active https://www.yogajournal.com/poses/happy-baby-pose and https://stickwithityoga.com/yoga-for-back-pain-relief-bird-dog-pose until you can feel that your have that kind of capacity.
3 - The strength for a good supported headstand, like the strength for a good supported pull up (https://www.instagram.com/p/3yASChJ1h2/?taken-by=markgoodwin269), comes from the back - and the ability to move the scapula on the chest with control. So get really good at https://www.yogajournal.com/poses/dolphin-pose. This will also help you test the inversion and learn what the effects of being upside might be for you.
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bloomholistichealth · 6 years
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This video came across my FB feed from a friend on the other side of the world. I wanted to share it and add some of the things I’ve learned from my research.
1- Belief is a powerful tool.
I think that there might be a strong correlation between the rise of rationalistic cultures (without magic or gods) and depression etc. The workings of the mind and emotions are very complex - it is much easier for the mind to operate in a 'everything is going to be fine' mode because of a short simple belief in, say, fairies than it is to bring to mind the detailed events and complex interactions behind each of our emotions or the true quantum physical philosophy of 'why do I need to be here'. For those who can just say 'this is God's will' it is easier to fall into a positive frame of mind. For those who fall in the gap between the two (between 'Mother Theresa’ and ‘Stephen Hawking’) the conscious mind is a bitch and can hold you in a negative state of anxiety, doubt and fear until it settles on a clear signal that helps it inform you how to proceed. That’s why we default to inactivity (”I’m just going to lie here while my head keeps whirring”) and chaotic activity (”I should do all these things all at once!”) when we get depressed. We literally don’t know what to do, there are no clear signals coming from the cortex that the muscles can follow.
2 - Emotions are a stoneage tool for survival trying to cope with a sci-fi world.
Our limbic systems are not well suited to the world that we live in and the constant stimulus it provides. Or the types of stimulus. It is suited to  “argh! lions” or “mmmm belly rubs” type lifestyle. At least in my own life these two things aren’t on my to do list most days It’s typically things like “reply to emails / do the washing / file tax return / charge phone / buy dog food”. And more and more of our activities are cognitive - that is we need to use our calcuating brains to do them (reading, understanding, processing, communicating). I’m not a lumberjack, and nor are you - and even if we were we would still need to file a tax return and operate the buttons on the washing machine. Our other senses are still massively inputing our brains circuitry, but the eyes and the fingers are getting all the attention.
In the stoneage scenario stressors (positive or negative) are short lived and resolvable. The lion either goes away or kills you. The belly gets rubbed. There’s a default level of low-arousal with a few spikes of arousal here and there. A lot of the pressures that stimulate our nervous systems these days are unresolvable. So our bodies never understand that they can relax back into the default resting state. There is no clear signal that we have ‘dealt with the situation’. On my phone right now there are at least 10 indicators of activity on the apps. If I click on them, nothing shows up. My phone is alerting me to stuff I can’t resolve. I can’t tune it out, because it’s been designed to get my attention in exactly the same channel that a message from my best friend or my daughter would signal in. It’s like a ghost lion that never goes away :)
3 - The default has become activity.
This is an individual  and a social/cultural thing, but I'll stick to the individual aspect. We are literally always on. The ghost lions are always stalking us, the belly-rubbing product adverts are always seducing us. As long as that phone is in your hand, or that body in an upright position, we are active cognitively and physically. Our bodies need to be signalled when it is safe to 'rest and digest' but that doesn't happen. Even when we go to bed many of us find we are still processing things that we didn't have time to during our days. We are so accustomed to stimulus that even if we do find some time to be peaceful and quiet our system detects this an “unusual event” and trigger an alert response. Gah! When we are triggered into alert states we:
cannot heal damaged tissues (so we get pain and fatigue)
cannot perceive the world fully (so we get highly focused, clumsy, irrational etc.)
cannot use our full mental function or store memories (we make mental mistakes, become forgetful, struggle to complete tasks)
are tense (this makes movement harder, creates tension headaches and joint problems).
It’s a bad way to be and this situation of chronic stress is the major health problem globally right now, not even counting the consequences of the activities people use to try and cope, like smoking, drinking, over eating etc.
4 - With effort we can adapt.
While we can’t necessarily become religious or delusional to help us overcome our logical traps, we can use our logic to full effect. We *know* that the brain is plastic. We understand how the body and mind interact and behave. We can use this knowledge to train ourselves to override the incoming stimulus, to avoid them, and to re-adapt our systems to relax in ‘normality’ and identify true problems among the noise. Of course I default to the teachings of yoga to do this. And the practices I use are evidence based, free and accessible, because I am a geek and a hippy. But there are many mechanisms, ancient and new, that help to modify the nervous system response and overcome the emotional bleakness that can be a consequence of our modern culture and society. The main point is that you believe in it. Because it is your mind that does the believing, and your mind that controls the way your feel. We aren’t ‘hard wired’ or ‘born that way’. We do have tendencies and traits, we are exposed to cultures and education. But we also have control. When we accept how and why our circumstances came about, we can see ways to influence those circumstances - and to understand and accept that we may not always be successful. If you or anyone you know is tackling difficult emotions or mental health issues please do all you can to support them and make sure they know they are loved, valued and understood just the way they are, and seek help from a professional to build tools and strategies to cope and thrive.
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bloomholistichealth · 6 years
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WHY SURFING IS THE BEST MEDICINE
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Bloom has been hard at work at HanzeHogeschool training for her ‘proper science’ physiotherapy degree and as a result has had ZERO time for surfing since last season. But it is still my first love so I’m going to indulge myself and bring it all back home.
Surfing. It is the best medicine. And here’s why.
IT’S THE PERFECT SOLUTION TO MODERN LIFE
Paddling is very essential for surfing and very very good to counteract modern life. In fact it is the perfect antidote. We sit for hours at a time every day with rounded shoulder and backs. To paddle you do the direct opposite. You have to work the muscles that extend your back - and you have to have them long and straight and equally balanced or your will fall off your board. And the WHOLE BACK is involved, from butt to brain. This is brilliant. And you do it for a long long time, so whereas a gym bunny might get power in these muscles, a surfer gets power and endurance, helping them to hold good posture when they get back out of the water and sit in the chairs again.
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Popping up on a surf board takes explosive strength in the core and hip flexors. So that’s your belly and your pelvic floor and you… well, hip flexors. These zones are chronically weakened by, yes you guessed it, sitting at computers, driving etc. And the consequences of weakness in these zones is significant to long term health. IBS, loss of bladder control, digestive problems, lower back pain, low self-esteem. Lower back pain alone is a massive cost to our society, let alone individual health, so I think surfing should be prescribed on the NHS. But not at my local break of course. :P
IT WILL SOLVE OUR ELDERLY CRISIS
Instability is a massive cause of injury. Our body has proprioceptive mechanisms inside our muscles and tendons that tell it where it is in time and space and allows for conscious and unconscious adjustments to be made to avoid falling over. The best way we know to train these systems is to put them into unstable conditions and let them practice. There is even a program to knock over old ladies to help prevent them from falling over all the time . I love my job.
Either way, the sooner we get training our balance systems the better. To surf is to balance. Just to paddle out requires the ability to balance on a board, and once you are popping up and riding there is a constant and entirely unpredictable surface to respond to. These two factors are the key elements of a good stability training scheme. Surfers grow old (dis)gracefully.
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IT DEFEATS PAIN
Think I’m going to far now? Well just wait. The ability of the brain to modulate pain is 200 times stronger than the ability of the bodies tissues to create pain signals. Let me explain that. If you have a nail in your hand, it is going to hurt. But only if the signal gets to your brain. And your brain can turn up or turn off that pain signal in lots of ways.
There are two really good ways it does this. One - when you are really really busy with something else. For example, if your are running away from lions, you aren’t going to feel the twigs scratching your feet as you run. Surfing is sometimes very very relaxing, but it isn’t passive. There is a LOT to think about, from the approaching waves, your position in the water, balancing on the board and sometimes paddling like hell out of the way of an incoming set. So it’s great distraction.
The other way your body likes to override pain signals is by being happy. Like, oh, I don’t know, hanging out with friends in the ocean, listening to the sound of the waves miles away from work pressures. Basically stress is really bad for pain, and it’s pretty hard to be stressed if you are surfing. Endorphins and adrenaline, the perfect cocktail.
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IT IS ANTI-STRESS TRAINING
Ah, breathing. You might have noticed this blog is called ‘Bloom *YOGA* Coaching’ so lets assume I’m a big fan of breathing and its benefits. But this is a physic-related post so I’ll stick to the evidence-based aspects. Oh… hang on… they are the SAME!
Breathing is done with muscles. So controlling and ‘exercising’ those muscles is the same as any other training. But here’s the best bit. Breathing allows Oxygen, that we need to create energy in our muscles, into the body and gets rid of CO2, which is produced when we make energy and it pretty poisonous if we leave it lying around in the body. So working to make sure our breathing is efficient is always going to be great. And paddling is definitely a cardio workout. And there is more. Our breathing (specifically our rate of breathing) is one of the indicators of our ‘current threat level’ used by our central nervous system to instruct the behaviours of our body. For example, if you hold your breath for a long time, you body will feel an overwhelming urge to gasp for air. Eventually this will be so strong that you will do it.
It’s no surprise that surfers, who might have to stay underwater for a while if get pushed under by a big wave, learn to hold their breath without panicking or ‘gasping’. They may or may not realise, but training their nervous system response in this way is giving them greater control over all their stress responses. And stress is the biggest health risk we know. 
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IT WILL CURE HUMANITY!
Because it is just better. Surfing is a low impact sport in so many ways. it takes and makes friendships, breaks down prejudice, gets you out in nature, and fosters an ego-busting relationship with nature that is quite honestly good for the soul. It’s humbling and inspiring to sit out there in the ocean, chatting to the dolphins, at the mercy of mother earth.
Low-back pain, a frail aging population, stress and pain are the biggest threats to our global health today. We could cure them all if we all just spent a little more time in the ocean!
Whoop! 
thanks to Cervesa Salada mag for posting this video and reminding my I want to keep on moving. https://www.cervezasalada.com/probablemente-el-mejor-free-surfer-del-mundo/ ;) 
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bloomholistichealth · 6 years
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Ugh. I busted my knee again. But hey! Who cares --- time to get creative. Injuries and illnesses and, let’s face it, LIFE tends to create obstacles. But with each shift in direction we get to explore somewhere new. So while I’m waiting for my leg to get back to functioning I thought I’d try some funky ways to keep my upper body and core ready for when I can get back to the bouldering gym. I was really starting to enjoy it as a physical activity, so I don’t want to lose all the techniques I’d started to develop (a little bit!). So here’s something I found to get the ‘straight arm’ motion still programmed in. For me this, and the torque through my legs, was the hardest thing to get the hang of when I first went to the wall. Moving your body around your arm, rather than your arm around your body, is a bit strange if you are used to walking and carrying stuff, not scuttling up things. The key here is to keep the fix in the core, but if your knee was fine you could definitely play with that motion. Tot ziens!
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bloomholistichealth · 6 years
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Fascia, Physics, Kung Fu Panda and you.
Fascia, as a mechanism for smooth transitional movements.
FASCIA IS EVERYWHERE
Like many people working with physical health and movement, I am getting fascinated by fascia. Right now I have to focus elsewhere, but lets have a quick summary of what I’ve learned so far…
When we study science, we like to break things up in to happy little chunks. But if we think about it, life isn’t really like that. Think of a pie. It has apples, it has raisins, it has pastry and … well, there is a bit of a blurry part (once it’s cooked) between the apples and the pastry that … it sort of definitely has appley bits in it, but mostly its pastry… 
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so with fascia.
Ok. so that’s a terrible analogy, but a good excuse to dream about pie. Here’s Tom Myers from Anatomy Trains (via the people at Functional Patterns) explaining it a lot better…
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So actually, it’s not much like an apple pie, but it is a lot like an orange*
WE TOLD YOU SO
The great thing about coming at the emerging movement sciences from the yoga perspective is that mostly it just confirms the ‘mumbo jumbo’ of the old teaching. We often talk about ‘creating space’ in the joints or moving very distant body parts apart. In a world where each muscle, bone, tendon and ligament is totally separate this makes no sense: extending my neck cannot possibly affect my ankle.
When we see the world inside ourselves as a set of substances - some thicker, some thinner, some more solid, some less - but all interconnected, then we can make use of these cues confidently. Imagine the spaces between your vertebra filling with liquid and moving apart… because they are.
SCIENCE … B!
Those who know me privately know I spend a lot of time gnashing my own teeth and tearing hair out at the kind of ‘yoga anatomy’ that leads us to ridicule in the scientific community and ultimately leads to potential harm. So let me try to get this right…
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Fascia, at it’s most functional, is the ‘skin’ around the tissues of our muscles and bones. Whether we can contract it consciously, in the way we can our muscle tissues, is not yet clear to me, but it *does* have mechanical properties. And if we are aware of them, we can utilise them when moving.
Consider the ‘bag’ analogy proposed by Myers. If our bones are groceries, and our muscles are bags to move those groceries with. Without fascia we have to move each item individually. With the ‘fascia bag’ we can put all the individual bags together in one bigger bag and move them all together. Overall, providing the load isn’t too heavy, this is going to take way less energy that making lots of individual trips.
But there is more to it than that.
TENSEGRITY
Fascia is tensile. It stretches and it rebounds. With a muscle:bone model of movement alone, we have a problem when we reach end range. And we do - most injuries or limitations occur because we go past our end range or move into it too fast. The tissues that protect us from over extending (our opposing muscles and our joint capsules) can’t cope with the force and we snap, pop or tear something.
I’ll let the lovely Joanne Avinson explain the tensigrity concept to you. And thanks to the also very lovely Alice for pointing me into her path.
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FAT PANDAS WITH BIG HEARTS
So if we understand that there is also this stuff called fascia we can understand that our movement doesn’t stop at the end range - we have an extra fabric running through our whole inner surfaces that can take up some of that impact, disperse it, and rebound into the next movement.
Hmmm… I think we need to see that in action… Here’s a big, out of shape animated Panda miraculously absorbing the impact of some cannonballs…
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God I love that movie. So while I’m not suggesting you should try catching fiery cannonballs, I *am* thinking that we can try to trust your fascia a little and seek out more fluidity in our movement. Surfers, climbers, skaters, snowboarders - I know you got this already. I know that it is precisely this kind of fluid, efficient movement that enables the responsiveness and agility that is essential in those activities.
AND HUMAN BEINGS
Can we bring the science of fascia, perhaps through the language of yoga, to more people and improve public health? Can what the physics call ‘activities of daily life’ be improved and made safer by teaching people to move into their fascia, to use their whole body and trust the elasticity, when making movements?
I had the pleasure of listening to Gary Ward from Anatomy in Motion (with thanks to the guys at Incitus for facilitating that!) explaining this in relation to gait (walking). I could squeeze another ten blog posts from that encounter, but essentially, it comes down to this …
Movement happens in our bones.
Nerves tell us when and how to move and then instruct the tissues to do so
The muscles, tendons, ligaments (and fascia!) enable and restrain the movement.
Muscles activate the movement by applying force
Tendons and ligaments restrain the movement by absorbing the force and … Here comes fascia!
Fascia creates fluidity in the movement by dispersing force and reflecting it.
Movement happens in the bones. And transitioning from one position to another is a continuous and fluid event. We are never still. What we are doing, consciously or otherwise, is transferring force from one structure of the body to another. Fascia can have a role in ‘holding’ this energy while we make a change in direction - from the end range back into the movement. 
EMBODYING FASCIAL MOVEMENT
So is fascia the magic functional aspect that can enable the ‘transition’ (between extension and contraction, between sitting and standing etc) to happen without strain, with supported fluidity? Transferring the force from one tissue to the other or ‘holding’ the potential as the muscle (bones) changes direction?
One last video from my movement crush, Bonnie Bainbridge, demonstrating with her typical grace and pragmatism the functional potential of fascia in movement.
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I only know a little, but it is a fascinating area of study with massive implications for how we train movement and manage tissue damage and rehabilitation.
Louise Bloom, me, of Bloom YogaCoaching is currently working and studying in Groningen, online and globally. For yoga, anatomy, workshops and health and fitness please see fb/BloomYogacoaching. I will be working with the beautiful AlpineFix through the summer and at other events and retreats. Details are available through the FB page. Or you can stop by for a geek chat, ask me to run a workshop, or make an appointment for therapy and yoga coaching. I also consult on physical welfare and user experience in the digital workplace. For workplace consulting please go on over to LinkedIn and continue the conversation there.
Thanks for listening!
======= *The only joke I have ever been able to remember since my childhood goes as follows (and makes me laugh soooo hard because it is so awful.) Me: Ask me if I am an orange You: Are you and orange? Me: Yes {Repeat until you get really annoying} Me: Ask me if I am an Apple You: Are you an apple? Me: Noooooo! I AM AN ORANGE STUPID! Apparently whoever invented that joke knew something about anatomy :)
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