Article By: John Bondlow, Health Specialist at WE Integration

Chain link.  It snaps.  You get it fixed; keep biking.  You peddle hard.  Then, it snaps again.  “I can’t believe it!  The same exact spot! “

The story is not possible.  How could you know that it snapped in exactly the same spot?  If it’s your body, you can be sure of it.  One health practitioner told me once years ago, “stress goes to the area of weakest link.”  The truth is, if you go to the bike mechanic, he’ll replace the entire chain.  Because, in fact, it will break at the same place over and over again.

Our bodies are very much like a bicycle’s mechanics.  If you shift hard when you peddle, keeping after that shifter, chances are good that soon you will need to get a new shifter.  Simple mechanics.  However, if you are not peddling forcefully when you shift while going up that strenuous uphill, miraculously, there is less stress on the shifter.  And, wow, the bike is easier to peddle, too?  Not only that, there is less of a likelihood that your chain will snap in the same place.

One of the chain break-like points in our bodies is at the base of the neck, where our neck meets the shoulders.  Twisting and turning, having bags upon it, oh – and did I forget to mention – simply leaning forward at your desk or performing with your instrument?  Yes, jutting that neck out extremely or just ever so slightly to do what you want to do: computer time, practice or performance time, creates stress at this junction.  And, over time, this area begins to feel just exactly like that chain link that’s about to snap.  You know the area I’m talking about, I don’t have to point to it.  It’s that same place, every time.

Specifically, the vertebraes in this area are where the neck vertebrae, the cervical vertebrae, meet the upper torso thoracic vertebrae.  Seven cervical, twelve thoracic. C 1-7, T 1-12.  And the junction C7 to T1 is where are neck meets our shoulders.  This is that wicked chain link of an area that is often ready to snap.  Rotation, bending, jutting forward, placing stress upon it…I hate to repeat myself, but this area is all about repetition.  What you do to it over and over again, every day, it’s up to you.

There are many muscles surrounding this neck-shoulder junction, C7, T-12.  Receiving bodywork to target restrictions in this area can help keep your chain link from feeling too close to snapping.  Before riding yourself to the bone uphill, maintain muscular stress to this junction by receiving Trigger Point Therapy, Deep Tissue Massage, or other Clinical bodywork methods to keep symptoms from increasing.

John’s blog: musicwellness.blogspot.com

 
Article By: John Bondlow, Health Specialist at WE Integration

I had a client that came back to see me and the first thing she said after greeting was, “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”  What she was referring to was that she hadn’t seen any change occur.  My reply was silence.  I was very interested in this reply.  Over ten years in the business and I’d never heard it before.  “Disappoint me?”  I was stepping out to let her change to the table to begin the session, when I returned I had my answer.  “It’s not about disappointing me at all…”

What I found interesting was when I asked how she was from last time she obviously saw an astonished and “oh, that’s too bad…” look on my face and commented appropriately (as I couldn’t hide my reaction to her news) that she wasn’t better.  The problem was, she sorry for me, not her.  It was my fault that I couldn’t hide my expression, I was sure we had made improvement, sure of it – only her response wasn’t there to reflect it.

There was change.

Last year I was taking some vocal lessons to try to open up and drop my voice for during guitar playing it is so easy to hide a voice behind the instrument, unless there’s a mic to compensate.  I really wanted to learn how to relax and drop the vocals, and then project that sound.  I began work with a teacher, only to discover that the first song I presented – I couldn’t use.  It was too challenging, even though it was what I wanted to have.  The second piece – was of little use also.  By the way, this is not a fairy tale.  Really, the third song didn’t make the end of the story.  That didn’t work either.  Why?  I referred back to my guitar teachers Zen -like methodology, and finally picked a fourth song: “Silent Night.”

That’s right, I chose a melody that was so simple it hardly moved at all.  This was the one.  It removed me from having to think about complicated movements and achieving complicated goals.  We were able to get through half of the song – after our working together for one month!

The point of the story is that if you are showing up for practice, and committing to something, spending time with it, change is happening.  It might be very small change, incremental, but it is there.  And it is up to a good teacher to point it out.  What we had found during the session was that range of motion had improved, pain had decreased, and there was less tension in the muscle.  The changes were small, incremental, but they were there.  All that this client needed was for her body to be taken through the motion, to have it understand some of what really had changed.  She could feel that there was, and was silent.