Almost everyone in our society shares the experience of tension, somewhere in the body, that either stays, or comes and goes, always in the same area.  Thinking about this for any longer than a moment presents a burning question every time – “Why?”  Why do I have to have this pain, this tension, why won’t it go away?  I’m confronted with this frustration every day, in all the unique ways that different clients experience it at different times.

I landed in the business of resolving tension because I was not satisfied with resigning myself to chronic discomfort.  Like so many people who come to see me, I knew something about it wasn’t right.  I knew I could help myself out of the cycle, and that I could learn to help others as well.

So here and now, with my current understanding of our physiology, I want to sum up what I have learned regarding why we have chronic and recurring tension or pain.  Having studied many avenues of treatment, and many explanations as to why said treatments are effective, I’m going to focus on the one area that I have found makes the most sense, experientially as well as on paper.  From everything I’ve read and personally felt, the root and, ultimately, the solution to chronic tension lies in the nervous system.  Whether I am doing techniques learned from the myofascial, energetic, deep tissue, Swedish massage, or any other standpoint, the nervous system is the primary focus both in the information I gather, and the changes I catalyze.

The human nervous system has developed astounding complexity, to the point that we can apply our minds to the most fundamental questions of existence, but most of the work it does is still quite basic.  Every moment, all the time, as long as you live, the nervous system is continually asking and answering the same question: “Am I safe?”  No matter how tough a person is, they are enabled to continue living for the fact that they have a nervous system that is constantly assessing threats of internal and external origin.  Even those who would think of themselves as fearless, exist by virtue of what is essentially built-in fear.

So if the perpetual question is “Am I safe,” what happens when the apparent answer is “No?”

Every system of the body is constantly modulated by two “sides” of the autonomic nervous system.  The sides are called the sympathetic and the parasympathetic, but we will call them the stress brain and the rest brain for short.  The stress brain is in charge of meeting external demands, taking action, and the classic “fight or flight” response.  The rest brain is in charge of internal upkeep like digestion, tissue repair, reproduction, and immune function.  Organs and tissues in the body are linked up to both sides and behave differently according to how much input is coming from each side.  A rough analogy would be some type of machine, say an engine, that has a control with a blue wire, and a red wire.  The signal from the red wire says “increase throttle,” and the signal from the blue wire says “decrease throttle.”  Both wires could have a very strong or very week signal, but it’s the net sum of the signals that gives the final position of the throttle.  Regenerative body systems, like digestion and immunity increase their activity in response to the rest brain’s signal, and action oriented systems like the skeletal muscles increase activity in response to the stress brain’s signal.  This is why someone’s stomach might start growling a few minutes into a massage; they were under enough stress prior to the massage that their digestive system was put on hold so that resources could be devoted to the skeletal muscles, once relaxation set in, digestion resumed – audibly.

To oversimplify, when the nervous system has determined that the body is not safe, or rather, that this is not an appropriate time to rest and regenerate, it pushes all action systems in the direction of overdrive, and puts all regenerative systems closer to a pause.  Increased sympathetic tone (stress brain activity) makes the muscles of movement (skeletal muscles) more active (tension).  It also increases the likelihood that the brain will interpret a given stimulus as a threat, and therefor generate the feeling of pain (That’s right, pain is made up by your brain, it’s not a sensory input.).  This is part of what we must understand, but it does not answer the title question of this post.

So, generally speaking, more “stress” equals more tension and pain – duh.  The question of why we have recurring patterns of tension, usually in the same place, still remains.  The short answer: We are creatures of habit.  In fact, all creatures are.

Before we move on, I want to clearly define the term “Sensory-Motor.”  This refers to the function of the nervous system to feel and produce movement and position.  In addition to the classic “five senses,” we have a slew of internal senses including proprioception, which is Latin for “self sensing.”  Basically, we have nerve endings inside our muscle and connective tissues that collect information about things like length, position, tension, and pressure, and send it upstream to the central nervous system, and we have motor neurons that tell muscles to contract.  So now you will know what I’m talking about when I say “sensory,” feeling movement and position, “motor,” producing movement or muscle activity, and “sensory-motor,” all of these processes combined.  The really interesting part, and the one that’s really relevant to our question, is the part that happens upstairs in the brain; what the brain decides to do with the information from the proprioceptors, and other inputs (like memory), and what motor patterns, and other outputs (like pain), it chooses.

So the brain has something that we’ll refer to as a sensory-motor library.  It’s a library of all of the movement and position related feelings, and all the muscle firing commands that we recognize and use.  When a baby squirms around in its crib, scrunching its face, moving its tongue, grasping its fingers and toes, and generally – squirming, its doing very important work.  We’re born with a more or less empty sensory-motor library, and every time we use our skeletal muscles (or have a part of us moved by external forces) in a new way we add a volume to that library.  The first years of life are spent doing this, and it’s very straight forward to observe the development of a child’s “motor skills.”  We generally tend not to think too much about “sensory skill” development, but the two really can’t be separated.

Now that the role of the sensory-motor faculties of the nervous system are more clear, I just want to add that they do not work alone.  Every action involves, in addition to proprioceptive data and motor output, emotion, thought, memory, and meaning.  To arrive at the appropriate motor (or pain) output, our brain first considers all of these factors.  In this process the level of stress brain vs rest brain activity is, of course, key.

When you learned to brush your teeth, ride a bike, type, drive a car, write, or anything else, you were a bit shaky at first – maybe very shaky in some cases.  As a reminder of what that’s like, try brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand.  Notice the thoughts, emotions, memories, and meanings that this action involves.  If you do this, you will be expanding your sensory-motor library by one more volume.  Imagine the “size” of a decathlete’s or modern dancer’s sensory-motor library compared to the average person’s.

For reasons that are too many to mention here, we each learn to do things in a unique way.  Handwriting is a very clear example, it’s so unique that it can be used to identify people for official documents and in investigations.  The same goes for our reactions to stress.  Stress is a fact of life, it is simply the body’s response to any given demand.  Sure it comes and goes to some degree, but it’s never eliminated while we live.  As we grow, we develop motor output patterns that correspond to different situations, feelings, memories, thoughts, etc.  If one facet of an action, say a certain emotion, is very prevalent in our lives, we will repeatedly use the motor pattern that goes along with it.  As certain patterns get used more often, they become more likely to be chosen at any time.  This is called habituation, the forming of a habit.

That knot in between your shoulders, that stiff low back, that foot that’s turned out a little more than the other, those are all motor habits, and they are all perpetuated by the brain.  Yes, the tissue adapts to these patterns, but the brain makes the decision, and to the extent that the tissues can allow, the brain can change its habits.  In a sense, we have recurring patterns of tension because that’s what we’re used to, it’s what we know to do.

The usefulness of bodywork lies in its ability to increase the adaptability of tissues, but more to the point to augment the client’s sensory-motor capacity.  To put that in more marketable terms, the point of bodywork is to help people feel better and be able to move more.

When you get up from the table after a massage or bodywork session, and feel that you have more “space” within you, or maybe feel taller, or more “grounded,” what you’re experiencing is an increase in sensory information.  You’re feeling many more tiny little parts of your structure that had been forgotten or never before sensed, and you may also be feeling new position and movement patterns (a great feeling for satiating the ever present “I want better posture” sentiment).  To evoke our metaphor once more, you have just had a whole section or floor added to your sensory-motor library.  That’s much more than the novel experience of that “spacey” feeling; it’s an opportunity to feel and move in ways that were previously not possible, and it’s a state in which you’re less likely to experience pain.  With repetition, it can be retained longer, and called upon at will.  When combined with a movement practice, I mean one where you explore new ways to move, it has even more power to transform all facets of your daily actions in the long term, that is to say, to change your life.

So, in times when you feel resigned to tension or pain, get a massage, you will feel better.  In times of exploration and questioning, get a massage, you will never feel the same.  I can attest to this, because this has been my experience, and the experience of my clients.

I’ve been drawn toward bodywork in one way or another for as long as I can remember.  A combination of two traits have steered me to this career: An irresistible urge to devote myself to personal growth, and a natural knack for body related learning. At age twelve, those two drives landed me in a martial arts class that became a five year practice.

When moving away for college promplted me to take a break from that practice, I had the chance to realize that training for violence did not serve me.  I spent the following six years using my hands-on talents for my self-built career in home improvement, but that job satisfied only my physical and financial needs.

After experiencing neck spasms that coincided with recurring life events, and getting a lot of relief and insight from seeing various bodywork professionals, I finally realized what I was made to do, and enrolled in The Lauterstein Conway School of Massage.

During my martial arts practice, an era that I still cherish, I began a learning journey that I am continuing through the healing arts.  The core of both practices is to master one’s own actions, one’s own body-mind.  In the martial arts, those skills are learned under the pretext of taking control of your opponent’s body-mind to protect people from harm.  In the healing arts, the skills are used to catalyze and support your client’s gaining greater control of their own body-mind so they can live a more healthful and joyful life.

I’m perpetually grateful for the skills I learn, and the people whose healing I have the privilege of taking part in.

Matt Arnold, LMT

There are so many cases in life where being of the most benefit is helped largely by just not getting in the way.  This is true in parenting, art, working in a group, psychotherapy, agriculture, government and a lot more.  In my massage practice, I have a certain way of approaching everything I do that’s based to a good extent on this idea.  I call it my “therapeutic posture,” using posture in the general sense, but including the body language sense of the word as well.

Let me break it down for you:

1. Hold the client in the highest personal regard.  That’s not much to say, but when you really apply it, it changes everything.  When I put my hands on someone they can feel this attitude.  My hands are saying “I’m here to learn from you, and to observe the very best in you, and I’m here to give you a chance to do the same.”  Side note: please don’t get the impression that I’m sanctimonious or sappy about my work.  I don’t make a big deal out of this attitude, I just do it, and as a result my touch feels great.  Back to the point: A lot of people who come to see me have tension or pain, and this involves a whole milieu of feelings usually including some embarrassment or even shame for not having total control over their body.  That embarrassed feeling is a perfect little stone for impeding the path of healing, and if I feed it in any way, I cut short that great process.
2. Hold the very best outcome of the session as possible.  Doubt is a healthy part of any endeavor; it keeps us from repeating the same ineffective methods, but doubt cannot be allowed to overshadow the possibility of total and speedy success.  It’s not realistic to either expect to fail or expect to succeed completely, the only thing that’s realistic is to include the whole spectrum of possibility in your mind, and I find it helps to favor the outermost prospect of benefit.
3. Listen totally.  This applies both literally, during the initial interview, and metaphorically as a dimension of touch.  During most conversation, while one person speaks, the other has a stream of thought that’s only partially related to what’s being said.  The listener tends to look for any bit of information that reminds them of something about their own experience so they can start talking next.  Active listening means that the listener immerses himself in the speaker’s experience and allows himself to reach a more complete understanding of the other’s perspective.  Bodywork is a conversation between two nervous systems.  If I gather only enough data with my hands to fit the client’s experience into some template, I will surely stifle their healing process.
4. Know how much the client wants to work on.  By reading so far, you can surmise that I work to help clients change a lot more than just “toxins in the muscles,” but the fact is, a lot of people just want some quick relief, and that’s fine with me.  When a client shows up who just wants “a good rub down,” it’s my job to oblige, and if they gain a deeper or more enduring benefit, all the better.  Force feeding someone a higher possibility benefits no one, but offering it without pretense creates a setting where more is possible.
5. Self care.  I’ll include two items in one here.  The first is the “oxygen mask principle,” see the safety card in your seat back compartment.  I think it’s pretty intuitive, so I’ll just say that if I’m in a good state of wellness, I can be more available to my client.  The other part of this principle applies to my body mechanics during each stroke.  If I put myself in an awkward position and labor intensively to put a certain force into the client’s body, I am over working myself and getting nothing done.  The body I’m contacting learns by example, and responds to my level of strain, so I work to eliminate strain from my own body during every movement.  Working with gravity, and with the design of my body means I can apply a great deal of pressure, if needed, without losing my sensing capability or triggering a defensive reaction in the client.
6. Know who’s in charge.  This is another two in one item.  It feels really good to have your “knots” mashed on, and this helps to flush metabolites out of areas of poor circulation, giving local functions a break and providing temporary relief, but it doesn’t change a thing in the long run.  A muscle does not relax in response to pressure or manipulation.  Muscles respond exclusively to input from the nerves.  Every knot is maintained by an output of the central nervous system.  The brain is the boss, and that’s who we have to talk to to get change.  All that is more technique theory than therapeutic posture, but it goes along with an important principle:  The client does the healing.  I do not fix anyone, but I provide, in the form of bodywork, a skillfully placed fulcrum around which a person can more easily reach their highest possible benefit.  This principle holds the other five within it, and gives rise to my opening sentence.  The most skillful therapist has, among other things, learned more and more ways to simply not impede someone’s own beneficial processes.

Any thoughts?

In honor of Zero Balancing Awareness Week and Cinco de Mayo, I will be offering Zero Balancing sessions for FREE all day this Saturday, May 5th. Zero Balancing is a combination structural and energetic manual therapy which focuses on the core foundational joints of the skeleton. It frees deeply held tensions in the physical body, and gives the client a deep connection with his/her true self, allowing him/her to more effortlessly approach life challenges. Many who receive a ZB report feeling soothed and freed up right down through the bone. This technique is subtle yet powerful, and it’s something that I personally love a lot, and am very happy to share. Whether you are new to bodywork, or you receive frequently, come and see what ZB is all about this Saturday, El Cinco de Mayo, at my Bee Caves Studio!

Click the Book Now button at the bottom of the page to sign up for your free ZB! (choose 60 min alignment from the menu).

At least once a day, I hear the question “Why is my ___ so tight?” or “Why won’t it stop hurting?”  And I’m forced to immediately disappoint the client by breaking the news to them that not only can I not pinpoint the cause of their discomfort, but no one can.  I could tell you “Well, your neck is in spasm because you hunch over a keyboard all day,” but let’s take a look at what purpose that would serve.  Telling a client that would put us both at ease.  I would feel helpful and wise, and the client would have something to blame their frustrating condition on.  Yes, it would keep us both right in our little sphere of comfort in which we maintain and repeat familiar patterns, but alas, the therapeutic process is not always comfortable.

A cause is defined as something that exists such that a particular outcome is certain.  Causes show up all over the place in things like auto mechanics – if your break pads wear down to the screecher, then there will be a screeching sound when your wheels are moving.  Fortunately, we are much more than machines and any such assessment would fall gravely short of the reality of a living system.

Maybe the client in question gets the same levator scapulae spasm any time they use a computer for several hours, but look at their neighbors, co-workers, family, anyone… not everyone experiences this spasm in response to that stimulus.  From this we must conclude that prolonged use of a “hunched” posture is only a contributing factor to the spasm.

The list of other contributing factors is usually vast, largely unknown by the therapist or even the client, and includes things like diet, movement habits, emotional habits, trauma, and more.

Now that we’ve determined that a cause is in reality a huge list of factors, I’ll have to disappoint you again.  If you’re a scientist, you’re already ahead of me.  The fact is we can see all these factors, and intuit which ones are likely cause the others, but ultimately all that is known is correlation.  Most statements of causality would be speculation and nothing more.

I find it more helpful to think of this jumble of circumstances as sort of a causal cycle, or web.  Web is is the more accurate term since we already know that causation is often assumed, but I like to use the cycle image because it’s easier to visualize.  This is pretty much the same thing as the gestalt concept.  I often advise clients to include several different therapies in their healing endeavor, explaining that each one will work with a piece of the causal cycle, resulting in synergistic benefits.

So now that we’ve determined that telling a client “this hurts because that” is, while easy, not really truthful, let’s talk about what else it might do.

If, as I and countless other therapists believe, the painful muscle cramp is only one facet of a great, being-wide phenomenon, then it follows that the best therapy would focus on the whole issue, not just one symptom.  By telling the client that the root cause is exactly what they already think it is, the therapist reinforces their subconscious story that the pain is part of them and will continue as long as they go on doing what they do, and rules out the possibility of any type of new experience (which is essential to therapy).  In my practice, I work with the quiet knowledge in hand that a symphony of events is packed into each muscle, each stroke, and every cell in our bodies, and I strive to craft my words and attitude carefully as to support the whole of a person in balance, and not box them into the pattern they wish to escape from.

So, if you’re on my table, and you ask me why your low back is sooo stiff, please don’t be too upset when I tell you “You’ll never know.”  Maybe it’s better to ask “What can I do to feel better?”

Massage gives your body the skills to better adapt to life: to more deeply relax, to move more fully, and to absorb and diffuse stress more easily.

Everyone knows that slouching is inadvisable, but very few of us have a realistic alternative. When you remember to sit up straight, it might be uncomfortable or even painful, and even if you’re determined, you default back to the slouch as soon as your attention is drawn away from your posture.

This video offers a great summary of the issue of structural balance.

I think postural habits are some of the most difficult ones to change. They are embedded deeply into our muscle memory, and over time our tissue even adapts to our position of choice, making it physically challenging to do anything else.

Here’s an excerpt from my recent interview with in.gredients, detailing a great tool for postural education:

For those that are really ready to take control of their well-being, here’s an exercise to retrain your muscle memory to counteract the collapsing tendency that is so common in our society:

‘Wall Angels’

1. Find an empty space on a flat wall the width of your arm span.
2. Stand facing away from the wall, with your heels about one foot’s length away from the wall.
3. Lean back and rest your back, hips, and head against the wall, then bend your knees slightly.
4. IMPORTANT: Push your low back flat against the wall, you should feel your spine contact the wall all the way from the top of the buttocks to the bottom of the shoulder blades. If this is a challenge, just work on this step until you can do it.
5. Relax your neck. With your arms down by your sides, place your elbows and the backs of you wrists against the wall, and slowly raise your arms up, brushing the wall as in a snow angel. When you feel your spine pull away from the wall, stop and correct it, then continue bringing your arms up. When you can’t flatten your spine against the wall any more, you’ve found your stopping point. Bring your arms back down, brushing the wall on the descent.
6. Repeat step 5 a total of 10 times.
7. Do this once a day for a month and see if your posture improves.

You could do more than one set a day if desired, but don’t do more than ten in a set.
If you have a physical practice of any kind (sports, workout, yoga, dance, etc.), do a set of wall angels before you begin and feel the increased ease enjoyed by an upright spine.

Depending on your beginning posture, you may feel a sense of difficulty, shame, hopelessness, or anger, etc while performing wall angels. This is a normal part of the process; your nervous system is quite comfortable with the habits it currently uses and will use many defences against being re-trained. When you step away from the wall after a set of 10 wall angels, you will feel a heightened awareness of your spine’s position. Building that awareness is the purpose of the exercise, and after each successive set, that awareness will last longer until you have formed a new postural habit.

If you’re serious about improving your structural and energetic balance, and thus your overall health, let’s schedule a session, I can help.

Before I became a bodyworker, I had the pleasure of having my eyes opened.  A chiropractor I was seeing because of a neck spasm mimicked my posture and asked me “How do you think someone in this position feels about them self?”  That was the beginning of a healing journey.

Take a look at these candid shots taken at a haunted house:

http://bit.ly/nPMI2i

They are hilarious, for one, but they are also great examples of the startle reaction.  It’s easy to see real fear on some of the patrons’ faces, and of the ones whose faces show terror, take a look at the shoulders, the spine, the position of the head relative to the ribcage.

This posture is familiar to all of us, and it’s a necessary survival mechanism.  Caving in around our visceral cavity protects all the soft, vulnerable parts that keep us alive – the abdomen and the throat, but we are such funny creatures, we use this response for all kinds of things that don’t potentially threaten our lives.

We use it when we are three years old and someone yells at us, when we are gloomy, shameful teenagers, and when we become adults with the would be full expression of our true selves slightly compromised, we use it constantly.

Cultivate an awareness of how you use your body to express your standard image of your self, and see if that posture still serves your needs.  Most importantly, remember that whatever state you’re in, it isn’t permanent.  If you haven’t before, you CAN hold your head high, it just might take some work.

Have you ever gone to a massage therapist with a crick in your neck, or something pulling in your low back, or knots on the edge of your shoulder blade and felt like they didn’t address your complaint at all? Why would this happen, were they not listening to you, are they unskilled? Maybe, but they may have been doing what they felt you needed while failing to educate you on the true nature of your ailment.  While a well integrated massage will usually relieve pain, it may not be the work that you expected.

Assuming that the therapist was in fact skilled, the client’s dissapointment in this scenario stems from two sources; the therapists failure to communicate, and the client’s presumption that they know exactly why they have pain. Descriptions of pain are very often accompanied by plausible explanations as to the cause, and understandably so. If we feel something has gone wrong inside our bodies, we want to have a reason at the ready. I know that when I started receiving bodywork what I mostly wanted was something to pin the pain to, something to fill the gap between the healthy person I imagined myself to be, and the pain I was feeling. From driving to typing, to strain from work, I wanted an answer so badly that I even bought a new mattress!

Well the bitter-sweet truth is that all the ergonomics and strong pressure in the world won’t free anyone from their pain patterns. In almost every case, the cause of discomfort or pain is both internal, and very old (even if the pain is new).

At some point, maybe around age three or four in many cases, we all live in our ideal physical alignment. A stable arch in both feet, just the right amount of play at the knees, a neutral pelvis, a spine that expresses its full length and supportive power, a ribcage and shoulder girdle that rest with balance around the spine, and a head that floats majestically and effortlessly at our summit. Three, ten, twenty, and forty years later the picture may be something completely different. So what happened?

Recently, at an Anatomy Trains workshop in Austin ( http://www.anatomytrains.com/ http://www.tlcschool.com/ ) The process was laid out in very clear terms:

Step 1: Experiments become gestures.

We watch the people around us, we test our limits, and we play with the possibilities that our form offers from day one.  Eventually, for reasons better left to a psychotherapist’s blog, we choose a set of motions and positions that express what we most want to express.

Step 2: Gestures become habits.

We integrate this set of gestures into our personality, and even our identity, doing them more and more often.

Step 3: Habits become posture.

We no longer have to use our conscious mind to initiate the habits at all, at this point they are the new neurological default.  Your posture is not how you are sitting or standing in a given moment, it’s how you hold your self when you aren’t paying attention to it.

Step 4: Posture becomes structure.

To use an example that’s very common in contemporary US society, imagine that the head being slightly forward of the place where it would be effortlessly balanced is one of the gestures that I picked to define myself.  Every minute of every day, a number of muscles in the neck, back, and beyond, are carrying an extra load in order to maintain that head position.  (To demonstrate this, try carrying a ten pound box of anything directly against your chest vs a couple of inches out in front.)  Muscles are made to contract and relax intermittently, so this sustained albeit low grade contraction causes the development of trigger point pain.  Fibroblasts – cells that build the collageneous web that infiltrates every corner of the body – respond to the persistent load in these muscles by laying down more and more tough fibers until the muscle becomes the steel cable that’s required to do the job of keeping up that forward head.

Step 5: Structure limits experimentation.

We grow up, we learn about health as an incidental phenomenon but not as a personal responsibility, we carry on our habits healthy and otherwise, and eventually the position of that forward head can’t be played with any more, it’s locked in place. Or so it would seem.

The good news is that the cycle can be intervened upon and reversed.  Suppleness can be regained even in advanced adulthood.  The fibroblasts continue to be responsive, and they will adapt to new postures if their host is aware and devoted enough to make the changes.

So back to the question of the massage therapist who works on your pecs when you have a knot between your shoulders.  Quite often “knots” are the result of exactly the kind of sustained over-demand on myofascia that I described in step 4 above.  In the case of protracted scapulae (shoulders forward), the rhomboids (between the shoulder blades) are persistently lengthened, while the pecs are persistently shortened, and the tissue responds to become just what it is asked to be.  When cells die in the pectoralis tissue, they are replaced at a slower rate, yielding a shorter structure,  while more fibrous collagen is layed down in the rhomboids.  The tissue between the shoulder blades becomes tough, tightly stretched, difficult for fluids to penetrate, over crowded with metabolites.  This condition is the source of the pain.  Manual work is needed in the rhomboids to bring in new fluid and evacuate metabolites, and to regain mobility between the bits that have become stuck, but it is also needed in the pecs to regain length and allow the rhomboids to rest.  As one prominent physiotherapist put it, “It is the victims who cry out, not the criminals.” ( http://dianelee.ca/ ).  In this case the victims being the cells between the shoulder blades, and the criminals being the pectoralis muscles.  Of course this is a gross simplification of a global posture pattern that could be seated at an even greater distance from the pain, but the example holds true.

Enjoy the soothing work, it feels great!  Enjoy the confusing work, it will set you free!  Ask questions, and seek an understanding of your pain.  Once you get to know it, you can invite it to move out.

A human body standing still is the result of a symphony of sensory and motor impulses.  Every muscle in your body is constantly updated with input from all over the system to make sure it’s doing what it needs to keep your head over your hips and your hips over your feet.  So often when people endeavour to change their postural or movement habits, they approach it from a “fixed position” perspective.  For example, you might visit a Chiropractor, and on your drive home think to yourself “If I just keep my neck where he put it, then the vertebrae will stay aligned,” when in fact it’s likely that the tendency to splint your neck in a fixed position is the root of the dysfunction.

Our bodies were made to move – all the time, yes there is an optimum alignment for each part of the skeletal-muscular system, but this is not the place where it stays put, it’s simply it’s ideal resting place.

Postural improvement can’t be fully realized by reminding oneself where, for instance, the shoulders “should” rest, and consciously putting them there any time one remembers to.  Posture and movement patterns are programs stored in the cerebellum, and for them to change, the nervous system must re-learn movement and rest the same way it learned it the first time.  To paraphrase Moshe Feldenkrais, a person cannot change until they have a new experience.

So when a body is standing there, opposing gravity as closely to vertical as it knows how, what is keeping it from being optimally aligned?  What input to key muscles is overriding that which would otherwise bring it into perfect opposition to gravity?  If one can answer these questions about oneself, they have a way away from pain.