Stay Supple for Life
Article for a local health oriented monthly magazine.
Nine years ago, Eric Cooper, CCSE, LMT, HSEC, CNMT, CMFT, COTT, owner of InSpire Somatics for Pain Relief, needed a cane to walk at age 45. As muscle pains and spasms became unbearable, Cooper became determined to solve his own pain problem. After a long search, including thousands of hours of training in advanced bodywork modalities, he found the solution he was looking for. Now, helping others to solve these problems has become his life’s work and passion.
Why does my body hurt so much, making me feel old and achy?
We associate stiffness and achy pain with aging, but age has very
to do with it. The achy, stiff, “oldness” you feel is the result of persistent patterns of involuntary muscle tension. The nervous and muscular system has a system of moving, and sensing, a feedback system. In reaction to stress or injury, the body tightens into specific reflexive patterns of contraction. The back stiffens and arches, or the chest depresses, etc. As feedback diminishes from persistently contracted muscles, a type of sensory motor amnesia develops. Tensions we can’t feel become more rehearsed; they become habits, manifesting as postural distortions and localized pain problems such as sciatica, shoulder problems and one leg feeling “longer” than the other. Posture is active, not fixed, and can change. Most of my clients leave my clinic looking and feeling younger.
How did you solve your own pain problem?
I found Hanna Somatics, a system of neuromuscular re-patterning movements that are called pandiculations, an extraordinarily effective technique that uses gentle contraction, followed by a controlled, slow lengthening of the muscles to full rest. I fixed how my brain was stuck and persistently holding my muscles. Results happen over time from gentle repetition, recalibrating the brain-to-muscle feedback loop, bringing fuller bodily awareness and voluntary control of the muscular system. It is “somatic” in the sense that learning occurs as an internalized sensory-learning process.
Yawning is a form of pandiculation that we all know. As kids, we did yawning contractions often. As adults, we stopped automatically resetting our bodies with pandiculation. Contraction “wakes up” the sensory-motor cortex of the brain, creating the feedback sensation that allows the brain to sense the muscle more clearly, allowing it to relax and lengthen. By making the automatic contractions voluntary, control is regained, and the tension can be turned off. As full body tension patterns de-escalate, the muscles rest and recover, and chronic tension pain diminishes. Pandiculation is not the same as stretching.
What is a typical session like?
Cooper assists his patients through precise pandiculations, contracting and releasing, that help the brain to remember muscular suppleness and control for each tension pattern. His clients regain the ability to allow the front to open, for the back to deeply relax, to find freedom in rotation, and balance in side-bending. He teaches people how to become experts at relaxing their bodies.
What sorts of problems does this help?
This helps with muscle tension related issues like back, hip and knee pains, headaches, scoliosis, postural distortions like hunching, carpal tunnel syndrome, frozen shoulder syndrome and restricted breathing, foot and knee pain, fibromyalgia and more. So many afflictions are the result of high muscular tension in the body!
Is there an exercise we can do ourselves?
Every morning upon awakening, turn your senses inward. What is noticeable and what is quiet? Try one or two minutes of yawning-like contractions, followed by an easy lengthening of the areas that are tense. Do what feels natural. Take the striving out of it and use just enough effort to sense what’s contracting. Make it pleasurable and cat-like, without any discomfort. Contract the front and lengthen. Gently arch the back and lengthen. Explore side-bending and twisting. After doing the pandiculations, turn your awareness inward. What do you notice? Cats indulge in these yawning-like contractions about 40 times a day. That’s how they stay so supple. With pandiculation, you can, too!
Eric Cooper, CCSE, Inspire Somatics is located south of Chelsea, MI.
For appointments,
call 734-436-1041 or email Eric@InspireSomatics.com.
For more information, visit InspireSomatics.com.