Muscles and
the Cranial Rhythm
Why some
patients do not heal
Solihin Thom DO DAc
I lean over the person, with my
outstretched arm, extended hand cupped holding the erecta
spinae, as the weight of my body leans into the muscles.
The hyper tonicity refuses to budge. The muscles give and
buckle laterally, but do not reduce their 'gain'. I gently
let go, and again allow my weight to be transferred to my
leading leg, as I allow the tissues to give, following
their slow inexorable melt. I transfer my weight and again
repeat the slow stretch hoping that the muscle spindles
reorganize. I stand back, and put a professional hand on
the muscle group; defiant, glistening with sweat and oil.
Their tenacity glows back, as they stand strong and firm,
shouting their non capitulation. Exasperated, I stand back
and wonder...
For many years I have wondered why some people bathe in the
luxury of personal attention, and allow their tissues to
uncurl and relax under expert hands. Yet note, that as many
that do, others valiantly hang on, making sure that they do
not give in. Why is this so, I asked myself?
A human being exists at many levels. When they come in to
see us they are operating from a survival mode. That is,
they are operating off stress - what ever that means to
them or to you - and they are exhibiting all the signs of
not coping. They have adapted under the forces that bend
and alter their life, and their tissues accommodate so far,
until they adapt no more. Muscle tension is an outward
sign. It tells us that their armor is galvanized and in
full tonus; making sure that they are able to pull up their
last resources to fight 'to the finish'. Of course, most
people wouldn't put this as so, but the musculature of our
bodies is influenced by our flight-fight mechanism, our
adrenergic system. So when we massage a client we are
asking their muscles to let go of the fight:
• Do
they know why they are on guard?
• When we ask our patients to put down their guard, do we
know what they are letting down to?
• Do they know what they are then possibly letting in?
You can see by these simple questions, it poses much that
is normally unanswered. A client entrusts us to give them
some respite to their acute, chronic or nagging problem.
They allow us to work with them so that their muscles relax
enough so that the neurological reflex arcs that hold them
in this insufferable torment are released. In may cases
this slow relentless work on the tissues release the held
memory. But often not, and the client returns, yet again
for more work on those intractable muscles.
You have seen this in your clients, I have seen it in both
osteopathy and in TCM. Those few, but nevertheless
prominent clients who do not get better. So what is it that
torments them? Why the guard? Why the defence? After all,
the part of us that is in survival is mammalian not human,
yet this is what in charge of their body right now! How do
I get them chunk up, and see or be reflective of what is
going on? Do I talk to them? Do I offer a suggestion? Do I
enquire as what is going on, deep down in their lives? This
may get me beyond the bounds of my brief, my licensure, or
lead me into deep waters. What do I do?
In the realm of body dynamics is a remarkable mechanism.
Every cell, structure, tissue and organ has a rhythmic
breath. This breath is an ebb and flow of its fluid state.
Each part expands and fills, each part ebbs and relaxes.
This dynamic yin and yang element so often glibly talked,
occurs at a cellular level. This momentum may be palpated;
and indeed William Sutherland DO at the term of the Century
marked and named this innate movement, the cranial rhythmic
impulse [CRI] - in deference to the area where the rhythm
could be felt the best.
What the osteopaths began to see was that structural
changes affected this dynamic rhythm, and in so doing the
function of the tissues changed. Indeed, they noted that
trauma, and the vagaries of life placed their onus or
charge upon the human frame which altered its shape,
posture, and movement. This in turn affected the micro
management of the tissues. They counted the rhythm, and
created a map of sorts; reporting that in normal health
this CRI had a rhythm of about 10 cycles per minute. In
actuality the CRI has many rhythms all relating to the part
of the person who is in charge at the moment.
We started off, with the premise that a human comes to us
because they are adapted. This adaptation can occur
throughout the body, but may be localized, perhaps
answering the question why some people respond better than
others. Each human being may be considered the totality of
many parts. To understand who we encounter when we touch a
set of muscles, we must first understand the parts of a
human being.