Quite often this has the added benefit of decreased pain. Especially pain that is chronic and has not been helped by other more conventional modalities like physical therapy and acupuncture.
My first experience of healing back pain happened when I experienced relief of my chronic back pain while in a class that was part of the certification for becoming a brain gym teacher.
I used to have chronic tightness on my right lower back which was ever present in my body as a low dull ache. I used to do yoga, get massage, acupuncture, and craniosacral therapy to address it but after the session it would feel better for about 15-20 minutes, but as soon as I started moving around, walking, sitting, driving, it would come back.
I had resigned myself to the fact that my body was just going to be like this and that I was just going to have to get massage, acupuncture, craniosacral therapy for the rest of my life to keep these things at bay.
Then when I was in a class called “in-depth” and my teacher noticed the asymmetry in my back.
He said, “You have the ATNR(asymmetrical tonic neck reflex) active in your body”.
I scoffed and said, “No way! That reflex goes away when you’re a baby. It’s not active in me.”
But he told me that reflexes can be unintegrated in our bodies beyond the designated time that it is supposed to be, and cause imbalances that cause chronic pain types of issues.
Also, because these reflexes are part of normal development, there will be no test to detect it as a problem because it is something that is inherent in all of us and is supposed to be there.
So I agreed to have him check my body for the presence of this reflex.
He checked my leg length while my head was straight and then also when I turned my head side to side and sure enough, my leg length changed as I moved my head which is one of the indications that this reflex is active in my body.
Then he lead me through a full balance procedure where he did additional brain gym processes to balance my brain and body system.
He did the checks again and my leg length did not change.
When I stood up again, I felt like I was standing crooked, leaning way over to the left, but when I looked at my reflection in the mirror, my body was standing straight up.
This mismatch in my feeling sense of my body and my visual sense of my body was shocking.
This meant that on an unconscious level, I was always pulling away from my tight right side in order to walk and stand up straight. Because my right back was always tight, and I was always pulling the other way to keep myself centered it caused an ache and tiredness in my lower back.
When that internal pull which was coming from my brain was gone, I was able to stand straight without needing to pull against my tight side.
After that session, the long term, low-grade ache in my back disappeared and has never come back. In fact, with each successive balance procedure, my body has only continued to become more and more balanced.
This was the first time I witnessed how the brain can have an impact on chronic pain.
Here are some signs that you may have some reflexes or movement imbalances that may be impacting your body and possibly causing chronic pain:
-Chronic Pain that comes back no matter what you do to address it, whether it be tight neck, shoulders, back, knees, ankles, etc.
-A difference in the tightness of your muscles between the left and right sides of your body
-A feeling like your body does what it wants to do regardless of how you consciously want to move(this shows up particularly in sports or dancing)
-Certain sensations seemingly affect you more than it affects other people, such as loud noise, bright lights, smells, other people touching you, routines being disrupted, fear of heights, etc.
-It is easier to balance on one leg more than the other
-your shoes wear unevenly
If you recognize any of these signs and are experiencing chronic pain, you may be able to gain relief from these.
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301-523-3477