Limb X Limb

 

Fascia

Much has been discovered about fascia in the last decade and much has been shared.  How do we integrate this information into a useful and functional tool?  How do we interpret the science into an understanding that makes sense for how we live our lives every day? How do we evolve what a body is by including the fabric of fascia?

Fascia exists to hold the body and preserve the eduction that we feed it with our movements, repetitions, behaviors, injuries and explorations. The fascia connects us and helps us to maintain the integrity of our structure. It cements our patterns and ways of being in the world. It is sticky and adjustable so that it can acquiesce to the repetitive postures as we change them. It also becomes dehydrated when we forget to move and remain in those very shapes. When our bodies become stuck in a shape, then our mindset adapts, we think this is who we are and have a difficult time finding our way our. By feeling and introducing the feminine back into our consciousness, we can change our ways. Feeling is the way to discover where movement exists and where it doesn’t. Fascia adds dimension to the body. It also offers us access from the places of movement or places of connection to the places of forgetting, to the places to which we no longer have access.

Fascia is the concrete fabric that helps us feel ourselves. It shows us where in the body we can embody with ease and where we have lost touch with ourselves. Fascia is the way to remembering in the mental sense as well as the physical sense. Reconnecting or re – member – ing the physical form. If we follow the sensation from the places that we can feel with ease toward the areas of our body that seem distant, then we can begin to gain access to first the boundary of the unknown territory and then into the heart of where we have forgotten.

By knowing the shape of the muscles, by having understanding of the maps of the body we retain access to the divine masculine. By feeling how that maps connects throughout the body, we gain access to the feminine. The sacred marriage is the moment, the epiphany that occurs when all the gears align and you can feel what you know to be true. When we translate knowledge and language into a feeling and reclaim access to the physical form we experience the divine marriage. When this occurs, we are hooked and keep coming back for more. We seek to gain access to this moment again and again and again because it is energizing and inspiring. When we experience the diving marriage of knowing and feeling we gain access to our bodies, we embody.

Unconscious Holding

One way to map the body is to divide it into the parts known to us and the parts unknown. There exists at any moment places in the body that we can move whenever we so choose. These parts are known and felt in real time. Then there exists places in the body to which we can not connect. These parts are unknown to us. The known can be mapped with the light of awareness. The unknown can be mapped with darkness of amnesia. There are two key patterns connected to the unknown darkness. The first pattern are the places that we are engaging unconsciously most of our lives. We muscularly grip or hold tissues in a range of ways from subtle, imperceptible contractions to powerful, massive contractions. The second pattern are the spaces in the body where we have no access because we have forgotten or have never learned to feel or use them. Often we have no muscular capabilities here and lean on the skeletal fascia body in the form of ligaments.

Imagine the nervous system in this whole, dimensional body of dark and light. The parts that we are aware of are teaming with light and electricity. The parts that live in darkness have no connections and remain in shadow like a town that lost its light from a storm. The process of embodiment is the process of expanding the light into the dark areas of self so that we can land successfully in the whole form.

Now visualize a place where one is consistently and unconsciously holding or gripping the musculature. The constant contraction squeezed fluid out of the area because of the inward pressure. At the same time, the fascia is pulled toward the engaged muscle like a magnet dimensionally pulls in metal. As the fascia is pulled toward the contraction it stretches as much as it is capable and then it begins to draw surrounding bones, organs or other tissues toward it. In this way, an unconscious contraction reshapes the bodies landscape by drawing attention and structure toward it. Now visualize this as a three dimensional phenomenon.

The Movement

If one of the reasons that fascia exists is to aid us in feeling our bodies, then how can we learn to use this to make functional and structural changes to our body.  The historical practice of stretching has the general population believing that stretching is a practice of changing the shape of muscles.  It also has us thinking that stretch is an activity that works by taking our tissues to their maximum flexibility and then asking them to adjust to a new and expanded normal.  The truth is that by stretching a myofascial unit to its maximum length actually creates a response of maximum resistance.

Imagine stretching a rubber band to its full capacity.  You then feel the maximum resistance that the rubber band has the ability to hold.  The rubber band will not acquiesce to a new shape, it will either maintain its integrity or it will snap.  The body responds in a similar fashion.  In fact, when we meet tissue or fascia at its maximum resistance, we often create a pain response.

So how then shall we facilitate successful change to a myofascial unit?  By learning to listen and feel our body we can awaken to what I like to call ‘First Resistance’ or ‘First Sensation’.  First sensation is the place on a myofascial unit that we feel when we make subtle, quiet movements.  When we move two bones away from each other, we awaken the soft tissue connections between those bones.  The first sensation is the place on the myofascial unit that offers us our first resistance.  This is the first place where change needs to occur.  The goal of first resistance stretching is to constantly meet the place of first resistance so that we can systematically make incremental changes to our fascial body.  By making small incremental changes and working slowly through the full range of a myofascial unit we can make sustainable structural changes to the soft tissues.

The Practice

If you are interested in bringing this life to work and putting it into practice, then join me at the Center for Remembering and Sharing every other Tuesday morning from 9am-11am for my new class Limb X Limb.  This 2 hour long class will be a workshop style that includes meditation, fascia movement, short lecture, partner work as well as holistic anatomy, chanting and dharma.  Limb X Limb is a labor of love and was born out of distilling 20 years of knowledge and movement.  The practice is designed to help your land in your body, to feel yourself clearly and understand what a body is.

Please sign up and pay in advance as space is limited.  Email me at zacherydacuk@gmail.com for more details or questions.

In late January of this year, I had the privilege of teaching at Orleans Yoga in Cape Cod. The experience was life changing for me. I was able to distill almost 20 years of study, nearly 40 years of living and processing and a decade of teaching into a stunning 4 day training. I can honestly say that I am a changed person after that training and my work as a healer and a teacher is forever and always changed because of the content and interactions from this experience.

Due to the time, hard work, dedication and her belief in me as a teacher, Petra Ledkovsky (Orleans Yoga owner) wrangled 10 brave souls to journey with me as I took them on a roller coaster ride through the human form. Petra was kind enough to open her home and community up to me, offering me access to a sacred space and the open hearts of eager students. Thank you Petra, I couldn’t have done it without you.

And to the students, I may actually have learned more from you then you from me. In my heart I know that we all benefitted from the experience…I am forever in your debt. Your open hearts and minds provided me with the container to fully blossom and expand to new heights, widths, and depths. Your receptivity led me to discovery, capacity, creativity and the integration of my life’s work. You have my gratitude.

This experience has inspired me so completely that I will be leading this course again in NYC, June 2018. Learn more HERE.

Recently, I have spent time digging into my past, into my unprocessed stories and wounds. It is only fair as I explore these places with my clients and students that I engage in the process myself. While exploring the unknown territory of the subconscious, it is important for to grant permission. We need to give permission to ourselves so that we know we are ready to explore the story at hand. We need to grant permission to others if they are to guide us safely into these wounds. We all need to grant permission to go into the places that scare us, that have been scarred and that are sacred.

It is so crucial that we ask ourselves if we are ready to explore our wounds, shadows and traumas. How can we really know if we are ready? One valuable practice that I have found for discovering the truth about whether or not I am ready to dive deeper goes like this:

1. Do I have pretty good awareness of the wound or trauma that I am curious about?
2. Can I marry the awareness with a clear feeling of safety?
3. If I am not sure or the answer is no, then the work is about acknowledging the boundary and getting comfortable with that boundary.
4. If the answer is yes, I can marry the awareness of a wound with a feeling of clarity and safety, then I will ask myself – Do I have an ample support system in my life just in case I delve too deep?
5. If I feel completely comfortable about my support system, then I proceed past my boundaries and begin to repel into the wound, shadow or trauma.

When I can grant permission to myself and I have clearly identified the piece of my shadow or trauma that I would like to engage, explore and digest AND I feel clear and safe about going there THEN the quest to delve into the darkness is righteous. When we digest and reframe wounds, shadows and trauma, then we begin the healing process as well as gain access to hidden treasures of freedom on the other side of healing. It all begins with permission of respecting our boundaries and the divine marriage between understanding and feeling.

When we apply this practice to our clients or students, it is important to understand that sometimes they are willing but don’t recognize where the boundary needs to be. Sometimes they trust you so much that they are willing to take a leap of faith. And sometimes, they aren’t ready to do so. In these moments, it is vital that we maintain those boundaries for them. As practitioners in healing professions, we must become skilled at recognizing when a student or client may have the understanding of what a wound is but the feelings may be too much for them to cope with in the moment or after they open up to that wound or trauma. If a client is not ready to feel a trauma, this can cause flooding which is approximately the same as reliving the trauma or wound in real time. We need to avoid these situations as much as possible. Sometimes clients and students grant us permission and we, as practitioners, must hold safe boundaries for them, thank them for their trust and safely hold the boundary right where it currently exists. It is a tremendous amount of work to just get clear about where the boundary is and getting comfortable with its existence is powerful healing in itself.

1. Stabilization
2. Healing
3.  Health
4. Development & Expansion
5. Death & Dying

I spent the better part of 10 years working for and studying with Tom Myers, author of Anatomy Trains and founder of KMI Structural Integration School. He has been and continues to be a pioneer and communication leader on the progressive edge of teaching about fascia.

Tom’s impact on me has been deep and long lasting. I gathered incredible wisdom and potent teachings watching his determination, courage, and drive to put fascia on the map. It was an honor to be part of that process as he expanded his audience to include movement and fitness instructors. Together we expanded the audience of his work in and around New York City. His impact continues to be felt in many communities world wide, and as I continue to deepen my own teaching, I can’t help but be thankful to Tom for the active listening audience awaiting.

Tom taught me many important lessons on my journey to becoming a teacher. I carry with me one of his often shared stories about a physician who describes his relationship to healing patients,“In my profession, I race down to the river only to find a person drowning. I pull them out, pat them on the back, and send them on their way. Then I turn around to do the same for the next victim. I’m so busy saving lives that I never get a chance to go upstream to find out why they are falling into the water in the first place.” This tale made a deep impression on me. It inspired me to translate many of years of studying fascia with Tom into a movement practice designed to prevent injury and promote healing and health.

Being in the classroom with Tom for the better part of a decade was a tremendous opportunity to gather information. As powerful as the foundation of knowledge was the gift of witnessing the essential skills and techniques necessary to becoming a successful teacher. Tom developed and utilized teaching tools designed to weave fabric and connection within the classroom, laying down his own layer of fascia between the students.

I have come to hold a great deal of reverence for the micro community of the classroom. From different walks of life we arrive as strangers with the desire to learn, grow, and become more than who we are. Tom showed me how to hold safe space so that unfamiliar people can become community in a short period of time. Beyond holding safe space, we must also facilitate connections by opening doors and dissolving personal stories so that students can clearly see each other. When this is done intentionally and artfully, the result is pure magic. The deeply personal and professional impact of studying with Tom for the better part of a decade will resonate with me forever. My time with Tom shaped my foundation, and grew my ability to see and approach the body as healer and teacher. For these gifts, I will be forever grateful.

Some of the most powerful life lessons are ones that creep upon us sideways and take us by surprise.  I learned this truth powerfully through my dear friend and colleague Ame Wren, founder of Boston Yoga School. She has had such a profound influence on my life.  Ame will forever have my unending gratitude.

Ame first contacted me in in the Spring of 2013, taking a leap of faith, and inviting me to become a guest teacher in her dynamic yoga teacher training program.  I eagerly accepted and found my way to Boston many moons later.  I was honored by her trust in me,  and was grateful and nourished by that first opportunity to touch the lives of her students.

Since then Ame has invited me back to share teachings with training yoga teachers in Portland, Cape Cod, Syracuse and Boston many times over.  We have always maintained an open dialogue, and with her guidance, I have been able to hone my craft and elevate my teachings to higher, deeper, and more precise levels.

There is an element within Ame’s training that has changed my life forever in the most unexpected and profound way.  As a teacher and a healer, my life is about giving.  To my family and friends, I would give, give, give. I did not know how to receive.  In fact, I’ve avoided it, dismissed it, and downright said no it receiving for much of my life.  I told myself a story that began as a little boy that I don’t need anyone else.  The story says I can do it alone, and there is no reason to let anyone in.  This was a lie that I told myself so many times and for so long that I more than believed it.  I lived it.  A stark counterpoint to my most comfortable mode, at the closing of each training Ame has implemented the practice of a “Gratitude Circle.”  As you might suspect,  everyone in the training sits in a circle and the students share from their heart gratitude toward the teacher.

The first few times that I sat in gratitude circle, I dismissed it.  I quietly repeated in my head that this was simply the students projecting their stories onto me.  It was safer that way.  After a couple of years, I began to listen to what the students were saying and I took their gratitude as confirmation and validation they had learned something from the class.  I did everything in my power not to feel their gratitude, not to receive.

This seismically shifted last month when I took a huge leap and taught some new content I have been working on–all focused on heart opening. The Advanced Teacher Trainees were the first group I shared this with, and I was deeply aware of the risk I was taking.  Something profound happened. The dynamic electricity of the weekend was abundant and apparent.  With clear boundaries, I set out to crack the students’ hearts open just a little, but the surprise was that my own heart had been cracked wide open by the practice I had been teaching.

When it was time for gratitude circle, the strength of my defenses and false ego had been dismissed.  My heart was open and I knew I had taught the greatest weekend I have ever had the privilege to share.  The heartfelt gratitude came like a flood of emotion from each and every student.  With my defenses down, I had no where to turn and no where to run.  I was receiving.  I was vulnerable. My tears fell as an overwhelming rush of love filled my vibrating viscera.   I didn’t burst apart, and I didn’t break down.  It just felt wonderful. An incredible initiation into the flow of receptivity.

So Ame Wren, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.  You forced me to sit in gratitude for so long that I learned to receive.  You are my teacher and my friend.   And I look forward to the next gratitude circle!!

Farming and gardening have been crucial part of human development.  Many gradual changes in our society happened around the practice of sowing seeds and growing food.  How can we apply the practices of growing food to the practice of growing our bodies?  How does working the soil relate to change?

When we plant a seed in the earth, it can take days and even weeks before we see the sprout emerge above the surface.  But this doesn’t mean the growth and change isn’t occurring.  Often we mistake the silence of sprouting seeds beneath the soil as a lack of movement.  In actuality, the seeds of change have sprouted and are taking root.   Quietly, change is stretching its arms legs and waking.  We often throw away our practices before we have a chance to witness the fruits of our labor.  It takes two, sometime three seasons for change to mature and bare fruit.

Envision change as a matryoshka doll, a Russian nesting doll.  It begins deep inside of as an intention, as a spark.  This is the smallest doll in the center.  As we nurture that idea and develop practices around change, the doll grows larger.  Slowly over time change grows from the inside out.  When the roots are strong and the practices are consistent, old habits are shed like a snake skin.  The outer self falls away and we are left standing, embodied with change.  Change occurs from the inside out.

Under our skin and between our bones, muscles, and organs is space.  The capillaries slowly leak water from the bloodstream like a garden hose with tiny holes that has been buried under the soil.  The vessels are porous and water seeps out from the bloodstream, irrigating the Interstitial Space. This water of life is made of  the water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breath, the chemical messengers we release from emotions and hormones and lastly our immune response.  All of these ingredients float in an aquarium under skin down to our bones.

The air we breath, the water we drink and the food we eat is fed by the blood stream into the aquarium.  The emotions we experience are the spices that flavor that soup.  Our cells drink this soup to repair and regrow new cells, to manifest our new self.  The quality and  balance of all that we put in our aquarium represents the foundation of what we become.

Changes happen from within.  Like a Russian Nesting Doll, the smallest inner child expands to the next size until you become the seeds you planted, until you become your practices.  You are what you eat, drink, breath and experience. Set clear intentions.  Garden your self.  Plant new seeds and become the change you practice.

 

Recently, Jacob Kyle of Embodied Philosophy & Chitheads Podcast was kind of enough to interview me. We discussed the history of medicine and the development of physical medicine as well as our role supporting that community.

Pain & the Present

Pain may be one of the most misunderstood feelings that we experience as humans and rightfully so.  In the coming weeks, we will explore the range of importance that pain plays in our lives.

What is Pain?  Though there are many ways to define it, I’d like to ponder a simple idea.  Pain is sensation. Its our body’s way of communicating from the unconscious self to the conscious self.  Once conscious of the sensations and pain, we are thrust into the present moment.

Pain is the conversation your body has with you in the moment to share its limitations or injuries.  It tells of the boundary between movements that are safe and unsafe.  Pain shows us injury and where we are in need of immediate attention.  It tells us if we have gone too far, if we need to slow down, if we need to stop entirely.  Often, we avoid it.  We move to get out of pain,  change our shape or compensate to avoid the loud sensations accompanying it.  I invite you to pause and listen to what your pains are telling you.

Life often presents us with opportunities to stop.  Sometimes we are forced to take pause because of some traumatic incident or an accident.  The traumas are loud and are heard immediately.  Sometimes life whispers warnings, offering us more subtle information and choices that emerge with them.  When transitioning too quickly through life, those warnings go unheeded. They then accumulate and we are forced to refocus, to manage the moments at hand.  Pain works similarly.  Minute warnings in the form of abnormal sensations can occur consistently .  Our consciousness grows tired of their constant nagging and ignores them; forcing them into the back ground of our unconscious.  We become desensitized to the low grade pains.  As we become deaf to the whispers and ignore these clear boundaries in our body, we travel down a path toward repetitive strain injury.  Repetitive strain injuries then graduate from low grade consistent pain to loud pain.

Repetitive strain injury are traumas that develop in the muscles, fascia, joints, bones or nerves as a result of over use of the body in irregular ways.  The ignored whispers from these minor communications that accumulate can emerge as traumas or injuries.  We then say things like, “I slept on my neck wrong” or “I turned around too fast.”  In reality, these are minor repetitive strains were finally accompanied by the straw that broke the camels back.  Thats when the loud acute pain takes over.

When we develop a practice of listening to pains and sensations, no matter what volume they are spoken, we can learn the language of our bodies.  Pain and sensation are the communications of the unconscious self to our conscious self.  They are asking us to pay attention.  They are offering us a clear path to the present moment.  Pain & sensation and the language they speak can become our greatest teacher. They can offer us a clear path toward healing and health as it relates to our physical form.  By paying attention in the moment, we hear the communications of our body.  With understanding and guidance we can interpret those messages in order to facilitate our bodies natural healing processes.

For example, often folks tell me about the pain they carry in their superior angle of the shoulder blade.  It will hurt a little from time to time and then flare up intensely.  They will ignore it and continue on with their life.  Often patterns of pain like this can emerge with too much computer or smart phone use.  But it doesn’t stop us from using our devices in an inefficient way.  Then one day we wake up with a kink in our neck, a severe pain that prevents us from accessing our normal range of motion.  And we attribute this injury to ‘sleeping on it wrong’ or ‘not my usual pillow.’  When in truth, this pattern has been mounting for weeks, months or sometimes longer and that nights sleep was the straw that broke the camels back.  The repetitive strain injury became loud and acute due to an event but the injury itself was growing quietly with minor pains or communications from your nervous system telling you to make a change.  (Learning how to listen and interpret these communications will be a topic for another “Musing” or you can check my teaching schedule.  See you in class.)

Our spiritual practices often invite us to form a relationship to the eternal present moment – “the now”  Our minds are easily distracted.  The language of our bodies can be  lost in similar distractions.  But the whispers and screams that pain delivers can not to be ignored.  The language of our body offers us an opportunity to reorient to the present moment like no other feeling.  It will guide us toward understanding the capabilities of our form and the most functional ways to facilitate healing and health.

Follow me next week as we further explore What is Pain? Coming, Going and Storage