Tension, Pain, Thinking – What Is The Link?

Are pain and tension linked to thinking? How? Do we experience physical pain more than mental emotional pain? Is limited body movement and limited thinking inevitable as we age? Which comes first, the body’s lack of flexibility or fixed and limited thinking? Is rigid body and thought pattern a sign of aging? How much of our physical and mental deterioration is our stuck thinking based on childhood belief and expectation? Do you ever ponder these questions?

These are the kind of questions you may not ask yourself until your body is in pain. Then the questions come unbidden. What have I done? How bad is the damage? Am I getting old? Can this be fixed? What do I do to fix it?

So, what do you need to know about your body and aches and pains to stay healthy and to repair readily when there is a mishap, overload or accident? How can you avoid a recurrence of the pain? What do you need to know?

Habits Serve and Shape Us
All of us have habits that serve us well and other habits that get us into trouble or limit our progress. These habits will shape our body, our thinking, our health, our relationships, our joys and our distresses. How can we increase the life enhancing habits and identify and reduce or eliminate the life sapping habits?

Teaching kinesiology and stress managing skills I interact with people of all ages. Some are dealing with young children and want safe and simple techniques to help them. Some are looking to change career or add to their existing health care training. Some have had a health wake-up call and want to make changes. Some are curious about how the body works and want be more aware of the best ways to improve energy and health or to stay healthy as they age. Many are interested in how their thinking influences their body function.

Habits Grow With Us
As we grow older our habitual thoughts and emotions make their stamp more and more visible on the shape of our muscles, our posture, walking gait and range of flexibility in movement. How does this happen?

As a baby, a toddler, a youngster we were curious, instinctively experimented, reached for anything new on our horizon, till we became familiar with what was constantly in our home world. This became our comfort zone, a place to retreat to when outer world was too difficult, too demanding, or too stressful.

In familiar territory we didn’t need to make an effort to master something new. We could switch off, relax, zone out, and do only what was comfortable. Our comfort zone is a useful place to rest and recuperate in but once recovered, got our second wind, we need to venture out again and engage in the unfamiliar, the difficult, the new, to stimulate and expand our ability and capacity. This is our life journey of self-discovery and self development. Along the way we learned to recognize stress and tension.

We Know More Than We Realize
Have you ever looked at a person and thought, “he/she is tense,” even before you spoke with the person. What made you recognize and use the work “tense?” We are often good at reading body language. It’s not an intellectual process but an immediate and instinctive assessment of a person’s current state. We know the signs even if we can’t articulate them.

Chronic anxiety for example, wreaks havoc with muscle tone, tensing muscles not for movement or work activity, but as a reflex to the anxious thoughts. We tighten muscles of the body to create a hard shield against the world, against fear of emotional pain, “holding our self together” physically, in an effort to counter or avoid the emotional “melt down” or to prevent “falling apart”.

Our Language Reveals Our Knowing
The common expressions in our language are metaphors highlighting just how familiar this experience is for many of us, either living in anxiety our self or recognizing it in others. Chronic anxiety can set our body tone and over time becomes our habit and our norm to the degree that when our muscles are not tense we “don’t feel our self”. It becomes part of our internal feedback system and self-image and we only recognize self through the anxiety produced body posture, tension, aches and pains.

Our entire history is progressively recorded in our muscles. Each stage of development of physical and mental habits is the foundation for further postural habits that reflect the impact of life events and how we coped.

As the years go by the stress patterns bow us, bind us, trap us in degenerative habits within ever narrower ranges of comfortable activity. We avoid what is not comfortable, what stretches our capacity because it’s uncomfortable. With narrower ranges of extension and flexibility we lose power and strength and become narrower in our range of thinking and effort and connection with our outer world.

Awareness Opens Solution Options
Without awareness of this process happening we make no attempt to slow, stop or reverse this linked mental and physical decline. Releasing the limited muscle range can also release the mind’s range of thought, allowing for new mental exploration, for creative invention, and shifting our view to new or different possibilities to engage in for fun or interest or other benefit.

Various styles of hands-on bodywork like massage and kinesiology address the body/mind habitual patterns, releasing stress held in the physical tissues caused by our challenges, anxieties and fears. Bodywork is not just physical, it also moves the stuck energy patterns and supports the release of body/mind tension.

Regular Body Care
A regular appointment for de-stressing the physical and mental/emotional body accumulations is anti aging and health and energy preserving. Regular muscle and energy rebalancing prevents habits becoming dis-ease. As your body loosens under the influence of caring hands so does your thinking and your interest and choice of activities that you can include in your life regularly.

Attend a workshop in Touch For Health Kinesiology to learn safe and effective stress reducing skills for tension, pain and thinking. Your health and life can become better with Touch For Health Kinesiology.

Holistic Approach for Holistic Health

It’s happening. What has been so obvious to natural therapy practitioners all along, the essential need take a holistic approach for holistic health, of treating the person and the body as a whole, is progressively being acknowledged and validated by universities, scientists and researchers. Health comes with respect for the whole person, the physical, biochemical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects, and better education to understand and meet needs holistically.

Medical interventions have focused on symptoms and block those with drugs, and they see detrimental side effects as an acceptable payoff, which they countered with further drugs. This does not create a healthy population, just drug dependant people. Side effects of multiple drugs are creating as many problems as they relieve. There is no possibility of cure or wellness in this.

Lifestyle diseases remain the leading cause of death in Australia. These are the diseases that are largely preventable by changing lifestyle factors. Australian Bureau of Statistics lists heart disease as the most prevalent, followed by strokes. Diabetes 2 has increased dramatically, and liver disease is climbing the ranks as cause of death.

Research is showing some cancers too are related to life style. Smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer. Poor diet is associated with bowel cancer. High blood pressure increases chance of heart attacks, stroke, and kidney disease. Being obese doubles your chances of developing all these diseases. Excessive alcohol consumption is leading cause of liver disease. The list goes on. Lifestyle diseases are on the increase world-wide.

I read, “The University of Sydney’s new centre will deliver coordinated education and research in basic sciences, biomedical sciences, nutrition and exercise science, coupled with clinical and community studies.
”

The University of Sydney is taking a more holistic approach for holistic health insights, and acknowledges, “Environmental, social, economic, and behavioural factors are all involved in the increasing prevalence of lifestyle diseases, all against a background of biologic mechanisms and genetic susceptibilities.” This is quoted from the website of University of Sydney.

As human beings it is essential we to take a holistic approach for holistic health, and take care of all health issues by integrating knowledge from all areas of understanding, traditional and modern. Scientists are providing more and more research to prove what we logically and instinctively already know and that natural therapies have always encouraged.

The physical body is designed for movement and functions at its best when we exercise, and it willingly responds with increased circulation and oxygen uptake, and increased muscle tone and mass, and increased physical fitness. Exercise enhances mental fitness too.
The biochemical body thrives on nourishing food, including water, with abundant energy at cell level for organ function and increased sense of wellbeing.

Holistic Approach for Holistic Health
Just exercising and eating well is not enough without also including how we think and feel. We also need to care for the mental, emotional and spiritual body. The brain generously builds brand new neural networks when we engage in new interests, in new learning of any kind, and effectively maintains the networks we actively engage regularly. Brain networks fall apart, actually disintegrate, when they are not stimulated by regular activation. Use it or lose it is a fact, not just a game with words.

Emotionally satisfying relationships in our personal world and our work world, with family, friends and colleagues, are essential to our emotional wellbeing. A life of meaning and opportunity to contribute our strengths, skills, knowledge, insights and energy is a basic emotional and spiritual need.

We know that constant, unrelieved stress is energy sapping and soul destroying. It squeezes the life out of our dreams and de-motivates and de-presses. Stress relieving strategies are important in our tool box for daily life.
(see links to previous articles giving stress reducing strategies at end of article)

The Emotional Body
Learn to communicate with your important people, your spouse, siblings, children, and extended family in a way that nurtures relationships. Become fascinated by how different we all are, even coming from the same parents and raised in the same environment. Discover the strengths in each person and explore what each holds dear. Doing a course like The Dynamic Communication Program can introduce you to ways to see and understand the world through your own eyes and through the eyes of those your value.

Socialize to keep your emotional brain healthy. We are designed to interact with our own species. Interacting with people opens doors to new experiences, fresh ideas, and different worlds. This builds new brain networks as face-to-face discussions and connections link parts of the brain and touch the heart in very special ways.

There is an energy exchange that can boost your wellbeing in ways a text message or email cannot. This is already showing up now as a lack of empathy and compassion in our up-coming generation of computer and mobile obsessed youngsters. Reduced focus of learning with and through others allows disregard for their impact on others wellbeing. This disregard leads to bullying, physical aggression, to criminal activity, and harm to others property. Only people with no interest, concern, or regard for others, no feeling of connection to others, can deliberately harm another. Socializing, sharing interests, being a part of interacting circles keeps us aware and mindful of behaviours and the ongoing impact. Only self centered, unconnected people can plot to cause distress.

The Mental Body
Learn something new. Take up a sport, learn to play a musical instrument, plan a trip where you will be exposed to new language and customs, learn the language basics. Learn a craft. Start tracing your family tree. Get curious and explore something new.
All these will build new brain networks ands stimulate new brain cell production. Your brain does regularly birth new cells, but with no new activity they have nowhere to belong. With no “family” to include them, to train them for a task and include them in an active circuit, they die. (see links at end to my articles on new brain cells)

Relax and rejuvenate – breathe, meditate, spin and weave, do pottery, paint, garden, sing, walk, dance – all reduce stress, change gear, shift thought patterns, quieten the Left brain chatter and allow the Right brain to dominate for a little while. Peace lives in the right brain.
Words live in left brain hemisphere so when you shift to right brain focus you find greater awareness of colours, shapes, textures, patterns, rhythms, relationships, connections, within your self and with nature. Enjoy and absorb the right brain experience. If you are engaged in brain chatter, self talk, you are engaging in Left brain.

Singing will engage more R brain, toning, singing non-word sounds, puts you further into Right Brain. Here is where you experience peace, joy, belonging in a world of vibrational energy, in sync with self and your world, present in the moment.

You Can Do It
You are not doomed to dis-ease nor do you have to “lose your marbles”. You can honour the amazing service your body and brain provide, and keep all your marbles and even add to them.

Take a holistic approach for holistic health. To enhance and maintain wellness of body and soul: exercise to improve circulation, breathe, drink water, be grateful, eat colourful foods, communicate and connect with family, socialize, learn something new, relax and rejuvenate, exercise, sleep and let your body recover from the day’s wear and tear.

You can do it. Create and live a holistic wellness life style.
Cheers
Anna

PS.
See http://annamcrobertblog.com/?p=118 Stress Release Process
and http://annamcrobertblog.com/?p=336 Shift Your Focus
See http://annamcrobertblog.com/?p=271 New Brain Cells On Demand
and http://annamcrobertblog.com/?p=278 Exercise Rescues Baby Brain Cells

Muscles – How They Work

A friends daughter has just given birth to her first child. As you can imagine there is much joy and delight for the families of both parents of this new being. This wonderful event has drawn my attention to muscles, and how they work.

Looking at and holding a new baby I am in awe of how quickly this tiny, soft bundle will go from no voluntary muscle control to, in 12 months or so, be crawling, balancing, toddling, all to the joyful encouragement of anyone on the scene. This child will also begin eating and drinking without assistance, turning pages in story books, attempting to put on shoes and items of clothing and mimicking what the “big people” are doing, all in the first year pr two.

All this physical activity is dependant on muscles. Without control of the voluntary muscles of our body we would be as helpless as that new-born baby.

Babies have their muscles in place at birth but these have too little tone for specific activity as yet. While in the womb there was no need for muscle tone as the environment was fluid, there was nowhere to go and nothing to do but let nature take its course over a nine-month period.

This is the real miracle to me – how a cell can be fertilized and begin to divide into two cells, four cells, eight cells and continue to follow a blueprint over nine months to grow into a whole baby.

And once born this baby will have to learn to live under the pressure of our atmosphere, a very different demand from in the womb. That very demand will develop tone in muscles till this little one can “find its feet”, stand up, toddle, walk and then run.

Muscle Is Remarkable Tissue
Muscles make up 70 to 85% of your body weight, depending on your physique and fitness level. Muscle fibres have the unique ability to contract and release, shorten and lengthen, and are responsible for almost all movement in and by the body.
Some muscles are classed as voluntary muscles. They are the ones we activate when we to cook dinner, draw up a plan, create a garden, use our computer, hug those we love, go for a walk or swim. These are the ones we can overwork at the gym or strain when lifting the groceries out of the car boot.

Other muscles are classed as involuntary muscles. They activate our visceral organs and keep them working as needed without requiring our conscious input. These muscles keep food moving through our digestive system, allow us to breathe in and out, and move waste material to the bladder and bowel ready to eliminate, among many other tasks that we mostly don’t think about.
Muscles are the most metabolically active tissue in the body and use most of the oxygen and food we provide. Muscle tone, or lack of, defines our shape and physical activity, provides stability for our joints, keep bones in place, is the source of our physical strength and influences our sense of power.

Our skeleton is held together and erect by muscles attached by tendons, ligaments and other connective tissues. It’s not the skeleton that holds us up. Without muscles doing their job we would be like a collapsed bag of disjointed bones.

Muscles work in groups with a prime mover doing the most to create a particular movement, in concert with synergists or helpers, stabilizers and bracers, and antagonists that release as the prime mover activates, to produce graceful, smooth, efficient movement.

“Any contraction in one part will necessitate lengthening in other parts, so that the entire musculature must always utilize many of the different directions of pull afforded by the arrangements of its fibres and many of the cables and levers provided by the tendons and the bones in order to execute any single change of shape,” writes Deane Juhan in Job’s Body.

In other words, any movement is not isolated to one area but engages the entire body’s muscles and connectors in greater or lesser adjustments to achieve change in body posture or movement. All your body muscles and their attachments are constantly communicating with each other and working as a single, united, synchronized whole.

This is why piece meal work on a muscle misses the point in terms of reducing pain and creating betterment in balance and co-ordination, as an isolated area of change needs to be integrated with the whole body awareness. The body operates as a whole and all upgrades need to include the whole muscle support system, not just a part. That’s what makes the Touch For Health Kinesiology muscle and energy balancing procedures so effective. You balance the whole body for every issue or stress.

Muscle Response Testing
Muscle tone and muscle responsiveness is responsible for normal posture, gestures and general movement. And it is this responsiveness of muscles that we look for and monitor in Kinesiology muscle response testing. We are testing this ability of the muscle to respond and hold its position in response to the gentle test pressure that is applied gradually to engage the lock mechanism. I train my students to feel and recognize this response in muscles. It is far more gentle and subtle than power or strength testing and avoids causing unnecessary strain.

The muscles ability to respond in this way to subtle testing indicates the conditions internally are available for the body to communicate effectively via the nervous system for efficient function and to give immediate feedback. When conditions are unfavourable the muscle effectiveness is reduced and the muscle does not fully lock and has to work much harder and recruit other muscles to do its job.
Actually, every thought can change the conditions for efficient muscle response by raising or dropping the energy flow according to the quality of each thought.

Do This
Close your eyes and hold your arm out to the side at shoulder level.
Now recall a time you were having fun. It might be the last time you were at the beach, or hiking in the hills, or sailing, or fishing, or pottering in the garden. Hold that thought for a bit and note how your arm feels.
Change your thought. Recall a time you were annoyed, fed up, despondent or anxious. Hold that thought for a bit and note how your arm feels.

Shift from the pleasant or fun thought to opposite thought a few times, waiting for a few seconds at each change to tune in and note the feel of your arm.

What you are likely to notice is that as you think of the “fun” time your arm feels lighter, easier to maintain, and when you shift to a “no fun” thought your arm feels heavier. That is your arm muscle, middle deltoid, demonstrating that you need more effort to hold out your arm for a “no fun” thought because your energy level to the muscle doing the job out just dropped.

Your habitual thinking can make you feel lighter or heavier, increase your energy or decrease it. Every thought has a muscle and energy pattern.

In everyday life muscles under constant strain can become overloaded and complain by causing pain. Muscles can also become underactive through congestion of accumulated waste products, or due to lack of fresh oxygen and nutrients to support cell action, or due to reduced energy availability.

The range of contraction and release will govern flexibility in movement. Reduced flexibility and use of muscles response will make us feel old and weak. “Some of the most tangible and troublesome features of age itself are simple conditions of muscular activity … that create all kinds of limitations to movement and that waste precious vitality,” says Deane Juhan in his book Job’s Body.

Muscles and how they work reflects how we think habitually. Constantly focused on energy sapping thoughts will drop body vitality and reduce muscle activity, creating a continuous downward spiral in health and energy.

Rigid muscles often reflect rigid habits and rigid thoughts that become more obvious as we age. Restoring muscle responsiveness to structural muscles returns power to the muscles, increases circulation and energy flow, revives flagging spirits and uplifts motivation and interest to a more youthful functional age – thank goodness.

Kinesiology muscle balancing brings holistic change to body, mind and spirit.
Cheers
Anna

How Body Patterns Can Program Your Thinking

It’s not surprising our body gets out of balance regularly – because we do not use our body symmetrically. And the hidden effect is that your body patterns can program your thinking and left and right brain communication.

Each of us is either left or right handed and left or right foot dominant. This will predispose us to favour activity initiated by one arm and one leg, putting more demand on that shoulder and hip and the teams of muscles throughout the body that work with our dominant pair. Lifting, carrying, pulling, writing, kicking, digging, climbing stairs, whatever, we will tend to rely more on our dominant arm and shoulder and on our dominant leg and hip.

Even getting out of a chair, or walking to the letter box, doing the shopping, mowing the lawn, all the various activities at home or at work, we will “put our best foot forward” with greater demand on one side compared with the other. Little by little it leaves its mark.

Brain Activity
This lack of symmetrical physical activity in turn activates more of one half of our brain than the other, one of the influences that creates a dominant brain reference in our thinking as well.

To shift thoughts something as simple as using the non-dominant hand for gesturing, and putting more weight on our less dominant leg, can facilitate access to another perspective, another range of possibility in mental activity, another way of doing things. Our thinking and our body movements and posture are closely linked.

What is Ideal
There is no static ideal of body balance in life but a fluid unique way of moving for each of us that reflects our flow of energy and our ability to handle life’s events and recover from the stresses we personally experience. Stresses will register in both the tension and in the lack of tone in muscles.

If stress is not released the evidence in our muscles of further stressful events builds on each previous layer till they “weigh us down”, muscles give up under the load, till shoulders droop and the spine curves, clearly showing the burden is too much to carry. Or the reverse happens. The muscles get tighter and more rigid showing the strain of carrying on under duress. Eventually the joints become stiff and unyielding, our muscle range limited, as is our activity in life. We can look and feel old long before our chronological age says we are.

We are designed for movement, and the more varied our movements the more variety we create in out thinking and solutions to the myriad life challenges we encounter in our time. Challenge and change provide the opportunity to continually adapt, extending our emotional, mental and physical range, and provide the means of escaping the gradually increasing fixations of spine and posture, of thought and emotions. We can slow the down hill deterioration, plateau out, and then continue to increase life enhancing activity to improve health and resilience at any age.

Keep Moving
Life keeps happening and we will either rise to challenges, build knowledge, ability and strengths and deal with the challenges, or we will hunker down, shield ourselves, withdraw from the challenge, ignore it or push it away. And it will show in our general posture, our muscles, our range of movement, our attitude, thinking and problem handling capacity.

Take Charge
Take charge and be kind to your body. It is your instrument for playing your part on this planet. Regular health and body maintenance, regular attention to tone of muscles, releasing overworking tight areas and stimulating under working areas, is anti aging maintenance that brings short and long term health benefits. Maintenance can effectively rebalance tissues before stiffness becomes debilitating, before pain becomes chronic, before we become one eyed or lop sided in how we go through our experience of life.

TFH Kinesiology muscle response testing easily and readily identifies the particular emotion held in a specific muscle that is too tight and painful or too flaccid and unresponsive.

Applying TFH Kinesiology stress release techniques and balancing procedures change the energy concentration, drawing off excess energy from the over working muscles and redistributing to the under active muscles by stimulating their uptake capacity. The resulting postural changes reflect in more balanced thinking and reduced stress levels.
New body patterns can program new thinking.
Cheers
Anna

Walking Benefits Body and Brain, Heart and Soul

Walking benefits the body and brain, the heart and soul. Walking is often quoted as a health giving and life affirming activity that is available to us all every day of the year. And yes, it does our heart and lungs a heap of good, it strengthens our leg muscles and lifts our mood. Walking helps to keep blood sugars in balance and gets us out of enclosed environments where the air pollution and electronic pollution is high. Depending where you live in the world today you can often find that inside homes and work places the air can be more polluted than outside with the traffic. That’s scary.

But there is more to learn about walking. Research is continuing to provide statistics and specific answers to questions like how does walking effect weight loss, energy use, fitness level and health outcomes?

Two Scientists from University College London performed a meta-analysis of research published in peer-reviewed English-language journals from 1970 to 2007 . All 459,833 participants covered by the meta-analysis were free of cardiovascular disease when they enrolled in the 18 studies. Collating all the data the bottom line is that the meta-analysis makes a strong case for walking.

Tracking Walkers Over Years
In a group of 44,452 American male health professionals, who walked 30 minutes a day, the result was 18% lower risk for coronary artery disease. Among 72,488 female nurses, walking at least three hours a week was linked to a 35% lower risk of heart attack and cardiac death, and a 34% lower risk of stroke. These people were free of cardiovascular disease when they enrolled in the studies, and were tracked for 11 years to arrive at the results published.

A 10 year study of 229 postmenopausal women randomly assigned the volunteers to walk at least one mile a day or to continue normal activities. At the end of the trial, the walkers enjoyed an 82% lower risk of heart disease.

The benefits of walking went beyond just for the heart and arteries and implicates lack of exercise contributes to four of the leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes.

A study followed the lifestyle habits and health of 30,000 women over a 12 year period. It found women who walked one hour per day at least, and added one hour a week of gym or swimming, were 55% less likely to develop breast cancer. The research was conducted by Nagoya City University in Japan.

Walking each day can help Type 2 diabetes. Contracting muscles use up blood sugars helping to keep blood glucose at normal levels. A study by Dr Frank Booth showed 30 to 50% of all cases of Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and many cancers were prevented by 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise each day. He received Honor Awards for his work on why sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of 20 of the world’s most deadly chronic diseases.

Tracking People Needing Cardiac Rehabilitation
But what about people who already have heart issues, will they gain any benefits from walking? Randomized clinical trials of cardiac rehabilitation provided answers. 48 trials in 8,946 patients showed moderate exercise for 30 minutes three times a week produced 26% reduction in risk of death from heart disease and a 20% reduction in overall death rate.

As a guide:
– 80 steps a minute indicates a leisurely pace
– 100 steps a minute indicates a moderate to brisk pace
– 120 steps a minute indicates a fast pace.

How Fast Should You Walk?
According to Professor Brewer, University of Bedfordshire, “At slower speeds you’ll walk less efficiently which requires more energy to travel the same distance. But the health benefits of walking or running extend far beyond burning calories, to lowering cholesterol, blood pressure and much more.”

“Maximum benefits are felt when you’re walking at between 50 and 70 per cent of your maximum effort, meaning you can just maintain a staggered conversation.”
Apparently the speed you walk at is as good an indicator of how long you’ll live as your health history, smoking habits and blood pressure combined, USA researchers have found.

University of Pittsburg physiologists analyzed data of over 34,00 adults aged 65 and over. They found speeds of 2.6 feet per second were associated with average life expectancy. Those who walked 3.3 feet per second or faster had the highest survival rates and the greatest gains were seen in walkers aged over 75.

Walking Up Stairs
Even at a slow pace climbing stairs burns calories two to three times faster than walking briskly on the level. The Harvard Alumni Study found that men who average at least eight flights a day enjoy a 33% lower mortality rate than men who are sedentary. That’s better that walking 1.3 miles a day that lowers the death rate by 22%.

Stair climbing is twice as energy demanding as brisk walking on the level, and 50% harder than walking up a steep incline or even lifting weights in the gym.

Best Time To Walk
Walking is a great start to the day. It’s the least polluted time of day so you gain the most benefits and the cleanest air. Of course walking on the beach or along a bush track or through a park is better than walking the streets. Even so, avoiding main roads and winding through suburbs with their trees and gardens will do more good than walking on a treadmill in the gym.

Walking in the morning also increases your metabolism along with oxygen intake and sets up your body and brain for a productive day.
Gradually extend the distance you cover and as you become fitter pick up the pace. You will come home with a clear head, feeling refreshed and re-energized and ready to start your work day with enthusiasm.

Walking Benefits Heart and Soul
Not only does the physical heart benefit from walking, but so does the emotional heart. When heart broken, heavy hearted, wounded, shattered or torn apart, your metaphysical heart too, your psyche and your essence respond to walking. Our Australian native people, like many native people, knew to go walk-about to connect with the Earth and sacred places, to hear and feel the heart beat of our planet. They knew the places of healing to strengthen their physical, emotional, and spiritual being.

Our churches and places of worship are often built on energy lines, the energy meridians of the planet. When we walk into an area of special significance our soul responds. We absorb the tranquility and harmony nature provides to restore our own inner state. Walking, like a metronome, can be mesmeric, a moving meditation that calms the mind and allows the body to synchronize, and feel the Earth draw us into its rhythm and vibration. Walking is very healing.

Old and New Under Review
More than 2,400 years ago, Hippocrates said, “Walking is a man’s best medicine.”
And Charles Dickens said, “Walk to be healthy, walk to be happy.”
And today our modern day researchers and scientists are saying the same thing.

Walking is an excellent way to protect your health and slow down the aging process. And you can walk alone with your mind in meditation mode, with friends who share your interest in health and wellbeing, or with the family to set the example, bond through regular activity together, and build healthy habits.

Don’t underestimate the power of walking regularly. Walking is not high tech, or funky, or cool, or glamorous, or expensive, so may not always get the respect or limelight it deserves. But for its health benefits, its value as personal transportation, its role in recreation and its ready availability and adaptability to all ages and all fitness levels, it is an intrinsic and practical way to be at our best.

Walking benefits body and brain, heart and soul.
Cheers
Anna

Walking – 50 Benefits in 7 Categories

Walking has many benefits for the body and brain, heart and soul.
Below is a list of 50 benefits in 7 categories:
physical benefits, health benefits, nutritional benefits, emotional benefits, mental and creative benefits, electro-magnetic benefits, economic benefits, and more.

Physical Benefits:
– low impact form of exercise
– gentle on joints and your whole spine
– improves flexibility
– is a cross patterning movement to improve co-ordination
– start at own pace to match fitness level
– easy to control increase of intensity, distance and frequency
– stimulates body-brain communication
– improves recovery from injury and surgery
– resets muscle use after trauma
– integrates healed muscles into team work again
– improves fitness
– increases lung capacity
– builds spare capacity for emergency activity

Health Benefits:
– speeds healing
– good for cardiovascular fitness
– can assist in lowering blood pressure
– reduces cholesterol
– improves bone density
– reduces risk of osteoporosis
– improves sleeping patterns
– assists in weight loss
– increase energy
– strengthens your immune system
– reduces risk of cancer
– increases lymphatic clearance of cellular waste
– gets you outside regularly
– extends life

Nutritional Benefits:
– increases oxygen intake
– improves digestion and elimination
– better nutrient assimilation
– allows exposure to sunshine and vitamin D
– draws attention to need for hydration and increasing water intake

Emotional Benefits:
– lowers stress levels
– elevates mood
– releases feel good hormones as you walk
– settles the mind
– is meditative
– can be shared

Mental and Creative Benefits:
– stimulates left and right brain integration
– encourages whole brain thinking and creativity
– aids problem solving
– activates new brain cells
– builds brain circuits

Electro-Magnetic Benefits:
– barefoot on wet grass or wet sand is grounding
– barefoot will discharge build up of positive ions in body
– barefoot will absorb negative ions from the Earth’s field

Economic Benefits:
– very economical as is free, just get good walking shoes
– cheaper than any gym
– keeps you healthy so saves on medical bills
– is insurance for healthy later years

I totally believe if you appreciate and honour your body’s intelligence, do what keeps your body well, provide quality food as fuel and building material, and take charge of your thoughts, beliefs and expectations, your body can then be your willing and able servant all your years so you can have the life your choose and love the life you have.
Einstein explained, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” So keep walking.
Cheers
Anna

PS See Article: Walking Benefits Body & Brain, Heart & Soul http://annamcrobertblog.com/?p=349

Sudden Muscle Pain Solution

Have you ever had sudden muscle pain that seems to come out of the blue? Then this experience might sound familiar. You are sitting at your desk and reach out to your right side to select a book from the shelf beside you. That’s OK. You ease the book out from its position on the self, still leaning slightly and stretching to your right. It’s a bit awkward but you can’t wheel your chair closer as there are files on the floor blocking your way. You wriggle the book free and you lift it off the shelf. It’s a bit heavy and you feel a sudden twinge in your shoulder. The shoulder didn’t like that but the pain subsided as soon as you put the book on your desk.

After referring to what you needed in the book you again lean out to put the book back on the shelf, but this time the pain is stronger so you change your mind and leave the book on your desk. At the end of the day even picking up the book from your desk right in front of you creates twinges, and there’s tension in the back of the shoulder too.

Next day you are aware of shoulder twinges with the slightest moves, even without holding any extra weight in your hand. And it continues to get worse. In a few days the arm and shoulder ache, and tension has increased in your back, now the opposite hip is also complaining.

Your Own Experience
Now in your case it might not be reaching over to get a book. It could have been reaching back to pull the safety belt out to buckle up in your car seat. It could be reaching down to pull out a weed. It could be picking up the paper that fell on the floor or doing something you have done many times before, but this time it’s a slightly different angle or from an awkward position or while juggling other items or something similar – and bang! – there goes that sudden twinge or sharp pain telling you something is definitely wrong.

Let me ask you, did that particular movement cause the pain or was it the last straw? Or had you been sitting in the same position for hours before reaching out? Or were you thinking about something stressful and not paying attention to what you were lifting? Or did you have a hangover or your blood sugars were low, or you were too busy of late to eat well and had no time for exercise? Or had you been relying on coffee, tea or juice, even soft drinks to hydrate your body instead of water?

Hmmm! There are many possible causes for pain, and some relate specifically to shoulder area, or your neck or more the low back, or hip or knee in particular, or could involve several areas. Rarely is the cause right then and there. That would be an accident, wouldn’t it? But of course, when under any kind of stress we are all more accident prone anyway. So even an accident may have contributing factors that relate to your own lifestyle or state of awareness, or lack of, over time, culminating in that moment when pain suddenly fired off.

Get To The Cause
But whatever the cause, attending to and getting relief as soon as possible is important. And once the pain is reduced or even if it disappears, it is equally important to find the underlying cause and attend to that. This is the key that ensures the pattern that set off the pain in the first place is not repeated. Addressing the cause is the long-term solution that protects you from degenerating into patterns of recurring pain and ongoing suffering.

The immediate solution and long term solutions will naturally depend on the cause and the repercussions on the body as a whole. Researching the topic of pain and pain solutions you will quickly discover there are almost as many options for solutions as there are causes. Seeing a doctor for a diagnosis and any tests that could help is a start. Getting to the bottom of the cause and creating long-term solutions is not the expertise of doctors as this needs a holistic approach and most doctors limit their themselves to drugs and surgery.

Holistic Solutions
Attending to the obvious is rarely the long-term solution. For best results uncovering and re-balancing the causal factors on a physical, mental, emotional, nutritional and essential level will reinstate holistic equilibrium to the body, mind and spirit.

Kinesiology Identifies What is Needed
Kinesiology muscle response testing quickly sorts through the options to identify the priority for creating the best internal environment for healing to take place and ensure long term betterment. Your body knows what it needs to heal itself. Muscle response testing provides a way to “ask” the body what is necessary.

Some of it is common sense.
Do what it takes to help your body’s healing process:
– reduce stress and strain
– drink water to dilute and flush out waste and toxins
– provide repair material through your food choices
– add supplements and herbs as appropriate
– keep the body moving within the range of the situation
– ensure your circulation is well maintained to bring new supplies for new cells
– focus on improving oxygen levels with mindful breathing
– ensure adequate rest and sleep for the repair and replacement to happen
– stay positive and appreciate each step of the improvement as you recover
– be grateful that the body is designed to self heal
– review what to change so there is no repeat of the problem.

Would it surprise you to know most people don’t consider these basic common sense actions or are not even aware they can support their healing process?

Kinesiology muscle responds testing is an invaluable tool and will guide you to pin point the specifics within each of these “common sense” components for your body’s optimum healing level. You can test for how much water, which foods, best time to eat what, thoughts that lift and direct energy for repair – and create the best healing environment internally.

Muscle responds testing will also identify the specific emotions stirred up by your pain experience, how to rebalance the stress, and the insight to gain from this pain experience so you build your awareness and self-knowledge.

To help yourself stay pain free you do need a level of awareness, some knowledge and skills. What is it that helps you know whether to learn skills to resolve pain now, or soon? How do you go about deciding how much time and energy you will invest in learning about your health and pain recovery? What would it be like if you had the knowledge and strategies to double your energy and increase healing for your self – and for your children?

Touch For Health kinesiology can do much more that reduce your pain.

Are you interested? You might want to learn at least the basics of Kinesiology muscle response testing through Touch For Health workshops. Attending just two days of TFH 1 you will learn how to raise your energy to handle every day life with greater ease, be productive and still have energy to spare to enjoy your family. And you will have techniques and strategies at you fingertips to boost recovery from life’s mishaps as needed.

Imagine what would happen if you could muscle test which food was causing your child’s headache or tummy ache, or uncontrollable outbursts, or sleep disturbances. Or which foods would aid pain recovery. Or what if you could help with learning difficulties, your own as well as your child’s, would that make a difference? You’ll be amazed and delighted how you can go from feeling helpless to helpful with Touch For Health knowledge and skills at your finger tips. Muscle pain can happen suddenly. Learn what to do to quickly and safely reduce the pain and fully recover.

Register for Touch For Health 1 Workshop coming up on 4th & 5th February and begin your year on a positive note. See notice attached to your January News.
Cheers
Anna

Low Back Pain – the Physical Cause

Back pain is all too common. And the cause can be physical/structural, biochemical/nutritional or mental/emotional. According to statistics up to 80% of working age people will at some time experience low back pain and up to 90% of those cases the pain cannot be attributed to a specific illness or injury.

Research shows that up to 75% of people with back pain still have the problem one year later or it has recurred in one year. So it really pays to know what you can do to correct this debilitating issue. Lets explore the physical aspects first.

PHYSICAL Cause
You may associate back pain with lifting or carrying heavy items, or sitting too long in front of computers or TVs, or too much gardening, or poor posture. That may well be the case, but there are other contributors as well.

Muscles help each other quite naturally. In any situation when one muscle is struggling its neighbours will pitch in and help out, even though the angle is not exactly right for the helper muscles to take the whole strain. Over time the helper muscle or muscles can be over strained and can in turn become painful.

Pain is mostly associated with a tight muscle that will not or cannot let go. It may protecting an area that has been strained or hurt, or is working too hard to help a muscle that can’t do its share because it has not yet healed enough to be working again. There are further reasons for back pain.

Poor Muscle Tone
Your body is designed to engage in lots of varying movements on a regular basis, and when this happens muscles maintain their tone and capacity for activity. It’s a feedback loop system – what you use is maintained and strengthened.

Back pain can involve poor muscle tone over all with very little spare capacity for any extra physical demand making you susceptible to overtaxing your back support muscles all too easily. Even standing for longer than you are used to can lead to back pain if your posture muscles are inadequate.

Back pain can also involve specific muscle weakness such as slack belly muscles creating strain on low back muscles, a common occurrence. General posture, the way you sit, stand and walk, will often clearly show that some muscles are working too much and others too little.

Belly Hanging Out
When your abdominal muscles in the front of the body do not do their share of supporting the body’s upright stance, then that requires all the work to be done by the back muscles alone, leading to overload, tension and finally pain.

You may not even notice how tight the muscles are till the tension hits your pain threshold. A muscle can be 75% contracted for days, weeks, months, even years. You may recognize subconsciously it is a bit tight and restrict your range of movement to avoid feeling the tension, but you won’t experience pain till the muscle tension increases to 80% contracted or whatever your pain threshold is. Now the situation is obvious and you finally have to attend to the problem.

Women often develop back pain in later stages of pregnancy when their expanding belly forces them to change their posture to accommodate the extra size and weight in the front of their body. Their hormones specifically allow muscle tone to soften so the belly can expand as the baby develops in their womb.

A common postural change pregnant women will make is to take the upper body further back as a counter weight to the heavy belly out front. This shift compresses the low back area. The upper body is now too far back taking the head back with it, so the head is brought forward, sticking out like a turtle, resulting in neck tension and eventually pain here too.

The problem compounds as the normal gentle “s” shape of the spine (side view) becomes very exaggerated, compressing more on the inner curves in low back and neck and losing support and rounding more on the outer curve, rib cage and shoulder blade area. The knees are forced to lock back as a further compensation with other consequences.

Overweight people with a large belly will also take on a similar problematic posture with no tone in belly muscles, poor tone in mid and upper back, and over-toned tight muscles in the low back, often with matching neck compression.

When this is the case, no amount of medication, or herbs or supplements will make the abdominal muscles do their share of the work. The abdominal muscles need to be activated and strengthened to take on their share of supporting the body so specific back muscles can do less, thereby reducing the tension and pain. (See how to do that in separate article.)

Feet Turned Out
Muscles deeper within the body can create problems too. One example is the low back muscle designed to rotate the leg out. When it is too tight your feet point away from the midline of the body. This muscle, the psoas, is situated behind the internal organs of your belly, attached from the front of the spine and to the inner upper leg. The angle of the feet is a give away of the tension in this low back area caused by an over tight psoas muscle.

When standing each leg is held in position by muscles that rotate the leg inwards (medial rotation) and other muscles that rotate the leg outwards (lateral rotation). When these muscles have equal tone the leg is in a balanced position with the feet pointing straight ahead.

When an outward rotating muscle, like the psoas, is working harder than inward rotation muscles there is likely to be tension and pain in the low back because this outwardly rotating muscle is attached to the low back vertebrae. The vertebrae are being compressed, putting pressure on the nerves between these spinal bones.

One Hip Higher
Another muscle often involved in back pain is working when you bend sideways. It contracts to bring your shoulder towards your hip when you lean over to the side to scratch our outer knee. When this muscle is tighter on one side of the body, you may have the hip on the tighter side pulled up higher, or the whole upper body may lean a little to the tight side so your shoulders are tipping or not centered over your hips. This can certainly be a source of pain.

One Hip To the Front and One To The Back
As you reach back for your seat belt to pull it forward and across your body to buckle up in the car a series of muscles down one side of your spine contracts to allow you to twist while reaching back. If you only ever twist one way these muscles can become tighter that the other side and as a result when you stand up one hip can be more forward than the other. This can contribute to back pain.

There are more possible physical causes of back pain that may have been set off by lifting or carrying something heavy in an awkward way. But whether the pain is from long standing tension and postural imbalances or from a one off over straining activity, or some accident, finding how to reduce and eliminate the back pain becomes critical as quality of life deteriorates rapidly with constant pain.

So what are your options for being pain free once more? Please see the article “Solutions for Physical Back Pain.” Other causes for back pain will be covered shortly.

Cheers
Anna McRobert

Physical Solutions for Back Pain

There are solutions for low back pain. But first, to correct the problem and maintain long-term success, you need to know how to work with the body and not against it. Your body will always do the best it can under the circumstances you provide, so lets look at the physical side of back pain first.

Team Work
Muscle pain is rarely a one muscle problem. Muscles work in teams and every movement will have a prime mover, a leader in the action, with other team players supporting the movement. The opposite action muscles receive a signal to stop working. Muscles ideally respond to signals to switch on or off as needed.

When experiencing back pain, according to research published in The British Medical Journal, to keeping moving in spite of the pain is more helpful for long-term recovery. But just doing exercises only may not fix the problem. Exercise for the unprepared or unwilling muscle can actually make matters worse.

Activate slack muscles
If the under working muscles in the body are not receiving or sending a clear signal to the brain to be included in an exercise, then other muscles compensate automatically and the tension and pain problem can be compounded if you are not aware of what is happening and what to do.

When you use muscles regularly, the brain recognizes that activity as a request to keep those muscles in readiness, willing and able to respond as needed. When muscles are rarely used or used in a limited range with very little load, then the brain does not register these muscles as essential to your life work or life style. Muscles get attention by the brain when they are used and will lose tone rapidly when not part of your regular activity.

Muscles not used for a prolonged period, as when recovering from injury, may be dropped from the “working circuit” and will likely lose tone and muscle mass. They need to be reintroduced for the brain to reconsider how and when to include them in with other working muscles and gradually be given more duties as they rebuild and strengthen. The brain can and will build new circuitry or add to existing neural networks to do this. It’s quite amazing when you think about it.

If a muscle has been out of the working program for a while or the tone is very low, then exercises are difficult to perform and even a little effort can feel like a strain. Gently upgrading the working program in the brain with kinesiology techniques makes it easier to activate muscles so they can be exercised safely and appropriately. It speeds up building muscle mass too.

Kinesiology Solutions for Back Pain
In Kinesiology there are a variety of ways to deal with the physical cause of muscle pain. The Touch For Health style of kinesiology focuses on identifying and activating the under working muscles throughout the body first, so they can take up their share of the load and the overworking painful muscles can relax off and do less. The aim is to redistribute the demand on postural muscles and improve energy flow. This can often reduce back pain 60% if not more, just through a basic 14 or more extensive 42 muscle energy balance process.

Kinesiology correction techniques can bring immediate changes in muscles. Spinal Reflexes are applied when a muscles shows poor response on both left and right of the body. Poor activity on either left or right side only responds well to specific points that stimulate the lymphatic system to improve clearance of waste products in the muscle area. This reduces congestion and improves energy flow and the muscle becomes more responsive immediately.

Other points increase blood flow to the muscle. Running the meridian that supports a specific muscle may be required or activating cells within the muscle or in the attachments work well when the muscle has been over strained or damaged.
These are basic techniques that anyone can apply to reduce pain once they learn where the points are and the type of stimulation required.

Corrections Reduce Pain
In kinesiology the muscle response monitoring procedure can identify which muscle is under-working and which specific point or correction will reinstate the muscle responsiveness. The results are immediate and the point or points can be done at home to maintain the improvement till the body is able to maintain the improvement on its own.

Each muscle is preprogrammed to know its own job and to help out other muscles if they are failing or struggling. This is a natural compensating and supporting ability that we take for granted or don’t even recognize is happening, yet is essential for smooth and graceful as well as powerful use of your body muscles. It is a beautiful example of community work within the body.

As the body is holistic in its communications, in a TFH balance the whole system of meridian energy distribution for muscle use is checked, not just the muscles in the pain area. Rechecking the subjective pain level at the end of a muscle energy balance typically reveals reduced pain levels and a more relaxed and improved alignment of posture plus greater mobility.

Touch For Health Workshops
The body is very willing to respond to the caring touch that activates specific points which connect internal resources. Pain is a signal. This is your body’s language for something needing help and it responds to your specialized input.
There are other causes for back pain that I’ll cover separately.

You don’t have to feel helpless or stuck when wanting to reduce pain to feel better, look better and be better. Book in for a kinesiology balance and experience the impact of working with your body to gain the results you want.

Register for the next Touch For Health Workshop and discover the safe and simple techniques that can keep your back pain free and functioning efficiently and effectively, expanding your options for joyful activity at every age and stage of your life.
Cheers
Anna McRobert

How We Walk

How we walk can make a huge difference to how our brain works. As babies we crawled on all fours as preparation for balancing on our feet and walking. With every movement we programmed our brains, building networks to support walking to running to dancing to specialized sports movements. But these brain networks and how we walk prepared us for much than just walking.

I was reading about a kinesiologist who developed a tiny treadmill to help infants with Down Syndrome learn to balance themselves and walk earlier. “The idea is we want to support this underlying pattern of coordination in their legs, this alternating stepping,” Dr Ulrich said.

This article drew my attention to how readily we take for granted the ability to walk and balance on our feet as we need. We never think about how we walk.

Dr Ulrich said, “Once locomotion occurs, it really advances cognitive development, social skill development and language, so the sooner you get them (Down Syndome babies) walking, the sooner they can explore their environment.” Babies start their treadmill training as early as eight to ten months of age.

And this “cognitive development” in babies continues in us all as toddlers, children, teenagers, and adults. Walking does far more than just get you from A to B.

Walking Programs Your Brain For Learning
The rhythmic coordinated movement, alternating stepping out with one leg and the opposite arm and swapping smoothly and continuously, helps to integrate left and right brain as well as well as other specific brain areas. This brain coordination is essential for easy learning, not just for babies in their first year of life, but also for later in the classroom, in the home and in the office, right throughout life.

In Touch For Health Kinesiology workshops we activate the acupuncture points that help integrate the brain side to side, top to bottom and front to back. This is a 3D “switch on” of brain neurology in preparation for processing body/brain communication in the TFH muscle and energy balancing process.

In any new learning situation this 3D “switch on” of your brain is an excellent first step to arouse the brain and set in motion coordinated networks for whole brain learning. You program your brain for learning by walking as a littlie and continue to reinforce this learning set-up in the brain each time you walk with momentum, and especially if you do your 3D “switch on” first. (See article 3D Switch On for Your Brain)

How We Walk
When we walk we lift one foot at a time, which means we are momentarily balanced on the other leg. So a sense of three-dimensional balance is as important as the coordination.

As we walk one leg swings forward in front of the body from the hip, like a pendulum, till the heel makes contact with the ground. At the same time the back foot rolls from heel to toe with a push off action to propel the body forward till balanced over the front leg. Now the back leg can swing forward past its partner that is rolling from heel to toe and in turn pushing forward.

So one foot or the other is always in contact with the ground. This is a beautifully coordinated continuous double pendulum movement. When also coordinated with opposite arm swing moving forward can be almost effortless.

In fact, it takes far less effort to walk with continuous coordinated movement than to stop-start as in window shopping or browsing or doing the grocery shopping and stopping to pick up items and compare ingredients. Each time you stop it takes extra energy and effort on the part of your muscles to begin the movement forward again. It takes a lot more energy to walk like a tourist or a mum going the grocery shopping than to set up a steady pace and keep moving.

When I watch some of the elderly walking, I often notice they walk so slowly that each step forward is from a standing start, so every step is very energy demanding. There is no push off from the back leg to propel their body forward so instead their forward steps get smaller and smaller till they are shuffling.

Meridian Energy Stimulus
And of course, if you have done Touch For Health Workshops you will recognize that the elderly are missing out on the extra that happens as you walk with momentum too. Each muscle you use as you walk is also activating meridian energy flow to the internal organs and supporting their function for active health as well.

Chest muscles engage stomach and liver meridians, arm swing uses gall bladder and lung meridian energy, knee lift and swing forward uses small intestine energy, foot lift to place the heel uses bladder meridian, push off with the back foot activates adrenal energy and large intestine energy.

A slow walk will not stimulate the energy flow in the same way, so meridian energy can remain sluggish or stagnant as a result, and be a mirror of energy levels in the internal organ functions.

Touch For Health also provides a way to check the opposite arm/leg patterns needed and has a correction that ensures the upper and lower body muscles are coordinating effectively so your walking gait has maximum gain for least effort.

How we walk often changes when you attend Touch For Health workshops. You learn how to easily and readily improve your coordination, balance, and gait rhythm, so walking is easy, pleasurable, and uplifting. The natural side effects are better internal function and improved health too.
Cheers
Anna