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"The will does not interfere. It is held in abeyance. It receives and doesn’t demand." – psychologist Abraham Maslow (earlier Russian trainers were certainly aware of his work) Humanity enjoys operating on certain “common wisdoms” or unexamined assumptions that may not necessarily be true. For instance, 99% of the world “assumes” that the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening. The problem is, in relation to the earth the sun sits still; it’s we who do the rotating, all possible risqué innuendo aside. "The older dramatists found their fun in obscenity; the moderns employ innuendo, which made a great advance in decorum." – Aristotle In the world of music, hundreds of thousands of younger Americans mistakenly assume, to an isolationist degree, that American indie/alternative music, the kind heard on many college radio stations, is superior to its European counterparts. This is a perilous unexamined assumption, held to be the utter truth and subject to intense anger when pointed out, merely because the music industry has succeeded in erecting a Berlin Wall that prevents intelligent European music from penetrating America’s shores. "By simply not mentioning certain subjects ... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations." – Aldous Huxley The problem is, the European material is superior to the American variety by a factor of about two generations, leaving Americans where the music industry wants them – dumb, isolated, Gaga, stupid, excessively militaristic, and highly clueless and self-righteous about it to boot. "The real tragedy was that fifteen hadn’t been colored yet." – Steve Spurrier, NFL and college coach, regarding a fire at the Auburn University football dorm that destroyed 20 books In the world of the psyche, one of our prevailing unexamined assumptions is that compared to matters of “higher consciousness,” physical sensations are of a "lower order." To see this assumption in action, spend a few days in a university philosophy department. Naively, we think "we" exist primarily in our heads, said Rolf. "The heart feels, the head compares." – Chateaubriand (1768-1848), French novelist/diplomat "You're living in your own Private Idaho, underground like a wild potato." – The B-52s Another pitfall is that when we deny ourselves extended awareness of our body we withdraw upstairs, into our heads, and assume a more abstract, chimerical relationship to life. We start playing the game on paper, as pre-game analysts like to say; we stop playing it where it belongs, on the field. “A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusion.” – Alan Watts, Zen educator “The best game-plan in the world never blocked or tackled anybody.” – Vince Lombardi, head coach, Green Bay Packers "Coaches who can outline plays on a blackboard are a dime a dozen." – Vince Lombardi "No plan survives beyond contact with the enemy." – Helmuth von Moltke (1800-1891), Prussian field marshall "No one ever won the olive wreath with an impressive training diary." – Marty Liquori, middle distance runner and NBC Olympic commentator "Record the album after the tour." – Andrés Segovia, Spanish classical guitarist "A common mistake among those who work in sport is spending a disproportional amount of time on ‘x’s and o’s’ as compared to time spent learning about people." – Mike Krzyzewski, Duke University basketball “Charts are great for predicting the past.” – Peter Lynch, investor and author "A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world." – sign on desk of Louis Gerstner, former president of American Express "Cricket is full of theorists who can ruin your game in no time." – Ian Botham, English cricketer "The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance." – Leonardo da Vinci As one could imagine, the literature of bodywork, going back for at least three decades, is rather unanimous in asserting that consciousness exists not in the brain alone. Consciousness rather is a phenomena that permeates the entire body. Likewise, a growing train of thought in the literature of theology is beginning to assert that even spirituality exists at each and every level of the body (see Bio-Spirituality, 1985, by the Revs. Peter Campbell and Edwin McMahon SJ). Our job therefore is to help pull this stagnant and highly specious energy down from the clouds and into the entire body, off the charts and onto the field. “Great players do little things that don't show up on the scorecard.” – New York Yankee announcer John Sterling “The key blocks that pry a crack in the defense are almost always hidden in the hurly-burly at the line of scrimmage.” – Andy Robustelli, NFL hall-of-famer “Show me a team with high-scoring wings, and I’ll show you a (rugby) team with good centres.” – Sir Fred Allen, captain/coach of New Zealand’s All Blacks “Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.” – Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915), American essayist who went down with the Lusitania “The secret of all (military) victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.” – Oswald Spengler, German historian; also attributed to Marcus Aurelius As an example, says Ken Dychtwald (Bodymind), when we walk, most of us move from our chest, shoulders or head. We need instead to generate movement from the tan den, our center of gravity and body-mass, the purported seat of our soul. (More specifically, Dychtwald is referring to the lower tan den, beneath the navel, about the size of a golf ball.) To operate from this space we need to relax and lower our center of consciousness into this region. Dubitsky makes a similar point in his Bodywork Shiatsu, though he lost a few points when he tried to turn that particular phrase into a new modality. Most of us hold our bodies upright, he says, by contracting the muscles of the torso and shoulder girdle rather than by the legs. This method is inefficient, it wastes energy, and it disrupts the energetic flows as described by Reich. Gravity is now unable to flow through our energetic center, and finger pressure now requires more effort as though the body were a tough steak in need of tenderizing. (Most of us sit far too much, wreaking havoc upon our center of gravity.) Regarding some possible confusion between the tan den and the lower tan den, the tan den itself could refer to our center of gravity, whereas the lower tan den could reflect an awareness of our center of buoyancy. These two centers, particularly on a ship, are generally not the the same. “(Gravity) has guided the evolutionary destiny of every plant and animal species and has dictated the size and shape of our organs and limbs.” – Ralph Pelligra, director of medical research, NASA "We so organize the body that the gravity field can reinforce the body’s energy field.” – Ida Rolf The type of restricted movement that Dychtwald and Dubitsky describe is reminiscent of Reich’s “armoring” in the same region – chest, shoulders and head – indicative of an overly militaristic outlook on life, one that finds potential enemies under any stone. In the behavioral realm, a key indicator for this type of thwarted movement that emanates from the shoulders upward can be described as excessive use of willpower. Willpower is traditionally considered an admirable trait, but when stacked up against whole-body awareness it’s like putting the cart before the horse, though it's probably not a bad idea to put Descartes before a horse. The good philosopher can then lead that same horse to water, perhaps in an artesian well not contaminated by the great Cartesian mind/body dichotomy that got us into such a fine mess in the first place. Some scholars, by the way, describe this dichotomy/split/dualism as a "cleavage." We'll leave that term for the cleft points of the energetic ki system and we'll wonder aloud if those latter scholars were adequately breast-fed as infants. “A brain without a body could not think.” – Moshe Feldenkrais “We should realize, in a vivid and revolutionary sense, that we are not in our bodies but our bodies are in us.” – Ruth St. Denis, modern dance pioneer “Watching a child makes it obvious that the development of his mind comes through his movements.” – Maria Montessori, Italian physician/educator, 1870-1952 “The notion of any ‘relation’ between mind and body is absurd, because mental activity and living bodily activity are identical.” – Charles Samuel Myers, English physician/psychologist, 1873-1946 “Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into.” – Hardy, to Laurel Said Feldenkrais, willpower can mow down appropriate action like a lawn tractor. When we learn to eliminate extraneous action, however, willpower comes less and less into play (Awareness Through Movement). This concept is encapsulated in the Japanese word kime, a martial-arts practice known as "tightening the mind" so as to exclude extraneous, nonproductive thoughts. Feldenkrais adds that any action becomes easier to perform and the movement becomes lighter when the large muscles of the center of the body do the bulk of the work (core to periphery). “Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.” – Michelangelo “If the dance is right, there shouldn’t be a single superfluous movement.” – dance/acting icon Fred Astaire “Simplify, then add lightness.” – Colin Chapman, automotive design engineer (1928-1982) “The best skill at cards is knowing when to discard.” – Baltasar Gracián (1601-58), Spanish man of letters “It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.” – Johannes Brahms, German composer (1833-1897) “The Detroit String Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms won.” – Bennett Cerf, publisher/humorist (1898-1971) This outlook also emerged in the self-improvement literature of the 1940s, particularly in Florence Scovell Shinn’s mini-classic The Secret Door to Success: Constant striving without letting go implies an overconfidence (arrogance) in our own willpower (ego) and a lack of confidence in a Higher Power that's willing to guide us. “Never be overconfident because that will block your improvement.” – Tony Jaa, Thai martial artist, actor, Buddhist monk “Confidence is not required to win. You can win without it.” – sport psychologist Bill Cole “A general who has too presumptuous a confidence in his skills runs the risk of being grossly duped.” – Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, Instructions for His Generals, 1747 “Who makes timid requests invites denial.” – Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD) “Happiness hates the timid!” – playwright Eugene O’Neill “Touch a thistle timidly, and it pricks you. Grasp it boldly and its spines crumble.” – fleet admiral William Halsey, U.S. navy “Many stay a long time in purgatory who, although not great sinners, have lived tepidly.” – Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), mystic/visionary “The man gave me that weak, almost submissive look that some men have even when they are expressing the most imperious of orders.” – French author Catherine Millet “A shyness that is criminally vulgar.” – The Smiths, How Soon is Now, (1984) Prior to the publishing years of Shinn, the Frenchman Émile Coué developed his axiom known as the Law of Reversed Effect: Whenever there's a conflict between willpower and imagination, the imagination always wins. However, Coué did not denigrate the role of willpower altogether. He saw that when the will and the imagination are in alignment, they do not simply add to one another, they multiply one another (1+1=3 vs. 1+1=1.5), a mathematical variant on our definition of synergy and a good opening topic for Day One of visualization class. (Covey says we usually come up with 1.5 instead of 3, not far removed from Dostoyevsky's 2+2=5.) "When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning." – Albert Camus (Camus' assertion helps hone our definition of 'imagination', a word that can be used with different shades of meaning depending upon the writer and era. In this case, Camus suggests we need to experience our words as we use them, a type of real-time visualization.) “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” – Mark Twain “Intellect confuses intuition.” – Piet Mondrian, Dutch painter and abstract pioneer (1872-1944) “When ideas fail, words come in very handy.” – Goethe “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” – Robert Frost Dr. Benson (Beyond the Relaxation Response) adds a slightly clinical perspective: When attempting to solve an entrenched problem, the overactive use of willpower activates the sympathetic (stress-preparation) nervous system and in turn may aggravate the situation rather than improve it. We're now bringing the pre-existing condition described on this page as excessive sway onto the playing field, as the body will attempt to self-correct the imbalance. "Physics has found no straight lines. Instead, the physical universe consists only of waves, undulating back and forth, allowing for corrections and balance." – Buckminster Fuller (The massage of the future will consist of easing the body into a state of receptivity to this fundamental physical reality.) Dr. Maxwell “PsychoCybernetics” Maltz offered his take: When we see a goal clearly in our mind, our creative "success mechanism" takes over and does the job much better than we could do by conscious effort or sheer "willpower." We need to ratchet down the strain and effort, as does a superior helmsman, known in Greek as a 'cybernitos'. "I know it was wonderful, but I don’t know how I did it." – Sir Lawrence Olivier, after a particularly brilliant performance of Othello, a moment in time expressed by the French word éclat "Invention is totally independent of the will." – British painter Benjamin Haydon (1786-1846) To create visualization forcefully, it works to unwind the body totally. We then chip away at failed behavior patterns not by willpower but by seeing that they don't work. If a phonograph (CD player) is playing music we don't like, we don't kick the machine around. Nor will effort and willpower help. We just change the disc or delete the file (recontextualize the situation). "Mistakes (and breakdowns) are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary ... understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate (surmount/recontextualize) them." – painter Salvador Dalí "I never learned a thing from a tournament I won." – golf icon Bobby Jones "Winning is not always the barometer of getting better." – golfer Tiger Woods "It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was onto something." – jazz composer Ornette Coleman, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer for music "So go on and play, and if you make a mistake, make it loud so you won't make it next time." – jazz drummer Art Blakey, member of the Modern Drummer hall of fame "I don’t have any problems in life – just situations." – Evel Knievel, daredevil motorcycle jumper "Adversity comes with instruction in his hand." – Welsh proverb "When a learned man errs he makes a learned error." – Arab proverb "It'll be the news...in Welsh!" – Victor Spinetti, A Hard Day's Night, upon learning that Ringo was missing Among recognized professionals in the field of sports psychology, one of the few to seemingly embrace and promote the Maltz approach is Lars-Eric Unestahl of Sweden. Working internationally at the Olympic level, particularly in skiing, Unestahl helps athletes achieve a deeply relaxed state before goal setting. He calls it "hypnotic goal programming." Note that many of us spend most of our lives in a state that approaches hypnotism, taking our cultural cues from the dictates and agendas of mass media. To this end, Maltz reminds us that physical relaxation plays a key role in the dehypnotization process, helping to move us up the bio-social ladder a couple rungs above the level of lemming. "It is unbecoming for a cardinal to ski badly." – future pope John Paul II, asked whether a cardinal should be skiing To reiterate: Achieving a higher level of performance is less a matter of willpower or additional effort emanating mostly from the thinking processes of the head. Rather it's a function of relaxing, directing energy downward, and letting go of any preoccupation with the goal, which is anti-precessional. "You decide you’ll wait for your pitch. Then, as the ball starts toward the plate you think about your stance; and then you think about your swing; and then you realize the ball that went past you for a strike was your pitch." – Bobby Murcer, New York Yankees "Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her." – Orison Swett Marden (1848-1924), founder of Success magazine "When opportunity comes, it’s too late to prepare." – John Wooden, basketball coach, UCLA "Wait-wait-wait and then quick-quick-quick." – iconic slugger Ted Williams on hitting "Achilles, though invulnerable, never went into battle but completely armed." – Lord Chesterfield, 1753 Garfield has interviewed a considerable number of top-flight athletes who concur that peak performance is not a run-of-the-mill, everyday, pedestrian act of will. Something much deeper is required, free of the anger, self-deception and misguided motivations the mere mind provides. "Where there is no internal scar, there is no external evil." – Japanese proverb "On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long." – grandmaster Emanuel Lasker of Germany (1868-1941) "Nothing fools you better than the lie you tell yourself." – Teller (magician) "Our capacity for self-deception has no known limits." – philosopher Michael Novak "If you put a ‘d’ in front of ‘anger’ you get ‘danger!’ In poker, the two are synonymous." – Bobby Baldwin, Tales Out of Tulsa, 1984 "Anger always thinks it has power beyond its power." – Publilius Syrus, first century BC "In anger we should refrain from both speech and action." – Pythagoras (6th to 5th century BC) D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966), the premier Japanese proponent of Zen thought for the West, says intellect (mind) tries to step in and ‘murder’ spontaneity and flow. Suzuki points us toward a "non-interfering attitude of mind" so we can respond to the moment without the baggage caused by judging the situation, fear, or dwelling on past mistakes. "When you play big you make big mistakes." – Werner Erhard "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." – Einstein "Great errors seldom originate but with men of great minds." – Petrarch (1304-74) "It’s better to lose a game by making a move than lose it sitting on my ass." – Earl Weaver, former manager, Baltimore Orioles "A mistake in judgment isn’t fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is." – film critic Pauline Kael "The higher you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it’s considered to be your style." – movie/dance icon Fred Astaire (1899-1987) Maslow himself has noticed this trap, remarking that most of us dwell on errors rather than accomplishments, losing touch with the proverbial-yet-genuine "winning feeling" though we think we’re being realistic, objective and productive. "If you have a bad day in baseball and start thinking about it, you’ll have ten more." – baseball all-star Sammy Sosa "The visionary is the only true realist." – Italian film director Federico Fellini "There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth." – Madame Curie "It is impossible to work under conditions where they confuse negativity with objectivity." – basketball announcer Marv Albert "Every obnoxious fan has a wife at home who dominates him." – Al McGuire, basketball coach and (obnoxious) broadcaster Bill Walsh, former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, has also commented how these mind-tricks only get more pronounced when one is under pressure. "One gets into a strange psychological, almost hypnotic, state of mind while on the firing line which probably prevents the mind's eye from observing and noticing things in a normal way." – Austrian violin master Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962), wounded in battle during World War I "I always practice penalty shots, but you can never replicate the pressure-situation you’ll be under." – Alan Shearer, retired Premier League striker, BBC commentator "One always feels that he is running from something without knowing exactly what nor where it is." – Bobby Jones, World Golf Hall of Fame, regarding pressure during championship rounds "The best use one can make of his mind is to distrust it." – François Fénelon (1651-1715), French bishop/theologian/poet "Ready. Fire. Aim." – attributed to an executive at Cadbury "Pressure is something you feel when you don't know what the hell you're doing." – Peyton Manning, quarterback for the Denver Broncos From this perspective, one purpose of sports massage is to take the bookends known as stimuli and response and widen the space between them so the athlete can still display equanimity come crunch time and not act like a mindless robot (or a pre-programmed Backstreet Boy or Chili Pepper, take your pick). By widening this space we enhance our ability to delay sensory shutdown, which includes diminished peripheral vision, depth perception and hearing. "The bats aren’t the same length and it’s further between the bases." – Reggie Jackson, regarding pressure during playoff games "Objects appear differently to people according to their temperament." – Agrippa the Skeptic, Greek philosopher, first century AD "The lights seem brighter." – baseball announcer Michael Kay, regarding the effect of Yankee stadium upon rookie players from visiting teams "The person I fear most in the last two rounds is myself." – Tom Watson, World Golf Hall of Fame "Great works are done when one is not calculating and thinking." – D.T. Suzuki, Zen and Buddhist educator (1870-1966) "I get a kick out of watching a team defense me. A player moves two steps in one direction and I hit it two steps the other way." – baseball hall-of-famer Rod Carew "Keep your eye clear and hit 'em where they ain't." – Wee Willie Keeler of the Baltimore Orioles, when asked in 1897 to explain his remarkable hitting success "When they fail, winners ask themselves, "What did I do right?" – sales trainer Tom Hopkins Dychtwald offers another physical perspective when he says that the vertebrae of the coccyx and sacrum act as channels for the nerve routes that enliven the pelvic basin. If blocked, too much energy comes from the head and not the feeling/emotive aspect of the body. Relations with others become based on domination, conquest and appeasement rather than a genuine exchange of feeling. “The problem with you, son, is that all your brains are in your head.” – Bill Shankly (1913-81), Liverpool manager "A gymnast's mind falls off the balance beam before her body does." – Dan Millman, Body Mind Mastery: Creating Success in Sport and Life (1999) Carl Erskine was a dominant pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s. He once said that bad thinking got him into more jams than bad pitching. “Competitive sports are played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch court ... the space between your ears.” – Bobby Jones, lawyer/golfer, co-founder of the Masters Tournament “A good darts player who can count can always beat a brilliant player who can’t.” – world darts champion Leighton Rees of Wales “There isn’t a hole out there that can’t be birdied if you just think. There isn’t one that can’t be bogeyed if you stop thinking.” – Bobby Jones, regarding Augusta We saw earlier, in the writings of Shen and Yang, how this blockage can be addressed at the base of the tailbone. Specifically, Qi circulation in the Governing and Conception vessels can get clogged up here, particularly at a point known as GV1 (Governing Vessel #1). This spot can also seal up with aging. Note that sacral stiffness begins around the benchmark year of age 40. “Men over 60 years of age should never run at all for anything, not even to catch a train.” – Sir James Cantlie MD, Physical Efficiency (1906) “The water doesn’t know how old you are.” – Dara Torres, 12-time Olympic medalist in swimming When these energy flows are thwarted, when we feel trapped in our minds that are spinning a mile a minute, we feel inhibited and/or perform at lower levels. Our homeostatic meridians are now overtaxed in their ability to act as reservoirs or capacitors. The little voice in the back of our mind is dominating the pulpit, asking 'What voice?' We act conceptually rather than contextually. We're eating the menu and calling it a meal. Here we’re also seeing an additional dimension of choking: a rapid retreat into the head at the expense of the whole. "Life does not consist mainly – or even largely – of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s head." – Mark Twain "If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced." – Vincent Van Gogh "The French fry is my canvas." – Ray Kroc, architect (madman?) of the McDonald’s empire "The track is my canvas, and the car is my brush." – Graham Hill, British Formula One champ Rolf also noted how heavily muscled bodies (swole souls) can contribute to this blockage. Thickened, more stolid physical bodies, she once wrote, pose barriers to awareness. In a body like this our attention gets trapped within and our awareness is minimized, verifying an alternate definition of stolid: 'dull.' Experimental results clearly suggest that the release of such bulkiness permits the emergence of a more aware individual, ready to respond to external stimuli more quickly and effectively. (How many soccer players or golfers or figure skaters are bulked up?) If Rolf were more up to speed on Eastern terminology and theory, she would certainly agree that stolid/wooden musculature as well as its accompanying frozen fascia are poor conductors of Qi energy, as Dr. Yang has demonstrated. Higher levels of power generation don't stand a chance. In her practice in London, massage author Claire Maxwell-Hudson has worked on runners, ballerinas and cyclists who felt that massage cleared their minds, thus improving their performances greatly. Several ballerinas would not pass up regular massage because they were so much more lissome afterwards. Their minds were certainly not empty after the massage; they just didn't harbor such a disproportionate share of the body's energies, leading to the suppleness. “Your fragility is also your strength.” – Pina Bausch, German dancer Lissome (adjective): 1) thin, supple, graceful, lithe, easily flexed; 2) a word that, ironically, shows up rarely if ever in the published literature on massage Perhaps St. Augustine, one of the most important figures in the ancient church, was right on the money when he described his way of getting out of his head and seeking clarity: “Solvitur ambulando,” or “It is solved by walking.” Coaching with words only "Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence." –Tom Landry, Dallas Cowboys "I used to say of him that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men." – The Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), regarding Napoleon and gravitas "A leader has to show the face his team needs to see." – Mike Krzyzewski, Duke University basketball, helping us to define the term 'game face' "If you’re going to make money, you’ve got to look like money." – Diamond Jim Brady, flamboyant railroad tycoon (1856-1917) "The personality must be bigger than the prop." – magician Harry Blackstone Sr. (1865-1965) "Not the cry, but the flight of the wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow." – Chinese proverb "A lot of actors think that the more lines they have the more attention they get. That’s bullshit." – Lee Van Cleef, a star of the seminal western ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’ Prior to the First World War, Dr. Fritz Talbot of Boston visited the Children's Clinic in Düsseldorf, Germany. What piqued Talbot's curiosity was the sight of a portly old woman carrying a neglected baby on her hip. "Who's that?," Talbot asked his host, Dr. Arthur Schlossmann. The second doctor replied, "That is Old Anna. When we've done everything we can for a baby and it's still not doing well, we turn it over to Old Anna, and she is always successful." (As relayed in Ashley Montagu’s seminal book Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin, 1971. Montagu is former chairman at the Rutgers department of anthropology.) "Touch is taboo only to the already disembodied." – Deane Juhan, Job's Body "When you touch, don’t take. Touch people only when you are giving something." – Ken Blanchard, One Minute Manager (1982) Longtime bodywork author Gordon Inkeles offers a related take: Rarely can you talk anyone out of tension, but you can usually massage it out of them. The availability of quality massage, he says, can change people permanently. "Implementation beats oration." – Aesop "If I can find a teacher who can beat me, then maybe I’ll take a lesson." – Lee Trevino, golf Hall of Fame Said Wilhelm Reich, the tense individual does not perceive his tension as such (nor does the languid runner with tight hip rotators and shortened psoas). If you try to describe it to him in words he won’t have a clue what you’re talking about. In addition, his diaphragm is typically constricted. (Our breathing is now restricted as well, since the diaphragm essentially acts as a bellows that drive the lungs. A bellows is an accordion-type device designed to blow air on chimney fires. In this sense, the lungs by themselves don't breath. They are breathed by the diaphragm, which provides about 60% of our breathing capacity.) Our task, Reich adds, is the amelioration of this tension, diaphragm included. Toward the end of his life, Reich remarked that you simply can't resolve psychological issues with mere talk-therapy. "You couldn't get at it. It didn't make sense." "How often I hear patients with hunched, tense shoulders and clenched jaws say ‘But I am relaxed! ' " – David Sobel, chief of preventive medicine, Kaiser-Permanente Medical Center, San Jose “No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.” – George Jean Nathan, drama critic and magazine editor (1882-1958), collaborator with H.L. Mencken "The mental never influences the physical. It is always the physical that modifies the mental, and when we think that the mind is diseased, it is always an illusion." – Claude Bernard (1813-78), renowned French physiologist who coined the term milieu intérieur, now known as homeostasis “If your body is not in shape to sing (from the diaphragm) you will push and push but keep falling back on your throat to make the sound. This will ruin your voice.” – Luciano Pavarotti, operatic tenor Said Rolf, behavior is usually chemistry and physiology; psychology (part & parcel of coaching) is not the primal force. "Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement." – Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler (1870-1937) "I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves." – Bobby Fischer, chess grandmaster "When a man’s house is on fire, it’s time to break off chess." – Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732 Also note the meaning behind the German word for “understand,” which is begreifen. Literally speaking it means not so much to “think through” a situation but to “feel it out” or “touch it.” Begreifen can also mean "apprehension," which has similar origins as the word 'apprentice.' An apprentice learns by hand, and the word comes from the Latin prehendere, meaning "to grasp with the hand." Further, to com-prehend is to take ahold of by grasping or seizing deeply, as in "getting it." “The intellect by itself moves nothing.” – Aristotle "Some factor other than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality." – Henri Bergson, French philosopher "The greatest American superstition is belief in facts." – Hermann von Keyserling, German philosopher (1880-1946) "Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real." – Niels Bohr, Danish physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize "I understand a fury in your words, But not the words." – Othello "The fewer the words the less litigation." – Gracián (1601-1658) The moral of the story is simple. If language itself is but 7% of communication, a coach/trainer better do a little more than just talk. As nationally known sales trainer Tom Hopkins has pointed out, too many salespeople blow the sale by talking too much, as if to cover up the fact they have something to hide or simply have nothing to say, as with wordy commentators on Fox News. “Humans cannot communicate, not even their brains can communicate; not even their conscious minds can communicate. Only communication can communicate.” – Niklas Luhmann, German sociologist “Talking uses energy. Doing creates it.” – IBM slogan “A valiant man’s look is greater than a coward’s sword.” – English poet George Herbert, 17th century “The student is best taught who is told the least.” – mathematician Robert Lee Moore At a minimum they're demonstrating that they don't feel in control when they're not talking, like the tipsy Mr. Single Guy at the wedding-reception after-party. To wit, recall the cat-and-mouse game between detective Petrovich and the young murderer Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky’s masterwork Crime & Punishment. Petrovich is content, for weeks at a time, to sit back and let the young student talk himself into arrest and conviction. “Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so that I can have a word with him?” – Chuang Tzu, c. 369-286 BC "The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing." – Henry S. Haskins, stockbroker/author (1875-1957) "There's an old saying amongst players in football, talking about your general manager and coaches: they speak with a forked tongue." – Joe Namath, New York Jets (Joe said 'amongst'?) "I want to kiss you." – Joe Namath Nor do the words of most coaches – especially business managers – work so well when aimed at generating the highest levels of accomplishment. The best we can hope for is a type of reverse-willpower that communicates head-to-head. However, the language required to describe peak performance is unlike the descriptive and “logical” language we’re typically comfortable with. The words themselves may not be so dramatically different, but the emphasis, the images they evoke, invite an entirely new look at this languaging process. So if the language is different once we 'arrive,' how can our same old language harbor a rat's-ass chance of getting us there in the first place? "Words are useful only to the degree they assist us in creating mental imagery." – sports psychologist Charles Garfield "Whenever one contemplates, one necessarily – at the same time – contemplates in images (phantasma)." – Aristotle, On the Soul “The human mind is not, as philosophers would have you think, a debating hall, but a picture gallery.” – English philosopher Douglas Harding “More of the brain is devoted to movement than to language.” – neurologist Oliver Sacks, author of The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat “The deepest rivers flow with the least sound.” – Quintus Curtius, first century AD “The shallower the brook, the more it babbles.” – Indonesian proverb “Promise is most given when the least is said.” – George Chapman (1559-1634), English dramatist Sports psychologist Ken Ravizza of California State University in Fullerton has interviewed many athletes about the nature of peak performance, which emanates from a level that sits deeper and two aisles over from conscious thought. A common element can be summed up like this: "I was unconscious. Everything was in slow motion." Let’s assert that not only does language fail to describe this space adequately, only by accident can it actually induce (coach into actuality) higher levels of performance. Until that day arrives, we will speed up the process on the massage table instead, using the tried-and-true Old Anna approach. “I explained it when I danced it.” – Dame Margot Fonteyn, premier British ballerina “Reason has proved itself completely powerless, precisely because its arguments have an effect only on the conscious mind and not on the unconscious.” – Carl Jung “Preach the gospel all the time. If necessary, use words.” – St. Francis of Assisi "A world of fact lies outside and beyond the world of words." – T.H. Huxley, biologist (1825-1895) "The void is waiting for vocabulary." – Edmond Jabès, Egyptian-French writer/poet (1912-1991) "The 'void' is not so much a nothingness as a space that can’t be expressed in conventional words." – Elmer and Alyce Green "When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void." – Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings "Look at this window: it is nothing but a hole in the wall, but because of it the whole room is full of light. So when the faculties are empty, the heart is full of light." – Zhuangzi, Chinese philosopher, fourth century BC (The Egyptian Book of the Dead refers to the "clear light of reality," a zone more lucid than what we normally regard as clarity.) And we will stay positive, of course. Studies show that before a coach even gets heard, much less be seen as objective, he must offer up four positive comments for every negative one, even though it's the negative one that most needs saying. "For a manager to be perceived as positive, they need a four-to-one positive-to-negative contact ratio." – Ken Blanchard, author of The One Minute Manager “Most people give more weight to negative whispers than to positive ones.” – psychologist William Purkey “The right way to get a pupil to hit the ball satisfactorily is to watch for any good natural qualities that may be there and to build up the swing around them.” – Percy Boomer, On Learning Golf, 1942 “When virtues are pointed out first, flaws seem less insurmountable.” – Judith Martin (Miss Manners) “When you’re winning you can ride them harder because their self-esteem is high. If you are losing and you try to be tough, you’re asking for dissension.” – basketball coach Rick Pitino “Avoid excessive sharpness or harshness of voice, which usually indicates the man who has shortcomings of his own to hide.” – German field marshal Erwin Rommel, the ‘Desert Fox’ “The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.” – Stendhal (1783-1842), French novelist Breakthrough point In Thai massage, the rationale of a stretch is to move our client just a speck beyond the point they could reach by themselves. Similarly, it could be said that the essence of coaching and athletic training is to move us beyond a point that’s been previously unattainable on our own, physically and mentally. We hold this goal in our mind and flirt with it briefly, but only rarely does it seem we break through into higher realms of accomplishment, especially for any sustained period of time. "I discovered the middle path of stillness within speed, calmness within fear, and I held it longer and quieter than ever before." – Steve McKinney, on breaking a world downhill ski record in the 1970s (McKinney inadvertently elucidated Buddhism's "Middle Way" more clearly than most any scholar working in the field) "The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness; only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest." – Bruce Lee "If one does not expect the unexpected one will not find it, for it is not reached by search or trial." – Heraclitus, ~500 BC Update on Heraclitus (a word you break down only at your peril): "Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible." – cadet maxim at West Point military academy "High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation." – inventor Charles Kettering (1876-1958) "Act like you expected to get into the end-zone." – Joe Paterno, Penn State football coach "Expectancy speeds progress." – Ernest Holmes, ‘new thought’ writer (1887-1960) "The moment of enlightenment is when a person's dreams of possibilities become images of probabilities." – Vic Braden, tennis pro and author "I dwell in possibility." – poet Emily Dicksinson "Where there is real faith, there is always expectation." – Catherine Booth, co-founder of the Salvation Army "If I don’t expect to get a hit, I have no right to step into the batter’s box." – Pete Rose, baseball star / gambler "If you don't believe you can make every putt, why bother trying?" – Ernie Els, South Africa, World Golf Hall of Fame "If you don’t think you can win, you’ll make cowardly decisions at crucial moments." – Magnus Carlsen, Norwegian chess grandmaster at the age of 13 In a sports massage context, let’s define breakthrough like this: when the volume and intensity of lifted muscular restrictions, those that have previously held us back, has reached critical mass and can be maintained for a measurable amount of time. Our job, whether as a coach or a masseur, is to lengthen this time frame. I estimate that sometime by the year 2050 will this criteria become recognized as one of the major functions, if not THE major function of coaching. “The difference of great players is at a certain point in a match they raise their level of play and maintain it. Lesser players play great for a set, but then less.” – Pete Sampras, former world tennis champ “Complacency is the last great hurdle standing between any team and its potential greatness.” – NBA coach/executive Pat Riley “To be pleased with one’s limits is a wretched state.” – Goethe “A higher rate of urgency does not imply ever-present panic, anxiety or fear. It means a state in which complacency is virtually absent.” (brilliant) – John P. Kotter, professor of leadership, Harvard Business School “Sometimes success needs interruption to regain focus and shake off complacency.” – London-born Lennox Lewis, world heavyweight boxing champion “Most champions get satisfied and lazy or are content with themselves.” – boxing coach Freddie Roach “The strenuous life tastes better.” – William James, 'dean' of American psychology “Champions aren’t made in gyms.” – Muhammad Ali By definition, a restriction is a condition that imposes a restraint, such as a leash on a dog or tether on a horse. The word stems from the Latin stringere, meaning to bind or pull tight. Significantly, this Latin word is also the source for our word ‘stress.’ In meaning, it is very similar to the Latin inhibere, defined as “to restrain or hinder,” from which of course we get the English word ‘inhibit.’ Also by definition, to inhibit means to discourage from free or spontaneous activity. With a minimal leap of faith, we can thus see that the words 'inhibition' (similar to prohibit) and 'restriction' are virtually interchangeable. The implications are rather clear, that a physical restriction is concomitant with a behavioral inhibition; they are two sides of the same coin, and Chaitow himself has even described tight musculature as 'tethered.' An inhibited muscle is one that responds more slowly to stimuli, and this definition holds up in a social context as well. “The reverse side also has a reverse side.” – Japanese proverb “Opposites are complementary.” – Danish physicist Niels Bohr “Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.” – Emerson “A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.” – Samuel Butler (1835-1902), English novelist “Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling?” – Dutch artist M.C. Escher (1898-1972) Normally the discussion aspect of this site precedes supporting quotations, but let's switch gears for a moment and allow the quotes to lead back into the discussion, which is rather appropriate for the topic at hand. Mercati's bland 1997 text regarding Chinese massage notes that even at its most yin, a given system will contain a yang component. (For most of us, this assertion will remain a mere theory until the day comes when it is directly experienced, like a thunderclap, as an unassailable truth.) Yin and yang, per Mercati, transform into each other, although she most likely wrote this line at the level of belief rather than at the level of direct experience. The small circles found in the yin-yang symbol, she says, illustrate that each contains the other. “While you’re judging the book, the book is also judging you.” – Stephen King “When you are at one with the world, you often find that the thing you seek is seeking you.” – Charles Haanel, American ‘new thought’ writer (1866-1949) Maslow spoke of the space known as breakthrough (sustained peak performance as opposed to a fluke) as one of transcending personal boundaries and one of reduced inhibitions. If we re-read some of his material and replace ‘inhibition’ with ‘restriction,’ his case, as well as ours, becomes even stronger. "If you’re going to be a leader, you’re going to have to have a very loose relationship with this thing you call ‘I’ or ‘me’. Maybe that whole thing in me around which the universe revolves isn’t so central! Maybe life is not about the self but about self-transcendence." – Werner Erhard (New York Times, 11-28-15) "The team itself must be the leader of the team." – Phil Jackson, NBA coach "When I gave up me, I became more." – Don Mattingly, New York Yankees "Never trust the artist, trust the tale." – D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), English novelist/poet "Lolita is famous, not I." – Vladimir Nabokov, Russian novelist (who detested Freudian symbol-mongering in literary criticism) "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." – attributed (misattributed?) to Sigmund Freud, a smoker According to Julian Davidson, author of The Psychobiology of Consciousness (1980), all breakthrough moments share some of the criteria found in full-blown altered states of consciousness, the kind Maslow was famous for delineating. These include changes in the senses of space, time, identity, as well as strong emotions and great changes in motor output. As per the emotions, in a sports massage context we can see the enhanced precessional effect of the emotionally laden homeostatic meridians. We can understand changes in space/time through our work on restrictions within the sub-occipital muscles, which affect proprioception. In this regard the most important occipital muscle may be the obliquus capitis inferior, connecting axis to atlas in diagonal fashion. Per Starlanyl (2013), this small muscle is “intrinsically” linked to eye movement. It contains a very high density of Golgi organs and in fact may be more a muscle of proprioception rather than one of movement. As per identity, we’ve helped pull awareness down from just the head into a larger portion of the body, particularly the lower tan den. (The lower tan den was mentioned by Plato; this awareness may have extended back to the time of Homer.) "The head ganglion of the proprioceptive system." (referring to the brain's cerebellum) – R.S. Snyder, 'The Cerebellum', Scientific American, August 1958 "Emotions are neuropeptides attaching to receptors and stimulating an electrical charge on neurons." – Candace Pert, National Institutes of Health "Emotions are enmeshed in the neural networks of reason." – Antonio Damasio, Portuguese-American neuroscientist "Every emotion or thought is always connected with some electrical current." – Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950), Polish engineer/philosopher "An emotion occurs when there are certain biological, certain experiential, and certain cognitive states which all occur simultaneously." – psychologist John D. Mayer, University of New Hampshire "In football (soccer), time and space are the same thing." – Premier League manager Graham Taylor, OBE Now, if we analyze some of the self-improvement literature through the ages, with an eye toward plucking out general patterns, can we glean any additional guidance toward achieving this breakthrough state? "All generalizations are dangerous, even this one." – Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), French novelist/dramatist "To generalize is to be an idiot." – William Blake, poet/painter with a mystical bent "Fraud lurks in generalities." – Legal maxim "Everything absolute belongs to pathology." – Nietzsche "Almost every significant breakthrough is the result of a courageous break with traditional ways of thinking." – Stephen Covey "To produce a breakthrough you have to stand the usual approach on its head." – Werner Erhard "I am banging my head against the walls, but the walls are starting to give way." – Gustav Mahler, Austro-Bohemian composer (1860-1911) "The transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant), or not at all." – Thomas Kuhn, American philosopher of science For starters, a consistent rhythm (pacing), applied with concentration, is a sine qua non. Unhurried slowness and firmness are key. If you analyze many auto accidents, you’ll see that a frequent cause is haste and impatience, not to mention a dose of denial. Even at the major league level of baseball, a common error among outfielders is to be mentally throwing the ball back into play even before they snag it in the glove. “Impatience for victory guarantees defeat.” – Louis XIV “A hitter’s impatience is the pitcher’s biggest advantage.” – Pete Rose, baseball star / gambler “Some people look at an egg and expect it to crow.” – Orison Swett Marden, 'New Thought' writer (1848-1924) “Hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateurs.” – Evelyn Underhill, scholar of mysticism (1875-1941) “An impatient person plays differently than a patient one.” – Vladimir Kramnik, Russian chess grandmaster “If you have confidence you have patience.” – Ilie Nastase (Romania), International Tennis Hall of Fame “My greatest asset was not my physical ability, it was my mental.” – Bruce Jenner, gold medalist in the decathlon (men's or women's?), 1976 In the Thuringia region of central Germany there’s an old custom: A couple cannot marry until they’ve sawn through a log together. If the rhythm of their movements agrees, the marriage takes place. Otherwise the association is broken off. It would be curious to see the success rate of this method vs. pre-marital counseling. “One way to regain your rhythm on offense is to make some big plays on defense.” – Bill Walton, NBA hall of famer and commentator “Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.” – Gary Lineker, former pro footballer, BBC commentator “Some people are on the pitch! They think it's all over! . . . It is now . . . it's four!” – Kenneth Wolstenholme, broadcasting England's world-cup-final victory over Germany in 1966; immortalized by New Order in 'World in Motion' This consistency of rhythm, combined with sustained pressure, begins to overload one's ego-defenses (demons of negativity) and enables him/her to cross the threshold into the realm of enhanced results. (The woman holding the saw is not complaining at this point, and wasn't Ravel's sultry Bolero inspired by the rhythms of a saw mill?) It’s possible here to also substitute the word ‘overload’ with ‘unload.’ This crossover point may occur when remaining restrictions give out to a large-scale and spontaneous release (the air's getting stuffy in here), one that is never forced. During a highly structured massage, this point seems to typically kick in – precessionally, that is outside the realms of pure logic – around the 50-minute point. We’re storming the citadel, so to speak, blasting through the ego-protective barriers of our inhibitions and negations (a.k.a. “can’t-do-that’s"). “Discovery should come as an adventure rather than as a result of a logical process of thought. Sharp, prolonged thinking is necessary that we may keep on the chosen road but it does not itself necessarily lead to discovery. The investigator must be ready and on the spot when the light comes from whatever direction.” – pioneering pathologist Theobald Smith (1859-1934) “Logic merely sanctions the conquests of the intuition.” – Jacques Hadamard, French mathematician “To the logical limit.” – Echo & the Bunnymen, Over the Wall “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anaïs Nin “It was the sweetness of the risk that I remembered, and not its dangers.” – Arnold Palmer “Even those who venture to dip a toe into the pond of risk never allow themselves to get used to the water.” – psychiatrist David Viscott “Judges like to see when you ‘risk it for the biscuit’." – from NBC coverage of the Winter Olympics, 2-12-18 “The beauty of a game of chess is usually assessed according to the sacrifices it contains." – Rudolf Spielmann, Austrian chess master and author “To live without risk for me would have been tantamount to death." – pioneer aviator Jacqueline Cochran “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” – Oscar Wilde Another trigger is a strong sense of visualization (which can be negative if we're not vigilant) combined with a trance-like frame of mind. Since the word ‘trance’ gets a bad rap at times, suggesting escapism and hedonism, we’ll define it as a mindset that has successfully blocked out distractions. Note that well-constructed visualizations are not pipe dreams. They take their story line from the reality of the subconscious, acting as spark plugs that impel us toward a well-defined goal. “Trance is a natural everyday experience.” – psychiatrist Milton Erickson “The freedom to create is somehow linked with facility of access to those obscure regions below the conscious mind.” – anthropologist Loren Eiseley “I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head.” – Jack Nicklaus “Visualizing the swing is useless if you fail to visualize what it’s supposed to achieve.” – Nicklaus “Half the golf balls struck by amateurs are hit, if not in rage, surely in bewilderment.” – journalist George Plimpton “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” – management consultant Peter Drucker Also, during peak performance the mind frequently experiences a suspension of time. The senses are heightened to such a degree that saying and believing the wrong thing – self-invalidation – can penetrate more deeply into the psyche. “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can.” – John Wooden, master basketball coach, UCLA “It takes a conscious recognition that one is just as capable of competing with people on the next level up.” – runner Steve Cram, English silver medalist in the 1500 meters, 1986 "If you’re going to do good work, the work has to scare you." – André Previn, pianist/conductor/composer "If at first you do succeed, try something harder." – attributed to John Maxwell, motivational author "If your goals don't scare you, they aren't big enough." – Tom Holland, author of Beat the Gym "Set a goal so big that you can’t achieve it until you grow into the person who can." – attributed to sales trainer Zig Ziglar “Sometimes our breakthrough begins when we refuse to be impressed with the size of our problem.” – Bill Johnson, evangelist “Destiny is an invention of the weak and the resigned.” – Ignazio Silone, Italian novelist and political leader, regarding resignation to so-called 'fate' “There is a future that makes itself and a future we make. The real future is composed of both.” – Émile Chartier, French philosopher It's essential therefore to dwell on the positive at this time. Says Hopkins, a negative tone does little more than justify mediocrity; it helps us rationalize why other people perform better. “The mediocre always feel as if they’re fighting for their lives when confronted by the excellent.” – Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Austrian novelist (1830-1916) "Give up the islands that reinforce mediocrity." – Werner Erhard "Everything I've ever done was out of fear of being mediocre." – country singer Chet Atkins "People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents." – Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), steel magnate "To be number one, you must train like you are number two." – Maurice Greene, gold medalist sprinter And as the mystics have reported regarding peak moments (they are our truest experts), there is no longer any sense of being divorced from our surroundings. As we learned from the human potential movement, when someone else in the room is making a point, this is us speaking as well. Once experienced, this mystic state of mind is considered superior to, and more desirable than, our ordinary states of consciousness. (The author of this site has experienced three intense mystical experiences – so far – in this current lifetime allotted to him, so he's not talking out his ass.) At this point we can also experience some reactivation as we climb the ladder onto higher rungs. Says Ravizza, this is when we need to be “comfortable feeling uncomfortable.” As Churchill once put it, ‘If you are going through hell, keep going.” The human potential movement is rather unanimous in asserting that all growth requires a period, sometimes unbearably long, of feeling off-center. Maturity entails holding this discomfort in one hand while climbing higher with the other. “To achieve anything in this game you must be prepared to dabble on the boundary of disaster.” – Stirling Moss (England), Formula One racer “To win, you have to risk loss.” – Jean-Claude Killy, French gold-medalist skier “If you don’t fall down, you aren’t trying hard enough.” – Tenley Albright, surgeon and Olympic gold medalist in figure skating “Baseball’s fundamental trade-off is the purchase of opportunity by the coin of risk.” (Brilliant) – George F. Will, Men at Work (1990) “There's a way of playing safe, there's a way of using tricks, and there's the way I like to play: dangerously, where you're going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven't created before.” – Dave Brubeck, pioneering jazz pianist and composer “Women are not at ease except with those who take chances with them, and enter into their spirit.” – Ninon de l’Enclos, French courtesan (1620-1705) “Creative risks will always outweigh technical mistakes.” – Alexandra Guarnaschelli, celebrity chef “The absence of risk is a sure sign of mediocrity.” – Fr. Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), French soldier/martyr “People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.” – management consultant Peter F. Drucker As we approach the point of no return, we begin to experience a physical renewal. Runners speak of the euphoria that endorphins generate in their body as they overcome the first signs of fatigue and receive their "second wind." On the massage table, generalized endorphins typically kick in around the 30-minute point, assuming the client isn't placed in the hands of a hack. In the academic literature this second wind has also been described as "glide" – a point at which the changes in consciousness transform physiology. “My task was to show the psychologists that it is possible to apply physiological knowledge to the phenomena of psychical life.” – Ivan Sechenov, eminent Russian physiologist and psychologist (1829-1905; a breakthrough thinker) “Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.” – William James (!) This is merely another way, and probably a superior one, to express the concept of alchemy, as physical restrictions and mental inhibitions (reservations/considerations) are lifting simultaneously. More work can now be done – and more elegantly – with far less effort, as ancient Greek philosophers noted with the concept of ataraxia. “If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.” – Steve Jobs, founder of Apple “If you want to touch the other shore badly enough, barring an impossible situation, you will. If your desire is diluted – for any reason – you'll never make it.” – Diana Nyad, long-distance swimmer (as in Cuba to Florida, without a shark cage) “As you know, shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances. It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real. Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency (shame). In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming.” – Trevanian, Shibumi, 1979 Note that the adjectival form of 'pudency' is 'pudendal,' referring to the vein, artery and nerve that supply the genital region. All can be compromised by tight fascia associated with obturator internus, a hip rotator, leading to erectile difficulties. “Acerbic good taste.” – James Michener, Iberia (1968), describing shibumi “Tact is good taste in action.” – Diane de Poitiers, French courtier (1499-1566) “Effortless effectiveness. Understated excellence. Beautiful imperfection.” – Matthew May, The Shibumi Strategy, (2010) Per Wikipedia: Even baseball players are said to exhibit shibumi when they contribute to the overall success of the team without doing anything to make themselves stand out individually. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson, NBA coach “Hitting is contagious.” – baseball adage “Turnovers come in bunches.” – football adage On a hormonal level, the secretion of oxytocin (the “feel good” chemical) may start kicking in, helping melt blockades. Traditionally in a one-hour massage this hormone invites itself to the dinner table around the 30-to-40-minute point, fashionably late, as they say. One such affected blockade could be at the base of the spine, not far from the first point of the Governing Vessel, one of the “Big Three” channels that flows through our core. We’re now approaching a 'whole body' type of breakthrough, rather than one that occurs just in the psyche. Some people even report a heightened sense of spirituality. In his classic Toward a Psychology of Being (1968), Maslow described more elements of a peak experience, and they apply here as well: “...a complete, though momentary, loss of fear, anxiety, inhibition, defense and control.” These fears, among others, “all tend to disappear or go into abeyance for the time being.” Maslow's languaging in this regard is exquisitely accurate – though it doesn't convey the full majesty of the event – for the author of this page once experienced a full-blown peak experience in the middle of a nondescript Bronx deli and thus knows the drill (or perhaps just the dill?). Regardless, one evolving purpose of sports massage over the next century will be to eliminate the word 'momentary' from Maslow's description. “The coach will find that one of his more important roles is to dispel the fear in his pupil.” – Britain's Nik Stuart, Olympic gymnast and coach "Heroes and cowards feel the same fear. Heroes just react to it differently." – boxing coach Cus D'Amato "I can say the Lord’s Prayer in ten seconds." – Evel Knievel, daredevil motorcycle jumper “I never had the fear of getting beat, which is how most people lose." – Dan Gable, Olympic gold medalist in wrestling, 1972 "We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears." – Dag Hammarskjöld, former U.N. Secretary-General “There's an intimate connection between a tight psoas and fear.” – Liz Koch, The Psoas Book Finally, we start to think contextually; we begin to glimpse the larger picture to a degree that enables us to deliver the little nuances that no one has provided – or even imagined – in the past. “It is not necessarily the pieces which seem to fit satisfactorily . . . it is the pieces that don’t fit that decide the issue.” – British physicist Peter Warlow Alexander Graham Bell, for instance, faced several competitors in the race to develop the telephone. The court system finally agreed that Bell was the legitimate developer because of only minor modifications he provided that no one else thought of, such as turning a screw a speck more than did his co-developers. Bell simply travelled a little extra distance, slightly beyond 100%. In retrospect, he was the most disciplined and systematic of the inventors of the lot. “The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.” – R.D. Laing, Scottish psychiatrist (1927-1989) “The difference between peak performers and everybody else is much smaller than everybody else thinks.” – sports psychologist Charles Garfield “Inches make champions.” – Vince Lombardi “The game was closer than the score indicated.” – iconic Cardinal pitcher Dizzy Dean, after a 1-0 game "The winning of a pawn among good players of even strength often means the winning of the game." – Cuba's José Raúl Capablanca, the greatest chess player ever “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson “In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten; then he who continues the attack wins.” – Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War general and American president “The team that wins two-thirds of its one-run games usually wins the pennant.” – Pete Rose, Cincinnati Reds “Obstinato rigore.” (tenacious application) – motto of Leonardo da Vinci As high school football coaches are fond of belching out, “I want 110% out of you tonight.” When restrictions lift and ease themselves spontaneously, it’s possible, as Meagher pointed out, to call the coach’s bluff and deliver 120% with a degree of effort that previously produced but 90%. Call it cheating with integrity. "Heroism, the Caucasian mountaineers say, is endurance for one moment more." – George Kennan (1845-1924), American explorer "With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries." – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818 "Genius (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all)." – Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish philosopher "It is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them." – William James "Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." – Joe Theismann, former quarterback for the Washington Redskins "Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints." – Emerson Skyhook Let’s look at some of the time-frames we’ve established in this discussion so far, including one or two we haven’t mentioned. These frames are loosely based on reliable evidence garnered from some 30 years of delivering massages in different locales and contexts:
– Frances Perkins, Labor Secretary under FDR, first female member of a Presidential cabinet “Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness, but two inches above the ground.” – D.T. Suzuki, Zen and Buddhist educator (1870-1966) (This type of enlightenment sounds like a fair translation of the German word 'einsicht,' similar to an "aha experience.") “Consciousness of our powers augments them.” – Vauvenargues, French writer (1715-1747) Ida Rolf (who else, it seems) offers some of the strongest and most apt explanations for this phenomena. Says Rolf, our consciousness tells us we feel “lighter” because restrictions have been diminished. (We can also rewrite this as “inhibitions have been reduced” and we've "lightened up," to borrow an '80s-style catchphrase with obvious physiological overtones.) As restrictions on a large scale lose their grip – and torsions lose some of their twist – the body is now physically taller. Formerly it was losing its battle with gravity, leading to loss of symmetry and increased fatigue. As a side note, it has happened only unexpectedly that Rolf’s comments get referenced here with notable frequency. In a review of the literature of bodywork, her findings bear a high degree of relevancy even though she did not write directly about sports massage as a separate discipline per se, nor did she need to. “Beauty is a light that plays over the symmetry of things rather than being symmetry itself.” – Plotinus (204-270 AD), and a remarkable observation “If men would but rest in silence, they might always hear the music of the spheres.” – Arthur Helps (1813-1875), English essayist and Royal advisor “The more we have received in silence, the more we give in action.” – Ernest Hello (1828-1885), French writer on religion and philosophy In his challenging and breakthrough text Anatomy Trains, Myers gives a metaphor for the opposite of the skyhook, namely the lighthouse. Says Myers, a lighthouse is a brick-upon-brick structure of continuous downward compression. A herniated disc is surely the result of trying to use the spine as a lighthouse (or Tower of Pisa), contrary to its original skyhook design which is to provide lift against gravity. If the spine were designed to function as a lighthouse it would need much greater length to perform its assigned duties. “The basic problem in most bodies is a shortening of the spine.” – Ida Rolf Lighthouse (definition): "A tall building on the seashore in which the government maintains a lamp, as well as the friend of a politician." – Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1906, a classic in American literature Tensegrity (definition): "The continuous-tension/discontinuous-compression structuring principle of Universe (i.e., stars not touching planets, electrons not touching their atomic nuclei), introduced to planet Earth to replace the continuously compressioned, secondarily tensioned structuring in present world-around engineering theory." – Buckminster Fuller This downward compression also creates aberrant electrical charges courtesy of the piezo-electric effect, as virtually all the tissues of the body generate electrical fields when they're either compressed or stretched. (Juhan notes that fascia is both a generator and a semi-conductor, or 'Grade B' conductor.) These superfluous charges could be a prime reason why our timing is off, inexplicably, on any given day. “Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.” – Warren Spahn, Hall of Fame pitcher “Make the hitter wait on you.” – David Cone, Yankee pitcher and broadcaster (9 Aug. 20) “When the pitcher controls the pace, the batter can’t get comfortable.” – Paul O’Neill, Yankee outfielder and broadcaster (9 Aug. 20) “If his timing fluctuates, it invariably does so in the right place at the right time.” – Beatles producer George Martin, regarding Ringo “Good timing is invisible. Bad timing sticks out a mile.” – Tony Corinda, English magician “You win battles by knowing the enemy’s timing, and using a timing the enemy does not expect.” – sword master Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645) “It is imperative to act in a rhythm different from that of adversaries.” – sword master Yagyu Munemori (1571-1646) “Pressure works, not by stealing the ball, but by changing momentum.” – college basketball coach Donnie Jones (Note how an opposing football coach likes to call a time-out before a crucial fieldgoal attempt, with the intention of throwing off the kicker's timing and concentration. This sly ploy is known as "freezing the kicker.") “Anxiety is the edge I have on the pitcher and catcher. When I’m on base they’re filled with anxiety, and that gives me an edge.” – Lou Brock, master base-stealer, St. Louis Cardinals “The idea is to break as soon as the pitcher begins his motion … you’re counting on the fact that the pitcher will panic.” – Billy Martin, Yankees, on stealing home plate “He slud into second.” – baseball pitcher Dizzy Dean. When corrected on his grammar, he replied “Sludded?" “It’s just as important to know when not to go as it is when to go.” – Maury Wills, Los Angeles Dodgers, master base-stealer “Find out what other teams want to do. Then take it away from them.” – George Halas, former head coach, Chicago Bears “The best move is the one that disturbs your opponent the most.” – Emanuel Lasker of Germany, world chess champion for 27 years “The best way to defend your bombers is to catch the enemy before he’s in position to attack.” – brigadier general Robin Olds, U.S. Air Force “The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.” – Frédéric Bastiat, French economist (1801-1850) “The highest art of the chess player lies in not allowing your opponent to show you what he can do.” – grandmaster Garry Kasparov Getting back to the skyhook, trainer Mark Verstegen says he’s seen instances where athletes have gained up to an inch to their frame, though a claim like this begs for supporting documentation. (In the early 1900s the Australian trainer H. Joseph Fay reported a similar phenomena.) Says Verstegen in 2004’s Core Performance, that's because their training enabled them to release and open up their hips, elongate their muscles and restore their optimal alignment (maybe because the PC – reset button – has stopped locking things into place?). They've been able to retract and depress their shoulder blades, which is to say they've pulled their scapulae back and down, extending the neck and head, thus stabilizing the body and declaring war upon the startle pattern and its attendant choking. Regarding the hips, Verstegen is certainly including the piriformi, which act as guy wires traveling in a near-precessional direction in order to stabilize the spine. In this role they also resemble flying buttresses found on many of the great cathedrals of Europe. The purpose of a buttress is to resist the lateral forces pushing a wall or arch outwards and redirect these forces to the ground. Piriformis originates at the sacrum, which has been described as the keystone of the arch, thus making the metaphor more complete though overused. Another set of guy-wires/ropes extends at a near right angle downward (precessionally) from the piriformi. These are sartorius, gracilis and semitendinosis. This triad of stability, sharing an attachment point at the goose's foot of the inside tibia (pes anserinus) can get pretty congested (Davies), begging for a little extra work on the part of the masseur. You won't read this in a massage textbook, but sartorius has also been dubbed the "honeymoon muscle." Sartorius abducts and laterally rotates the thigh, causing the vagina of the female partner to become "well-exposed," shall we say. Now you'll never forget the function of sartorius ever again. “Diana Rigg (British actress) is built like a brick mausoleum with insufficient flying buttresses.” – film critic (and moron) John Simon, 1970 “They (actors) can’t help how they look, any more than John Simon can help looking like a rat.” – reputable film critic Roger Ebert “The player owes the gallery as much as an actor owes the audience.” – tennis great Bill Tilden "The audience is not the least important actor in the play, and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces." – Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), English novelist/playwright Speaking of rodents, let's digress for a quick moment to note that the word 'muscle' itself comes from Latin musculus, which meant "little mouse." The word was the diminutive form of mus, meaning 'mouse' plain and simple. The Romans perceived both a mousy shape and movement in certain muscles, particularly the biceps. The Greeks were in on the act as well, and in their language both 'mouse' and 'muscle' were called mys, giving us the prefix 'myo'. Even in Arabic, adalah means 'muscle' while adal means 'field mouse.' The similarity of mys to the Greek mystikos, by the way, perks up the desire to speculate if there's a deeper connection to experiences of the mystical persuasion. Aside: In the process of channeling forces of compression downwards, a flying buttress helps stabilize an arch so it doesn't collapse outwards. As arches and buttresses were refined over the centuries, cathedrals reached enormous heights whose walls were more window than solid material. Similarly, a healthy piriformis may play a "push up" role toward the sacrum, providing greater stability and lift for the spine. If so, we've gleaned additional insight into Ida Rolf's fabled skyhook, and piriformis may play a key role once its trigger points have been addressed and pliancy has been restored. Piriformis, by the way, is considered a triangular muscle. Per Earls & Myers (2010), triangular muscles in general provide control of movement whereas square sheets such as the QL provide stability. Note that ilio-psoas roughly falls into the triangular category. “The arch never sleeps.” – Indian proverb “Stability is not immobility.” – Prince Klemens von Metternich of Austria (1773-1859) Regarding alignment, we can rephrase this as “myofascial spans existing in a state of cooperating balances,” a process that begins to occur spontaneously as restrictions/inhibitions release their grip. In the popular literature (such as Readers Digest, Redbook, Cosmopolitan) people tend to describe this experience as “letting go,” and they’re not far off. Rolf describes it, very literally, as “uplift,” as if an imaginary skyhook were pulling us upward like a sailboat being sucked forward into the wind, a phenomenon known as lift. This skyhook experience in and of itself may be the prime indicator for that elusive and hard-to-define state known as well-being. (You may never see this assertion expressed anywhere else, ever, especially in books with the words "well being" in the title.) Contrast this space with the sagging body of depression or a car running on non-aligned tires. Regarding the shoulder blades, trainer Kit Laughlin of Australia offers a related take: As we become more tense or as we’re exposed to any frustrating experience, the shoulders move upward of their own accord, an aspect noted by Pierce-Jones in his description of the startle pattern. Recall the last truly relaxed person you saw: they displayed much more open space between the ears and the shoulders, suggesting that relaxed people carry their shoulders lower. Angry people, on the other hand, can hold their shoulders up around their ears. In my own experience, I've noticed that people who we label as "assholes" often have raised shoulders. In an exchange of e-mails, Laughlin, in all good humor, didn't dispute my contention that raised shoulders can be considered one form of "asshole indicator." "Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole." – The Modern Lovers Be that as it may, the thin shoulder-blade/scapula, much like the rib, is optimally designed not to be pulled this way or that but to float. It acts like a railroad roundhouse with several competing vectors of pull. (In this regard, Clay refers to the scapula as a Swiss Army Knife.) Toward the spine and beneath the shoulder blade, the rhombus/parallelogram-shaped rhomboid pulls in one direction. One the other side, the serratus (from the Latin serrare, to saw) anterior pulls the scapula forward. Per Myers, the rhombus and the saw act as one continuous unit designed to suspend the shoulder blade between them, even helping it sit still when necessary to provide a fulcrum for arm elevation. What can also throw a monkey wrench (pardon the name of the wretched song by that pathetic foofaraw known as the Foo Fighters) into this balancing act is a tight pec major, which according to Baker is virtually continuous with the deltoid. Per Davies, when the pecs tighten up they pull the shoulder blade forward, as evidenced by winging or tilting outward from the ribcage. Pec minor, deep to pec major, can wreak similar havoc upon trapezius, and may be the key toward releasing it. The rhomboids then play tit-for-tat by tightening back in a form of eccentric contraction. It’s exhausting work and it sets up trigger points. During eccentric ('away from center') contraction, tension increases in a muscle while it’s lengthening. For example, slowly lowering weights after a contraction of the biceps, what a weightlifter may call a "negative," is believed to foster greater muscle growth than the opposite movement alone, or concentric contraction. Whether true or not, the evidence says that eccentric contraction paves the way for trigger points, which will obediently reduce arm extension when all is said and done. "Control the negative." – heard at the gym "Never allow your form to suffer for the sake of getting in an extra repetition or two." – Owen McKibbin, Men's Health Cover Model Workout (2003) "What gives Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great expressive composers never sacrificed form to expression." – Camille Saint-Saëns, French composer (1835-1921) "The spirit can assert itself only through the medium of clear form." – Gustav Mahler, Austro-Bohemian composer (1860-1911), whose music was banned in much of Europe during the Nazi era "In a fight, technique is always a better asset than strength." – David Lawrence, boxing coach, Gleason’s Gym, Brooklyn, New York Another key indicator for rhomboid strain, found in and near their tendons, is a gritty/gravel-like feel when manipulated by massage. Some prim-and-proper clinicians (dedicated followers of fashion) call this "palpable crepitus," but calling them "crunchies" on your next massage exam should not be grounds for expulsion. Experienced masseurs can actually "hear" these crunchies (as Dr. Mally calls them) with their fingers. Better yet, do some arm rotations in a quiet room and listen for these crunchies yourself. The crunch comes from calcium deposits embedded within tendon, a red flag for muscle strain. Our manipulations here on these so-called "calcium boils" can help dissolve and flush them away. According to Endo (1995), the ancient texts state that the patient who is filled with toxins is of the jitsu (full/protruding) condition or disposition. Perhaps one of these toxins is excess calcium which we can pour over our Rice Krispies to produce their famous snap, crackle and pop in the scapula, which happen to be key indicators for rhomboid trigger points. Not to be outdone, TPs in the nearby supraspinatus and subscapularis can produce a pronounced yet treatable clickety-clack along the track whenever we elevate or retract our arm. Chaitow notes that calcium build-up is also central to the issue of unresolved trigger points. In a trigger point, he says, calcium accumulates and the spindle lacks enough energy to drive the excess outside the cell, where it belongs. The core of the trigger point is now deficient in oxygen and it's drowning, perhaps explaining the increased energy consumption of the point. (A perpetuating factor for a trigger point is lack of oxygenation of its related muscle. This deficit also hinders the removal of waste products.) "In a large mass of muscle deprived of its circulation, the rate at which the recovery process can go on, after severe stimulation, depends on the rate at which oxygen can reach the fibres by diffusion." – Archibald Hill, of England, winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine. Hill's assertion forms the core of the Pfrimmer Technique. Unlike most others in the literature, Chaitow (1996) refers to this core center point as a "nidus," and it's a very accurate use of the word. Nidus comes from the Latin for "nest" or "breeding place," and it basically means "a place where bacteria or other organisms originate, deposit, lodge and multiply." In colloquial terms, nidus means "ground zero," and it's the bullseye point for hyper-excitability. Per Chaitow (Positional Release Techniques, 1997) calcium buildup at the trigger point now prevents the free flow of the neurotransmitter ACTH (acetycholine), so the brain tries to pump in more ACTH than is necessary. The muscle takes the easy way out, choosing to maintain the contracture rather than dispense with the culprit we call calcium. Jelvéus (2011), probably on cue from Chaitow, offers a similar take. Regarding the cause of trigger points, he says, some form of trauma damages the end sacs of the sarcoplasmic reticulum as well as the sarcolemma. A sarcolemma is the cell membrane of a muscle cell. This damage produces an overabundance of calcium ions. The main function of the sarcoplasmic reticulum is to store these calcium ions. "When I get up in the morning, it sounds like I’m making popcorn." – Lawrence Taylor, New York Giants linebacker Calcium of course is an essential ingredient of bone. One theory holds that when knots are left untreated, the body begins to mistake them for bone and starts to form calcium deposits upon them. Such deposits and their resultant adhesions can also affect the pulley/patella. If it doesn't glide easily, here's your possible reason. Similarly, it's said that if any of the 26+ bones of the foot become displaced, nature fills in that wayward joint with a calcium deposit, a Gorilla Glue of sorts. In the foot, the calcium deposits may take the form of crystals (some call them "spicules," which sounds rather painful), embedded in the fascia. The heel bone of the foot is called the calcaneus, from the Latin ‘calx’ meaning limestone. Possibly to the Romans the heel resembled a lump of similar chalky material. Curiously, 'calx' is also the origin of the word calcium. Spicule: a minute, sharp-pointed object or structure that is typically present in large numbers, such as a fine particle of ice. Said Ingham in 1938: when examined under a microscope, acid crystals that form in nerve endings of the feet resemble particles of frost. They clog things up like grit in the fuel line of a car. Says Ingham, as long as even the slightest tenderness remains in the nerve endings of the feet, we're still fighting to break up and scatter these crystalline deposits. These points of congestion, she says, are "potent poisons." Perhaps we can make the same link for the rhomboid and its role in helping the shoulder blade float in mid-air, so to speak, an indicator that the mythical skyhook is about to make his long-anticipated yet oft-resisted appearance. "Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops." – journalist H.L. Mencken However, for now, and for all the talk about whether the scapula is a knife or a roundhouse or even a detector of eccentric assholes, the strongest analogy seems to be that of the counterweight, which most any academic writer would henceforth abbreviate as CTWT, or perhaps TWIT. A counterweight is an ingenious engineering device that we see in elevators, derricks, railroad crossing gates and cranes. If we want to lift an object with our arm, the counterweight (scapula) provides opposing force that balances out the load and thus assists with the lift. We save energy and extend the life of the apparatus. The motor doesn't have to work so hard, nor does the musculature. For verification, just try lifting your arm while you hold your scapula in place. You'll also get a glimpse of the contention that the scapula, like the clavicle, is really a glorified spacer and attachment depot, in scapula's case an attachment area for up to 17 muscles. In this sense the clavicle functions like a strut on a car, designed to space key structures at an optimal distance apart. As a result it's susceptible to compressive stress. To wrap things up with our plant analogy, most plants naturally aim for the sunlight, which unlike Katrina we need not walk on, in a straight or erect (for which the Greek word is ortho) manner (for which the Greek word is trop). In plants, growing in a direct line toward the stimulus is known as the ortho-tropic effect. That’s also the reason we build highways with grooves, so the road surface can expand without buckling in intense heat. Combine strong sun with a root system (core) that’s loose and deep, and Verstegen’s claim of adding an inch to one’s frame may ring a bell of truth, courtesy of the skyhook. Prior to now, the only purpose of a skyhook was to find a gullible Boy Scout at summer camp and send him tent-to-tent with instructions not to return until he finds one (or a garbage-can opener or a left-handed smoke shifter or rock stretcher, whatever the case may be). Effortless "In all activities of life, the secret of efficiency lies in an ability to combine two seemingly incompatible states: a state of maximum activity and a state of maximum relaxation." – Aldous Huxley Even though it plays a pivotal role in our little presentation here, the skyhook will not remain on center stage all by itself. It’s now time to introduce another marvel of technology, the diminutive trimtab, found on rudders and stabilizers of boats and planes. Picture a huge cruise liner visiting ports of call in the Caribbean or even making a transatlantic journey. As we’ve discussed, this ship will spend much of its time veering off course. By adjusting the rudder, obviously, the ship’s crew and/or on-board computer will continuously maneuver the craft back on track. The problem is that on a huge ship or plane the rudder faces tremendous resistance from the water or the air. To help overcome this resistance, German aero-engineers in the early 1900s developed a mini-rudder that hinges onto the main rudder, and they termed it a trim-tab, though its use may extend much farther back in nautical history. With a relatively effortless motion a crew member can flick the trimtab to the right or left, thus creating a vacuum that the main rudder gets sucked into, greatly reducing resistance to its movement (sound familiar?). A massive ocean liner or jetliner can now alter its course with a figurative flick of the wrist. Once the craft is in motion, an experienced pilot, through proper manipulation of the trimtab, can maintain a steady course with virtually no effort, thus improving propulsive efficiency. The trimtab, moving in the opposite direction of the rudder, thus reduces the workload of the pilot, allowing him or her to concentrate on other tasks, including lunch. Also, by reducing drag, deft use of the trimtab increases fuel efficiency. In this sense, trimtabbing is directly related to the Buddhist concept of 'upaya' or "skillful means." “Swing Easy, Hit Hard.” – title of 1965 book by golf Hall-of-Famer Julius Boros Said Buckminster Fuller, the great genius of the 20th century, if you need to accomplish dynamic results in life, then operating like a trimtab – providing a slight change in the initial conditions of an endeavor – can help provide the spark, the breakthrough ingredient, to get you there. Says Fuller’s gravestone in a manner characteristically terse: “Call Me Trimtab.” "It is not the horse that draws the cart, but the oats." – Russian proverb "Marry me and I’ll never look at another horse." – Groucho Marx, A Day at the Races "The horse must have confidence in you." – equestrian Rachel Hunt "The test of a good jockey isn’t the races that he should win. It’s the ones he wins that he shouldn’t win." – British jockey Charlie Smirke (1906-93) "Horses don’t know the odds." – Nick Zito, horse trainer "Horse racing is animated roulette." – sports writer Roger Kahn "The stupider the peasant, the better the horse understands him." – Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright and short-story writer That said, and with the skyhook already providing lift, are there some trim-tabbian steps we can take to further elevate our performance to levels that are often given lip service but rarely achieved? These optimal states are suggested periodically in the literature of self-improvement and sports performance, but little in the form of concrete guidance is generally provided. The image and reality of the trimtab, however, might be our candle in the dark, our “performance supplement,” so to speak, far more effective and useful than the dubious pills, powders and snake oil we see advertised in body-building magazines. "I try to do the right thing at the right time. They may just be little things, but usually they make the difference between winning and losing." – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Los Angeles Lakers “Whatever is useful is common and ugly. The most useful part of a house is the bathroom." – Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), French poet and dramatist First up, let’s get back to the thoughts of Moshe Feldenkrais, whose book The Potent Self belongs on the shelf of any serious athletic trainer, along with the groundbreaking works of Rolf and Maslow. Note that Feldenkrais wrote this material in the 1940s, though it didn’t see the light of day until four decades later. Said Feldenkrais: Watch a master of their craft at work. You'll see that what distinguishes them is an absence of effort. Effort indicates imperfect action. Masters (like a trim-tabbed rudder) seem to meet no resistance. For instance, watch an expert woodworker as he uses a saw. He'll make special little actions with his arms and hands, but the forward and backward movements are actually initiated at the hips (in line with Snead’s advice to Eisenhower). “An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in the subject, and how to avoid them." – Werner Heisenberg (Germany), Nobel Prize winner in physics, 1932 “A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations that require the use of his superior skill." – Apollo astronaut Frank Borman The woodworker's action displays not only poised simplicity (a key to consistency) but serenity of attitude. The analogy here is more than fitting: fluidity in the pelvic basin acts as the trimtab, in this case, for the movement of the trunk and arms. The co-existing state of serenity, a variation on well-being, is our secondary key-indicator that optimal movement has been achieved. At a minimum, diminished restriction in the trunk can add 60 yards to our golf drive with the same degree of effort, per golf legend and author Bobby Jones. A similar phenomena applies to baseball pitchers, especially in the clutch or under fatigue. This is the perilous moment when the core muscles, particularly rectus abdominus, choose to run amok. “The player should move freely beneath himself." (in other words, at the hip) – English pro golfer Abe Mitchell (1887-1947) This assertion is also backed up by observing the role of the vital shen-men point of the ear, found in the ear's upper-middle portion, just beneath the ridge. A so-called "master point" (electronically active), shen-men has also been called "divine gate" and its stimulation is said to promote a sense of overall well-being. Note that in reflexology terms the shen-men is located in the ear's pelvic basin. Shen (pronounced 'shun') by itself has been translated not as the source of the word shenanigans but as the intention and vitality behind Qi, regardless of any tomfoolery or cheap wordplay involved. “The best carpenters leave the fewest chips.” – German proverb “You must leave no trace of yourself.” – Shunryu Suzuki, Buddhist teacher (1904-1971) “It is no semantic accident that ‘posture’ and ‘attitude’ apply to both the physical and psychological domains.” – Dr. Irvin Korr, osteopath (1904-2004) “Not much more than a hundred years ago the term ‘attitude’ was used exclusively with reference to a person’s posture. To describe someone as adopting a ‘threatening attitude’ or a ‘defiant attitude’ was to refer to his physical mien.” – Vienna-born psychologist Marie Jahoda, Attitudes, 1966 'Haltung': a German noun that describes both posture and demeanor; the word also entails composure and our deportment. A suitable English synonym is 'mien,' meaning one's facial expression or manner in the sense of indicating disposition; our demeanor, air, bearing or comportment. Aside: Attitude can also mean "stance" or "orientation." The word comes from the Italian attitudine, meaning fitness or posture, from the Latin aptus, meaning fit or fitting. In aviation, attitude (similar to 'pitch') refers to the orientation (posture?) of an aircraft relative to earth's horizon. Another aspect of flight is known as 'yaw', the craft's deviation from following a straight line. An aircraft is also susceptible to 'roll', when the tip of one wing is higher than the other. These three elements – pitch, yaw, and roll – can also be visualized as the prime descriptors of the positioning of our vital PC muscle (reset button) whose vibrance, or lack thereof, is intimately connected with our posture, not to mention attitude and sense of well-being. Garfield puts a different spin on this phenomena: When we are physically relaxed, the body seems to respond more directly and precisely to our volition. We’re more in touch with whole-body movement, and our very thoughts are better converted into the movements we desire. In fact, the line between volition and the movement it calls for begins to blur. On top of this, we’re more aware of how other players are thinking and feeling. It's not uncommon to hear a gifted athlete describe how they saw a play develop even before it happened, and it's doubtful whether this zoned-in acuity could express itself from within a state of agitation and upset. “Players taught to watch the man with the ball leaves them totally unprepared for the next move, which is always dictated by a player without the ball.” – Tommy Docherty, former manager of Manchester United “You create shots for yourself by what you do without the ball more than what you do after you get it.” – Steve Alford, head coach, UCLA basketball “Be aware of your opponent's sword without looking at it.” – Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, ~1645 “It doesn’t matter who scores the point, it’s who can get the ball to the scorer.” – Larry Bird, Boston Celtics “Pelé made his goals because another player passed to him at the proper time.” – Pelé “The quality of the pass leads directly to the quality of the shot.” – Pete Carril, head basketball coach at Princeton “If you can’t pass, you can’t play.” – basketball coach Dean Smith, to Michael Jordan In a nod to the earlier work of the Greens, Garfield asserts that volition is the very foundation of human endeavors. Per the Greens, volition is "the heart of the mind-body problem.” (Instead of 'volition,' perhaps we should use the more current term of ‘intention.’) Back to Garfield, the conversion of volition/intention into physical results is not accomplished by force. It is accomplished by imagining and visualizing the intended result from within a relaxed state. "Intent is everything. One does not jump. One lifts into the air." – dancer Agnes de Mille (1905-93) "It took me years to figure out that you don’t fall into a tub of butter, you jump for it." – Oscar-winning actress Claudette Colbert (1903-1996) "Muscles are, in a most intimate and peculiar sense, the organs of the will." – psychologist G. Stanley Hall (1846-1924) "Instead of forcing and working my legs, they reacted as my mind was thinking." – Don Hemery, English gold medalist in the 400 meter hurdle, 1968 "Mind is everything. Muscle? ... pieces of rubber." – Olympic track legend Paavo Nurmi of Finland (1897-1973) "The body has a physical response to mental images of winning." – Randy Couture, mixed martial artist "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." – novelist Kurt Vonnegut The word 'erector,' as in 'erector spinae,' is commonly translated from the Latin in the sense of 'building upward.' However, it's possible the word 'erect' stems from the Latin erigere, which suggests a lifting upward in the sense of being pulled. If so, 'erector spinae' can be translated as 'spinal skyhooks' or even 'back pulleys.' Perhaps the Greens earned a heads-up on the matter because they accepted Eastern variants on the topic of volition, namely a definition framed in terms of the activation of ki energy. Their research also described the effects of vipassana meditation, a topic not totally unrelated to mysticism. Likewise, in her study of Thai massage theory, Apfelbaum (2004) noted that whenever we press the starting point of any energy line, we must visualize and imagine that we're activating the flow of energy along its entire length. "Our muscles should obey our will. Our will should not be dominated by the reflex actions of our muscles." – German physical trainer Joseph Pilates (1883-1967) “The will is never free – it is always attached to an object, a purpose. It is simply the engine in the car – it can’t steer.” – Joyce Cary, Anglo-Irish novelist “The will must be stronger than the skill.” – Muhammad Ali "The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be." – Bruce Lee, whose punch was clocked at 118 miles per hour "His bat was part of his nervous system." – British playwright Harold Pinter, regarding cricketer Sir Len Hutton "Some people attach snowboards to their feet, very few attach them to their souls." – Shaun White, three-time Olympic gold medalist, inching perilously close to cheesiness Our good friend with the non-pronounceable name, Mihaly, caught wind of this phenomena a different way by saying “channeling of attention to a limited set of goals – and means – is what allows effortless action within self-created boundaries.” "Power is never stable when it is boundless." – Tacitus, first century AD We all have our individual goals, but the means – at least in the case of the woodworker and President Eisenhower – originate in the hip (arse), the trimtab point of which may well be the sacro-iliac joint, located at or near the point where the stress lines of the body cross. A good example is the 'X-Factor' determined by the cooperative motions of the right glutes and left lat combined with the left glutes and right lat. These muscle groups, whose lines of force cross at or near the junction of the sacrum and the ilium (upper crest of the pelvis; Latin for "the flanks"), are functional partners that create "paired force" designed in part to prevent our bodies from twisting and torquing out of control (dis-tortion). This movement continues right into the shoulder, for as Cash reminds us, even though the lats cover most of the lower back (from the Latin 'latissimus,' or 'widest'), they are really a shoulder muscle. Though large and strong, the force of their contraction is focused at a small area of attachment at the humerus. "Little hinges swing big doors." – self-help writer W. Clement Stone (1902-2002) “Life can turn on a dime." – American proverb “A very little key will open a very heavy door." – Charles Dickens, subtitle to The Strange Gentleman (1836) Next we move to the neck, whose fluidity can be compromised by the overuse of sheer willpower. Gripped by the fear of failure, said Feldenkrais, we over-mobilize our power here. That is to say we act too quickly and intently, thinking these attributes will certainly ensure success. However, we’re throwing away the elements of grace, coordination and appropriate movement, thinking that hurry and effort can supplant skill and discipline, much less enable us to wield a saw in a proficient manner. "He who never hurries is always on time." – Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940), Russian novelist/playwright/physician "Never hurry when it counts." – pro golfer JoAnne Carner "He who hurries cannot walk with dignity." – Chinese proverb On the contrary, Feldenkrais said, hurry (an indicator of trepidation) always indicates doubt in our ability to accomplish a task or cope with a situation. Says Myers, loosening the neck is often the key to "intransigent" problems between the shoulder blades, in the back and even in the hips. Don't ignore levator scapula ("the shoulder blade's elevator"), attaching to the transverse processes of C1 thru C4 and crossing underneath the trapezius at about a 90-degree (precessional) angle. Travell & Simons called it the "stiff neck muscle." Concerning Myers' intransigence (nothing personal), our amiable author could have also chosen the word "intractable," which would have been more precise in this case. Checking the dictionary for accepted synonyms for intractable, it's curious that two physical terms pop up: 1) inflexible, a topic we've beaten into the ground; 2) and better yet, stiff-necked, which is where Myers placed our intransigence in the first place. The antonym for our current word in question is 'tractable,' which can mean 'malleable,' or something or someone who can bend without breaking, which the knot in our piece of wood precludes. "Flexibility overcomes rigidity.” – phrase in judo, which literally means "the way of flexibility" "The more intractable the problem, the better.” – Werner Erhard "In the middle of the difficulty lies the opportunity.” – Einstein "The mere fact that you have obstacles to overcome is in your favor.” – Robert Collier, self-help writer (1885-1950) "The obstacle IS the path.” – Zen proverb "He is the best sailor who can sail within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.” – Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Scottish novelist "The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.” – Nietzsche Working on the neck, especially in a trigger-point capacity, is the trim-tab technique directly aimed at sharpening our proprioceptive skills, which may diminish with age if left unattended. These skills include the ability to evaluate spatial parameters and respond to them quickly; to experience good timing (which suffers from trigger point activity); the ability to execute precise movements; and enhanced peripheral vision. "Nothing is important except releasing the ball at the right instant ... accuracy means less." – John Hadl, pro-bowl quarterback, San Diego Chargers "Good teams beat you with speed. Great teams beat you with timing and spacing." – Jason Kidd, 10-time NBA all-star "Timing is everything. Five minutes make the difference between victory and defeat." – Horatio Nelson, British naval commander "As your eyes relax you see the whole field better." – Chris Collinsworth, NFL wide receiver and broadcaster, 1-13-18 "Pelé has about 25% better peripheral vision than other athletes." – Pelé biographer Joe Marcus "A good midfielder has eyes in the back of his head, that's the secret in a nutshell." – Ernst Happel, Austrian football manager "My father could look straight ahead but concentrate on something on the very edge of his vision, almost nearly behind him." – Dale Earnhardt Jr., NASCAR driver and TV analyst Note: we never pull on (traction) the neck unless we've received advanced training and certification in this regard. It's not necessary to fulfill our purposes. Nor do we move the neck in more than one direction at the same time. That's for chiropractors. It’s also been suggested that proprioceptive improvement also reduces the incidence of ankle sprain. One study of Italian soccer players found that such methods reduced injuries by 87%. (Prevention of ACL Injuries in Soccer; Caraffe, Cerulli, Projetti, Aisa, Rizzo; published in Knee Surgery, Sports, Traumatology, Arthroscopy; chapter 4, pp. 19-21, Springer-Verlag, 1996) The ankle is the joint most prone to injury (Gibbons), who traces much of the problem to inhibition/weakness in the glutes, exacerbated by a psoas who confuses himself with a stick of pepperoni or a smoked kielbasa. Says Gibbons, a weakened gluteus medius can sponsor over-pronation of the sub-talar joint (where the talus meets the heel). The foot now lands more on its inner margin, and this can contribute to shin splints, plantar fasciitis, or problems with the achilles. (How many authors have ever suggested that plantar fasciitis might begin in the psoas?) It should be noted that Davies traces ankle sprain and/or weakness, in part, to trigger-point activity in the peroneals (foot stirrups) of the outer calf. Persistent TPs, he says, take the stretch out of the peroneus, placing the ankles in jeopardy and referring pain there. (If a client complains about ankle sprain, ask them if they heard a "pop." If so, they may have torn a ligament.) "A tight muscle will pull a joint into a dysfunctional position, and a weak muscle will allow it to happen." – John Gibbons, The Vital Glutes, (2014) "The attempt to restore joint integrity before soothingly restoring muscle and ligamentous normality is putting the cart before the horse." – Andrew Taylor Still, "father" of osteopathy Note: In a joint, fascia provides almost as much stability as does ligament. (Starlanyl 2013) "It’s the fascia that crosses joints, not the muscles." – Ida Rolf Let’s move north to the head, where too much energy is usually concentrated. (Congested ki inhibits the healing process and leads to a type of angst.) It’s a fundamental tenet of bodywork that massage pulls energy down from here and disperses its elsewhere, and we won’t belabor that well-established point once again. But let’s briefly revisit Timothy Gallwey’s 1974 classic The Inner Game of Tennis for a couple new insights. First, says Gallwey, thinking too much and the resultant trying-too-hard produces muscle conflict. Expressed a different way, over-evaluation (the paralysis of over-analysis) leads to tightened and confused musculature. "He thought thrice before acting. Twice would have been enough." – Confucius "In analyzing complicated variations one must examine each branch of the tree once – and once only." – Alexander Kotov, Russian chess grandmaster/author (1913-1981) “A wrong decision is generally less disastrous than indecision.” – German golfer Bernhard Langer, two-time Masters champion “Indecision is actually the individual’s decision to fail.” – Raymond Charles Barker, ‘New Thought’ proponent (1911-88) “A good player who needs too much time can suddenly become a poor player.” – Johann Cruyff, Dutch football great “The more you reason the less you create.” – suspense writer Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) “When cerebral processes enter into sports, you start screwing up.” – Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee, Boston Red Sox pitcher “Thinking instead of acting is the number-one golf disease.” – Sam Snead To compound matters, in tennis as well as most sports we can’t think fast enough to produce a successful round of action. For instance, some baseball announcers have claimed that the most difficult task in all of professional sports is to hit a 97-mile-per-hour fastball thrown from 60 feet away. (The great Ted Williams is also credited with this observation.) To hit this ball successfully, virtually no reaction time is possible. Composure and informed anticipation take precedence over mere “thinking.” |