Life
Moves©Vol. 1, No.
2, September 1998
|
Life
Moves© |
|
| Self-Care News You Can Use |
Vol. 1, No.
2, September 1998
|
In an article entitled, appropriately enough, "Emptying Your Cup: Non-verbal Awareness and General-Semantics", published in ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Volume 55, Number 1, Spring 1998, I provide basic instructions for learning how to `empty your cup'. The article outlines how to practice looking, listening, tasting, feeling, experiencing, etc., at the silent, non-verbal level. This kind of practice, which some call "mindfulness", can give you essential skills for body-mind self-care. It forms one of the basic aspects of the Alexander Technique.
A simple experiment in non-verbal awareness follows:
Spend the next few minutes
letting sounds from your surroundings come to you. Notice any
tendency you have to label what you hear or to talk to yourself in any
other way. How well can you put aside these labels and bring yourself
back to the sounds?
If you found that you had difficulty not talking to yourself, remember the importance of not immediately jumping in with judgements of right or wrong but rather of accepting, although not necessarily liking, what happens. Notice the quiet space between your thoughts as you repeat the experiment now.
Learning to turn down the volume of internal chatter even a little can help you to become more awake and present. You have more of a chance to receive new signals, to learn new things about yourself and the world. This can help you adapt better to changing circumstances. It can also make life more fun.
McKenzie
Approach to Back and Neck Care Available
The McKenzie Method of mechanical diagnosis and therapy provides self-treatment skills to people with back and neck pain. According to Robin McKenzie, a physical therapist from New Zealand, "If you adopt certain positions or perform certain movements that cause your back to go out, then if we understand the problem fully, we can identify other movements and other positions that, if practiced and adopted, can reverse the process.
McKenzie's work began with a chance event 40 years ago while working with a patient with a severe case of back and leg pain. The patient arrived one day and was instructed to lie down on a treatment table which had its head end raised for a previous knee patient. When McKenzie entered the room 10 minutes later, he was surprised to find the patient lying face down with his back in an extreme arch. At the time not a recommended position! However, the patient's leg pain had completely disappeared while his back pain had greatly diminished.
McKenzie followed the spark of interest that this incident struck in him. Challenged to reconsider traditional treatments, McKenzie developed an approach that emphasizes a careful examination of positions and movements in order to design a progressive, individualized program of exercise and postural care.
The McKenzie method provides tools for quickly determining people's responsiveness to this form of treatment. Its emphasis on patient self-care provides tools for reducing the probability of recurrence. Please call me for more information.
Born
On Denial
A joke' (perhaps not as far from the truth as we would like):
A woman who smoked became
more and more upset about what she read about the relation between smoking
and cancer. So she gave up reading
Important
note:
This material is
meant for your information and not intended to substitute for evaluation
or
treatment by a physician
or other health-care professional.
Copyright Conditions: This material is copyright by Bruce I. Kodish. However, permission is hereby granted to download, copy and distribute the text to others if (1) the text is not altered, and (2) there is no charge to the recipient, and (3) this copyright notice and conditions are attached. It is a copyright violation to distribute this material in any way for which remuneration is received without the prior permission of Bruce I. Kodish. Contact: backsolutions@aol.com Return to Top of Page