Have you ever had a bodywork session where everything just feels right in your world? Your body feels relaxed and oddly light. Movements feel easier. Your mind is clear and less anxious. You’re ready to move forward with a positive attitude. You may be thinking I’m talking about a traditional ‘massage’, because massage is primarily designed to reduce stress. Not it. This is about Functional Neurology sessions. And there’s a reason you’re so relaxed after this work.
Now, before you think this is Gospel, allow me to dissuade you from that notion. This is pure neurotheory. No proof, simply educated guessing. But, it’s been a theme more and more lately. Clients realize how fantastic they feel experiencing these sessions. This is true even when they don’t think they have much going on.
We Hold Onto A LOT
We are constantly living in an overwhelmed, overstimulated environment. Each of us handles it differently. Some are constantly running on empty trying to put out all the fires. Others are riding a flow state into the next thing without much acknowledgement of ‘stress’, although the stress still exists. Silently building. These physical, mental, and emotional stressors can be many layers deep. And we just push through it, move on to the next thing, because it’s what we think we’re supposed to do we’ve been programmed to believe is normal.
Honestly, we get used to holding onto a lot of stuff. It always amazes me what we get used to and don’t realize it until it’s no longer there. You need to regulate before you rewire. You need to be able to manage and process the threat response before your Nervous System can take control of the relearning and enter a relaxed state of being.
Stimulus and Stress
In Functional Neurology sessions we are using various assessments to discover where and how the Nervous System is responding to stress. When we discover an abnormal processing issue, or a threat response, we help the Nervous System decrease the threat and get back on track. Using neurostimulus is what makes it so oddly relaxing. Neurostimulus uses our proprioception sense of movement, action, and location. Specifically applied neurostimulus; the sense of pressure, sharpness, stinging, soft touch, vibration, etc, sends information through the spinal pathways to see if your Nervous System responds well to it or not.
Most of this is what I refer to as static noise. When there is so much daily noise going on in the background, we may have a difficult time putting the proper resources into healing what needs to be healed or focusing on the task at hand. Which increases the noise, which increases the threat response, which increases the burden and overwhelm. Neurofeedback loop of insanity.
A Neurotheory
What I believe happens is that each corrective accepted by the Nervous System is essentially letting go of the burden. We’re walking around holding all of these stressors and we get to set some down and walk away. You feel lighter, more fluid, relaxed, and at ease, because you’re no longer lugging it around. Threats are decreased and the fires are out.
By helping your Systems regulate before rewiring, your Nervous System gets to take a deep breath and reevaluate its priorities. And how incredibly relaxing is that!??!
The fact that we also add on an incredibly gentle and effective soft tissue treatment PLUS self-care to encourage the Systems to continue letting go doesn’t hurt either. And that’s a neurotheory for another day.
