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Keeping In Touch...
To Our Clients, From Your Partners In Bodywork
OUR NOVEMBER 2006 NEWSLETTER OUR JUNE 2007 NEWSLETTER OUR NOVEMBER 2007 NEWSLETTER
MAY 2008
VISCERAL MANIPULATION AND THE GALL BLADDER
Chakras, Your Energy Stations (Part 1) The word chakra means disk, vortex, or wheel. Each chakra is a swirling station of energy positioned at one of seven points, from the base of your spine to the top of your head. Electrical oscillations in the skin above the chakras are in the frequency of 100 to 1,600 cycles per second, as contrasted with 0 to 100 in the brain, 225 in the muscles, and 250 in the heart.
Seven major chakras are usually distinguished, although some healers identify only five and others as high as ten. Each chakra influences the organs, muscles, ligaments, veins, and all other body systems within its energy field. Chakras also influence the endocrine system and so are strongly involved with your moods, personality, and overall health. This is why we will sometimes include chakra activation and balancing as part of your treatment.
The first three chakras are personal and human in nature. They concern themselves with the human world and all that that entails. Their primary purpose and concerns are survival. The fourth chakra is a very interesting center because it has the capacity to orient itself to the manifested world or to turn itself to the realm of spirit. Also, the fourth chakra can function as a bridge to link the inner and outer worlds. The fifth, sixth and seventh centers are transpersonal and spiritual in nature. They do not concern themselves with the human world. Each center thus has its own perspective and its own needs. To move through the chakra system and experience the world is like using an elevator in a high-rise building. If we get out on each floor and gaze out the window, the world outside will look different at each floor. (Source: Care and Feeding of the Energetic Core, Karen Custer, p. 42)
The first (root) chakra sits at the base of the spine. This chakra is the foundation of our most visceral drives and, as such, is concerned with the health of our body, food, shelter, and our basic life connection to those around us. Thus, when we gaze out the window of the first chakra, we would ask questions like: Is there food for me to eat? Do I have shelter? Can I keep myself warm? Am I safe from danger? When the need for physical safety has been met, then this center allows us to feel safe. The adrenal gland is the endocrine gland most closely related to the first chakra.
Problems with this center can manifest as feelings of spaciness and basic insecurities with regard to our physical well being. Also, problems with this center can show up as weight or food issues, poor bowel function, and fears of abandonment.
In a treatment session, have you ever heard us say, “I sense that you’re not grounded”? You probably won’t be surprised to hear that we have several methods of helping you become grounded, most of which you could easily sleep through. When the first chakra is activated, you will feel comfortable with having a physical body; your feet will feel like they are firmly connected to the ground; and you will feel secure, strong, and substantial.
The second chakra is a sacred vessel, a womblike container of imagination and creative impulse. It is a protected domain, where the creative force can flourish. The womb chakra extends from the top of the pelvic bone to the belly button. The domain of this chakra is the emotional body. It encompasses the small and large intestines as well as the organs of human creation—the womb, ovaries, and fallopian tubes. The glands related to this center are the gonads.
The second chakra can be thought of as the human heart, for here is the realm of personal relationship and the concerns of connection and boundaries. It also focuses on patterns of exchange. What do I want from another person? What do I do to get that? Are my transactions fair and respectful to me and others? Do I feel I have gotten enough of what I need? Within this center are also our sexuality, imagination, and our need for self-expression.
Problems within the second chakra show up in the forms of excessive daydreaming, sexual dysfunction, difficulty either giving or receiving, strong rejection issues, blocked creativity, and never feeling what one has is enough. We turn others into our parents or we try to parent them because we are unable to have an equal relationship based on love and honesty.
The third or solar plexus chakra is the force that maintains your individual identity. This chakra holds an energy of discrimination and assertion, which is why it is also called the power chakra. Encompassing the area between the belly button and the rib cage, it governs the liver, gall bladder, spleen, stomach, pancreas, kidneys, and adrenals. In the upper center of the chakra is the diaphragm. As the governor of these organs, the solar plexus chakra influences aspects of our emotional life such as fear and caution, self-protective anger, mobilization during times of crisis, and grief.
The third chakra is the seat of the ego and the intellectual, linear mind. The concerns of this center are ones of worldly identity and power: Who am I out in the world? How am I perceived? Do I have influence? The need of this center is for competency in order to experience self-confidence. This chakra is the home of the “doer” and when this part of us dominates our system, the need to produce becomes a tyrant in our lives. Productivity, which was only intended to be a means to an end, becomes the end itself. As such, the challenge of this chakra is to secure a healthy ego that is balanced.
Problems in the third chakra manifest as difficulty finding our work in life, ongoing self-doubt, manipulating others by making ourselves invaluable in relationships, possessing inferiority or superiority complexes, being power-driven, over involvement with the values of the world, and competitiveness. Difficulties with insomnia, migraines, and eating issues also show up with third chakra imbalances.
[The top four chakras will be covered in the next issue.]
Visceral Manipulation and the Gall Bladder In previous newsletters, we wrote about listening to and understanding the liver and the kidneys. In this issue we will discuss the gall bladder and one of the techniques we use to “hear” what your organs have to say.Visceral Manipulation was developed by French osteopaths Jean-Pierre Barral and Pierre Mercier. Their work is based on the osteopathic premise that movement is life. All of our organs are designed to move and slide in multiple directions within the thorax and abdomen. Whenever movement of an organ is restricted, there is a possibility that it won’t be able to function optimally. Visceral Manipulation is a technique for gently assessing and improving organ motion.
Each organ has two categories of movement, which Drs. Barral and Mercier have named mobility and motility. Mobility is movement in response to external factors, such as walking, bending, and breathing. The diaphragm pumps up and down like a soft piston 24,000 times a day, causing all of the organs below it to slide forward and down. When you twist to the side, your organs (hopefully) twist with you. When you slouch forward in a chair, can you guess what your organs do?
Motility is the other component of movement addressed in Visceral Manipulation. This is the inherent and independent movement of each organ rhythmically toward and away from the midline of the body. Motility is not dependent on body position, rhythm of the breath, or the heartbeat. Each organ quietly rotates on its own axis seven or eight times per minute, and this rotation can be palpated by a practitioner’s sensitive hand.
So, what does the practitioner’s sensitive hand actually do? It assesses the two types of movement: for mobility, does the organ move when the diaphragm moves? Does it slide against adjacent muscles, bones, and organs? Is there scar tissue in the area that is restricting movement? And for motility, what is the amplitude of the movement? And what is its quality – is it smooth or uneven? Once these things have been assessed, the work itself is gentle and precise. We work only until we feel the organ starting to respond, then we let the client’s body self-correct from there.
Let’s look now at the gall bladder and some of the things it may be saying to you. The gall bladder is located on the undersurface of the liver, behind your lower right front ribs. It is about the length of one finger and the width of two. Its function is to store and concentrate bile, which is produced by the liver and which helps the body digest fats and eliminate cholesterol.
The first thing most people associate with the gall bladder is the gallstone, which can cause a tremendous amount of pain if it leaves the gall bladder and enters the bile duct. However, your gall bladder could also be talking to you in less dramatic ways. One of the first things we check when someone has pain on the left side of their neck is the gall bladder, which refers pain there. It also can cause a cramped feeling under the right lower ribs and under the right shoulder blade.
Other symptoms of an unhappy gall bladder are “letdown” headaches, which usually occur on weekends, sensitivity to light and odors, and digestive discomfort about 45 minutes after eating.
As you may recall from our earlier articles, each organ tends to process certain emotions, and a lack of mobility or motility can mean that we have a harder time dealing with the emotion associated with that organ. The gall bladder processes irritation: a person with gall bladder issues will definitely “sweat the small stuff.” It’s not the big issues of life that concern the gall bladder, it’s losing your keys, taking a test, being late, or missing a connecting flight.
Visceral Manipulation can be very effective for the gall bladder. We can work both with the organ and the bile duct to improve mobility and motility. Things that you can do to help your own gall bladder include avoiding chocolate and sulfites, deep breathing (an internal massage for all of your organs), and stretches that open and elongate the front of your abdomen. Hopefully you will find that you can face the small frustrations of life with more peace of mind and less stress on your gall bladder.
