vestibular

Body as an information process

There is a constant information exchange happening in your being. From your nervous system, to your digestive system, to your hormonal system, to your immune system, your felt sense of "self" is rooted in biochemical, electromagnetic, thermal, and pressure dynamics.

To understand this is to take a new approach to working with your body. Instead of a mechanistic view of your body as something to maintain in a contrived or artificial way, you can use your body to evolve your understanding of yourself and your potential. The body (and your uniquely personal experience of it) is the portal into a deeper self-knowing. To reference it is to complete a feedback loop of the dynamic, present moment.

What the hell does that mean?! Let me give you an application of that broader perspective in a very mundane example. Hip pain is often treated by strengthening and stretching muscles around the joint. But frankly, the body doesn't understand anatomical names of specific muscles or planes of movement. Technical words can certainly help us understand what we are experiencing by giving us more concrete and neutral language. But your body's understanding of its own hip is this: it is a major point of information convergence.

At a deep level, your body understands when it is aligned in a way that can direct the force of the weight it needs to support itself into the ground. If it cannot support the weight well, it might grip to stabilize itself. How does a body know if the hip joint can support well? There is feedback from the joint itself called proprioception and an overall sense of stability in the vestibular system. Some people will experience improved hip stability as a hip that moves smoothly, is painless, or feels open.

When you look at hip pain from that perspective, there are many implications to how you can resolve dysfunction. Is the midfoot moving well? Do the bones in the lower leg articulate well? Does weight transfer through the sacrum occur in the gait? This is a very different approach, and I welcome you to contact me to gain a different perspective on your particular issue.