quack

quack

Saturday 28 September 2013

SI 11 - Our Celestial Ancestors? - need for dialogue

Small Intestine 11 (also known as The Celestial Ancestors from the Chinese) in ‘acupuncture’ language – apparently something else to physios – I discovered this in dialogue with my physio last week, and I find it really interesting.  What it is is that at least some of the special pressure points which we learn in shiatsu training are also learned by conventional medicine, as physiotherapy is now considered.

I think my physio also mentioned that GB21 (Shoulder Well) on the shoulder was the ‘trap point’.  There may well be others, and to be honest I would love to know what they are, and how they map onto each other, and how the locations are described.  For example, GB21 is halfway from C7 and the edge of the shoulder – I wonder how physios would describe this location? [go on, if you’re a physio reading this, please let me/us know!].

As I’m thinking about it the physio, who is also an acupuncture practitioner, also mentioned Large Intestine 4 (Great Eliminator) – another really important point in shiatsu practice – as being the same as one used within physiotherapy practice.

I notice that I’m both surprised and unsurprised.  I do think I was surprised when I first discovered about GB21 in an earlier physiotherapy session.  However, I also of course not surprised – if it works, it’s likely to be discovered several times within different cultures presumably – but somehow I wonder how the Chinese discovered them, presumably without the benefit of seeing dissection, which could help with muscle understanding.

mm, a puzzle – do add your two penn’orth of you have any thoughts.

Catherine.

Saturday 14 September 2013

shiatsu bodywork – like a healing balm

I went to a local shiatsu practitioner support group t’other night – the chosen theme was ‘support’ as a quality of the Earth Element which is this time of year, moving from summer to late summer and harvest time, before moving on to Metal autumn energy.

We did some gentle individual bodywork, and then two sets of paired work – all really quite gentle, and more like hands-on healing in a way to me, including the theme of support throughout.

The following day I was so happy to feel that my ‘sick’ shoulder (the one with the broken clavicle, which I had said in the session felt as if I’d been shot) felt much happier, and as if it had received a healing balm.  Really very impressive, and to be honest unexpected, even though I am a ‘shiatsu and all that’ fan.

A couple of days later, it still feels rather good, though to be honest I haven’t been challenging it too much with exercises which might cause the overlapping bones to rub against each other potentially in a tissue irritating way.  Not sure what’s for best, since other practitioners are also concerned that I must use the muscles to maintain and regain range of movement.

something to ponder on – but, really, just wanted to share with you (whoever ‘you’ are) the potential balminess of shiatsu.

cherish your clavicle(s)

before I broke my clavicle recently, I hadn’t realised it was so important.  I had heard of people breaking a clavicle – often as a riding (bike or horse) accident, but that it was a relatively minor accident, such that people often didn’t even realise it had been broken.  Generally, it heals up by itself (apparently) and there may be a bony knob sticking up where the bone joint is.

Perhaps I make a lot of things, but it has felt like a really serious injury – not so much initially when I thought I’d be better and back to normal within 10 weeks.  But when it was still hurting, and wriggling my shoulders still felt like a bad plan, followed by a visit to the consultant who figured out it hadn’t made any attempt to join up, I was particularly perturbed.

One medic explained to me that the clavicle was in a way the most important bone in the body, because it supported everything else – not quite sure if I’ve summarised what he said quite right – but it was something along those lines.  Bottom line – clavicles are IMPORTANT.

so, my message is, appreciate your intact clavicles (while they are) – so very many things to be thankful for that perhaps one doesn’t realise is working in one’s life until it goes wrong in some way.

I love my clavicles – both of ‘em, I love the one on the left which is intact, and the one on the right to encourage it to get back to the best possible place it can to support me.

 

Tuesday 3 September 2013

On natural healing?

I tutored for an Open University course about perspectives on complementary medicine for many years.  I always found it interesting what polarised responses it could receive.  On the one hand, there were orthodox folk (eg Ernst in newspaper, Colquohoun) who thought it was over-embracing the positives of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and on the other there were more radical folk who thought it was over-critical of CAM.  I had a tutor colleague with a nursing background, who lay in the former camp, and I remember she cited some fractures as an example of where orthodox medicine worked ‘naturally’ by just putting the injured limb, for example, in a sling to heal up on its own.

Round about that time I fractured my wrist, and experienced this form of health care – I went to A&E, where I was X-rayed and given a wrist support to help give it support in healing.  At the end of the ?six weeks, I returned to the hospital to the OT section, where they told me to do some very uncomfortable exercises, bending my hand at the wrist in different directions.  These exercises somehow felt inappropriate to me so I didn’t do them.  By a happy chance, I had met and been impressed by a chiropractor at a conference on CAM, and ended up consulting him.  He reckoned that the scaphoid bone had got stuck, and over several sessions unjammed it, with the result that my hand would flex another 45 degrees to the approximately 80-90 degrees that the other one did naturally.

So, in this case, I reflect that ‘natural’ in the sense of ‘not doing anything’ was insufficient.  I also happened to chat to various people such as participants in my Japanese Yoga class who said they’d fractured a wrist in the past, and it had set in the wrong place, so they had ended up having an operation where it was re-broken and set in the right place.  I’m not sure if they lost any mobility or sensation long-term as a result of this, but no doubt it was painful going through the operation and post-operative healing again.

Recently, I broke another bone! – I did at one point have a check a few years ago for osteoporosis, since a herbalist colleague had wondered if my bones might be getting brittle with my age.  It was in fact low-ish, and perhaps I should do more to build that bit up, I don’t know.  Again, it being the clavicle I was essentially given a sling and told to go home and get better.  There was in fact talk of putting a pin in to the clavicle to ? hold it together.  Consultation at the local fracture clinic didn’t show up any further problem, though to my eyes the two ends of the broken clavicle looked ‘miles apart’.  However, I was told they would seek each other out and all would be well.  My physio told me I would regain full movement so I would be as good as pre fracture.

Imagine my concern when I returned for my discharge appointment at 10 weeks to be told no re-join had occurred.  There was talk of having the pin/plate process at this stage – which would now include a bone graft, since the bone doesn’t heal so well so long after injury.  Thankfully, I happened to consult a physio who suggested more of a wait and see approach, and in that time I re-connected with an osteopath-trained practitioner who seems to have readjusted the two ends of the clavicle back into place – still not quite sure exactly what he did, but there was a definite alarming clicky/crunch which seeme d to please him, and seemed to end up with my clavicle in a much better place, and me able to move it much better.

So, what is my point?  My concern is that orthodox medicine is missing important possibilities for facilitating healing in a more natural way with regard to fractures by supporting healers who know what to do to (? in this case, certain osteopaths? - ? traditional bonesetters? – as an aside, I think osteopathy did stem from an American bone-setting tradition) to get fractured bones into place so they can heal up most effectively.  I know my experience is over just a couple of breaks, but I was struck by the comments of people I knew who had sustained wrist fractures, and when I googled about clavicle fractures, there seems a lot of problems there too.

Anyone else any perceptions or thoughts?
 
 
References (still need a bit of working up)
 
Colquohoun, D (c2005)
 
Ernst, E (c2005)
 
Heller et al (2005) Perspectives in Complementary and Alternative Medicine.