Meaningful Movement and Neuroplasticity

Over the years I have come across situations where I taught my clients different movement patterns as a supposedly better alternative to their habitual movement patterns, somehow those new movement patterns never stuck to them.  One day out of blue they started adapting and using the new movement patterns automatically.  I always wondered why that might have occurred.  I wondered if they didn't do their "homework," so they didn't adapt.

One day I was playing with my 7 month old son.  He could roll over pretty well, but couldn't still pull himself forward on the floor, so I put a few toys on the floor, thinking he would try to reach for them and maybe would pull himself forward.  He didn't care enough to even attempt to reach.  Then, he started crying because he was getting hungry.  So I went to grab a bottle and he was staring at the bottle with such excitement.  As soon as I put the bottle on the floor, he quickly rolled over and started pulling himself forward so desperately.  He just learned army crawl!  Just like his father, he LOVES FOOD.  Food is very important for him, more than anything it seems.  Food draws 100% of his nervous system's attention.  His nervous system organizes movement patterns to allow him to accomplish his goal, that is to get to food and eat.  

That's made me think about my clients who adapt to new patterns fast and those who don't.  I think this has a lot to do with whether those movement patterns are perceived as meaningful and salient by the nervous system.  When I say nervous system, I'm talking about what's happening at subconscious level.  I think this is why changing habits is so difficult as it requires a shift at subconscious level, or very strong will power.  And, this is why it's so important to think about functional contexts and meaning around particular movements you're practicing, not just repeating the same movement mindlessly.  

Parkinson's Disease and Sensory/Motor Awareness

I'm not going to discuss pathophysiology of Parkinson's Disease (PD) in details here, but I'd like to share my experience of working with people with PD.  

Bradykinesia (slow movement) and Akinesia (muscle rigidity) are common motor symptoms of the disease.  The disease slowly affects movement quality and posture over time.  As people start to move more slowly with smaller range of motion, the nervous system starts to adjust its sensory awareness/perception as the movement changes.  Because this change continues gradually, people may not notice such change, even though it may be apparent to other people's eyes. What will happen is that their sensory awareness becomes so distorted that they perceive their abnormally slow and small movements as being "normal."  When they see other people moving at their regular speed, they don't perceive them as moving faster with larger range of motion than they are.  It's like a thermostat that is off.

PD is often considered as a movement disorder, but to be more precise and accurate, it is a sensory-motor disorder.  Movement and sensation are constantly influencing each other and being updated in the brain.  Areas that you don't use much tend to have poor sensory awareness.  Areas that you use very frequently tend to have good sensory awareness.  How accurately can you sense specific parts of your low back without touching and seeing?  How accurately can you sense your individual fingers?  It's much more clear to sense your fingers, correct?  This is very important when working with people with PD because without changing their sensory-motor awareness/perception (calibrating their thermostat), they are much less likely to change their movement quality because their inaccurate perception tells them they are moving just "normal."

Kinesthetic Awareness: Road Map for Movement

Our brain has "maps" that represent parts of our body for movement and sensation.  These brain maps are constantly updated when we move our bodies.  The parts that tend to be used more frequently have a larger representation on the brain maps.  Maps are also unique for each individual.  For example, pianists have much larger representation of fingers than most people. Likewise the parts that are not often used have smaller representation.

So what does that mean?  It means that movement clarifies brain maps.  Updated and accurate body maps mean good kinesthetic awareness.  The body parts that have smaller representation on the maps tend to have less clear sensation.  It's hard to feel/sense those parts.  How clearly can you sense your low back one vertebrae by one vertebrae vs individual fingers, with your eyes closed?  For most people, sensation on low back is not that clear.  

Our brain relies on these maps for movement.  If your brain maps are outdated and inaccurate, what you're actually doing may be very different from what you think you're doing.  Every time I have my clients notice such mismatch between actuality and their thought, they are so amazed.  Most people cannot feel/sense the shape of their spine accurately.  Sometimes they sense the opposite of what they are actually doing.  For example, when I ask people whether their lumbar spine is arched or rounded, they tell me that it's rounded when it's actually arched.  Try this:  "Close your eyes and raise your shoulders out to side to shoulder height so your arms are parallel to the floor.  Open your eyes to confirm whether your perception was accurate or not."  

This is why I focus on improving client's kinesthetic awareness so movement becomes more precise.  Don't you want to have an accurate road map or updated GPS when you go on a road trip??  In both Awareness Through Movement classes and one-on on movement re-education sessions, I draw your attention to various parts of your body while you're engaged in movements.  This process clarifies your body maps so actuality and what you're doing become much much closer.  As Moshe Feldenkrais said, "If you know what you're doing, you can do what you want."  

Parkinson's Disease and Early Intervention

I've started working with clients with Parkinson's Disease (PD) recently after I went to a LSVT BIG® certification course.  I was very surprised that only a few physicians refer their Parkinson's patients to exercise programs at early stage of disease.  Many physicians wait until patients' symptoms get much worse and their functions are apparently affected.  Although PD is progressive in nature, research has shown that early intervention can slow the progression of the disease or even reverse it.  Specific exercise program is beneficial at any stage, however, the outcomes are much more promising when it's initiated at very early stage.  

I've worked with people with PD of various stages, and I've seen huge improvements even in people with late stage PD.  One gentleman I worked with was initially wheelchair bound and was not able to stand from wheelchair without someone's assistance and not able to ambulate. After working with him for about 6 weeks, he was able to stand from wheelchair without any assistance, and able to walk with a walker.  This was a big deal for him who couldn't do these things for a long time and never imagined that he would be able to do these things again.  Not only the exercise program helped him to improve his functions, but improved his quality of life so much.  He was quite depressed and didn't have much motivation to do anything when I first saw him, but by the end, he was a completely different person.  

I'm hoping that more people with PD start hearing about benefits of early exercise program and initiate a program as soon as a diagnosis was made, and more physicians become aware of this.    

Awareness Through Movement®

Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement® (ATM) consists of verbally directed movement sequences presented primarily to groups.  In ATM lessons, people engage in precisely structured movement exploration that involve, thinking, sensing, moving, and imagining.  Many are based on developmental movements and ordinary functional activities.  Some are based on more abstract explorations of joint, muscle, and postural relationships.  The lessons consist of comfortable, easy movements that gradually evolve into movements of greater range and complexity.  (www.feldenkrais.com)

One of many things the Feldenkrais Method emphasizes is to improve awareness by helping people become aware of their habits as well as new ways of moving, sensing, feeling, and thinking while you're engaged in various movements, thus the name Awareness Through Movement.  I will share one of my favorite quotes from my Feldenkrais trainer:

"Habits are bricks. Repetition is the cement between the bricks. The more repetition of habit, the more solid the wall.  If you keep repeating the habit, it becomes solidified causing pain, rigidity, depression, etc.  Awareness creates doors and windows in which you can move over, under or thru that blockage."

Awareness Through Movement lessons are designed to create those doors and windows and guide you discover and open them.  When you those doors and windows, whole new possibilities start emerging.  You will discover a lot more than more efficient movements, more comfort, reduced pain.  Words are just words, and can't give you such kinesthetic experience. The only way to truly understand the effects of this work is to actually experience it.  I encourage you to check out local Awareness Through Movement classes.  Please also check out my classes in Everett, WA.   

Is Slouching Bad?

I often get asked this question by my clients:  Is slouching bad?  What do you think?  Somehow straight posture is considered ideal, and slouching posture is perceived as bad in out culture.  If you also think straight posture is good and slouching posture is bad, let me ask you why? If we never be allowed to slouch when we sit, we all would be healthier and pain free??  If you think bad posture is related to more pain, literature doesn't seem to agree with you.  We talk about posture a lot, but interestingly enough there's no literature that shows posture is related to pain.  

Let's say straight posture is ideal, so you decide to sit with perfectly straight posture.  How long do you think you can sit still perfectly?  Probably not very long.  After sitting for a long time, what do we do instinctively?  We get up and move, right?  This happens regardless of what position we are in because we're putting pressure on the same places all the time and compromising blood flow to those areas.  Straight posture may provide some advantages from a mechanical standpoint, but if you stay in the same position, you're compromising movement. The same thing for slouching posture.  If you're in the same slouching position, then there's no movement and stress is constantly placed on the same areas, even more in some areas than in straight posture.  Then you have exactly the same problem.  What would be healthier for our body is to create a habit of changing our positions frequently or moving frequently so we're distributing stress more evenly.  For this reason, I really emphasize creating more movement options so we don't get stuck in only one movement pattern.  

 

What is "Good Posture?"

I often get comments from my clients that I have a "perfect posture."  I always ask them what the "perfect posture" means, and many say it's perfectly straight.  So, straight posture=good posture??  From a perspective of Feldenkrais Method it is a place from which you can initiate action in any direction with minimal preparation.  You're basically ready to move any direction from ideal posture.  You're not holding tension and staying rigid.  I think people tend to confuse posture with position.  Position is static.  Posture is dynamic.  Posture is action.  Ideal posture should allow you to move more responsively.  In contrast, if you're rigid and holding yourself as straight as you can, you may appear to have a good posture, but you won't be able to move as quickly.  Not only that, you are straining muscles as you're making a lot of effort to maintain such a state.  Masters of Tai Chi or Aikido all demonstrate great posture if you watch them.  They're ready for actions.  They are not tense.  As a general rule, a good posture should never feel uncomfortable or tiring.  Awareness Through Movement class will give you an experience of what it feels to have "good posture" that feels natural and authentic.  

Team Play

If you ever played a team sport, you know how important it is that each player contributes to a game to make a great team, right?  Even you have a very talented player on your team, it's very unlikely that your team will be good if only that one player works hard on the field/court.  This same principle applies to our movements.  For example, I worked with many clients with neck pain.  They had neck pain when they looked up or turned their head to look behind.  Most of the time they were mostly using their neck to orient head with very little movement in other parts of their body like mid back, shoulders/shoulder blades, ribs, hips, etc.  The neck was the only player contributing to the work, sort of, while other players were hanging out and watching the neck doing all hard work.  No wonder the neck got sore!!  Neck pain, low back pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, you name it, but it's very common that people violate the team play principle.  This is one of many principles taught in Feldenkrais Method & Martial Arts (Tai Chi Chuan, Aikido, Judo, etc).  Check out my Awareness Through Movement classes & one-on-one Movement Re-education session to work on your "Team Play" skill!

Motor Performance vs Motor Learning

In fitness and rehab settings, it’s very common for trainers/practitioners to demonstrate exercises and have their clients repeat the exercise  and give them visual/tactile feedback to “correct” their movements before they give their clients a chance to feel/sense how they are moving. While showing them “correct” form of the exercise first and providing them external feedback would allow them to perform the specific motor task quickly, the motor task may not carry over to other functional tasks.
We often confuse motor performance with motor learning. Motor performance is the ability to perform a motor task. Motor learning is to have a carryover between one movement pattern and other functional movement patterns.

I think many people often use external feedback (visual/tactile/auditory) too much and don’t teach clients how to access their internal senses (proprioceptive-kinesthetic sense) to learn how they’re moving. The problem is that clients often don’t know how they are moving and can’t tell when they are moving “wrong.” When they are “corrected” and learn to copy the exact same movement, they still haven’t recognized the pattern of movement. Therefore, they just learned to perform that specific movement well, but they will probably go back to their old habitual patterns when doing functional tasks. I suggest we start directing clients’ attention to certain body parts and helping them become aware of how they are moving in space by asking them questions, before we jump in to put our hands and “correct” their movements. Let them explore movements and make some mistakes and let them make a choice. If we don’t allow them to make any mistake, how would they know what mistakes are? Learning always involves lots of trials and errors. We can help them recognize their mistakes so they can learn from the mistakes. We can become a movement tour guide for them so they don’t get lost.

© Taro Iwamoto 2015. Please do not reproduce without the express written consent of Taro Iwamoto.

What is limiting our abilities?

Over the past years, I’ve come to realize that we are often limited by our habits. Limitations can be physical, emotional, and intellectual. As a movement educator, I often witness my clients beating their body when they run into physical challenges. What most people tend to do in that situation is that they try to force themselves to overcome the obstacle by will power with their “no pain no gain” mindset. Their mindset is such that if they can’t overcome the obstacle, they’re not trying hard enough; therefore, they will try harder. They may achieve their goal but not without a cost. Or they may fail and give up. This mindset is very common in many cultures. Truth is that “obstacle” is created by our habits. We can ignore this fact and keep driving ourselves with will power and keep exercising our habits until our body can’t keep up anymore. I think it’s our habits that make us move, feel, and think in very limited ways and that make us feel old. We can also make the obstacle disappear by recognizing our habits and creating new habits. This is where movement intelligence comes into play. Learning to create new movement patterns/habits isn’t something we (adults) often do when facing what I call “movement puzzle” or daily situations that challenge us physically.  Instead, we usually try to exercise our old habits and hope to break through the obstacle with strengthened old patterns. This works to some extent, but soon we’ll hit the wall again because we still haven’t realized that our habit keeps creating obstacles.
I’m not saying that habit is devil. Habits are very useful. In fact, if it weren’t for habits, it’d take us too long to do simple daily activities such as brushing teeth, or getting dressed. However, many habits are not serving us well anymore, yet we hold onto them because we’re not even aware of most habits.  I think habit can become our enemy when it’s invisible (we’re not aware) like silent cancer because we cannot recognize what is happening.  If we cannot recognize, we won’t be able to take any actions.