Successful endurance athletes carefully manage exercise, diet,
hydration, and rest to maximize conditioning while avoiding burnout.
It’s a delicate balance; a single miscalculation can end a promising
career. Many athletes use yoga, meditation, and massage to improve
their odds. Unfortunately, few have exploited advanced bodywork’s
unparalleled opportunities to optimize performance, accelerate
recovery, and prevent illness and injuries.
Give ‘em Air!
To
function optimally, the lungs must inflate in a coordinated,
sequential fashion. Everyone—athletes included—has restrictions in
their lungs. These result from infections, vaccinations, medical
procedures, emotional or physical trauma, and chemical and thermal
exposures—as well as from restrictions on neighboring structures
such as the heart, liver, stomach, esophagus, and mediastinum. Regardless
of cause, lung restrictions reduce aerobic capacity and performance.
Releasing the restriction improves air exchange while reducing
effort.
The
body’s most important job is getting oxygen to the brain. The body
will recruit (sacrifice) less important tissues (bones, muscles,
joints, the lungs, stomach, and other organs) to minimize the effect
of restrictions on heart and arteries that do that job, the carotid
and vertebral arteries. So whether they result from whiplash or
physical, emotional or spiritual trauma, these restrictions may
produce chronic headaches and neck and shoulder pain. But since
many physicians and therapists do not understand the recruitment
process, symptoms are often misdiagnosed and mistreated, thereby
undercutting the body’s best efforts to minimize a restriction’s
effects.
Hierarchical: Render Unto Caesar
A
frequent casualty and good example of the body’s sacrificing less
essential functions and tissues to protect more essential is the
thymus gland. Headquarters of the immune system and located between
the sternum and heart, thymus has access to the 100 to 200 billion
immune cells in your body. The immune system protects you against
allergens, infection, toxins, and toxic emotions. Immune cells also
hoover up scar tissue and adhesions and grow healthy new tissue of
any kind, in real time. So thymus is very important, but not as
important as getting oxygen to your brain. When thymus has been
sacrificed in favor of the heart or lungs or brain, as is often the
case, properly trained bodyworkers can restore its effectiveness.
A
Terrible Thing to Waste
The
brain and central nervous system play a key role in maximizing
athletic performance. All structures in the brain need adequate
space, blood and CerebroSpinal Fluid (CSF). When we think of
athletes, we often think of brawn, not brain, but this is wrong. In
addition to making timing, content, and audience decisions when we
speak, the cerebellum helps coordinate fine, voluntary motor muscle
movements. Of the many athletes who are graceful one day, clumsy the
next, many may have a simple, correctible cerebellar challenge.
Recovering too slowly? Losing your focus? Low on
energy? Pituitary or Hypothalamus may be cramped. Properly trained
therapists can address these problems easily.
What Don’t You Understand About Mechanical!?
When
problems arise, we are encouraged to medicate. But you don’t change
brands of gasoline when you have car trouble; instead, you take the
car to a mechanic. The body’s functioning and vitality depends on
mechanics at least as much as on chemicals, if not more so. So why
would you change fuel at the first sign of body trouble?
Warp Speed
Muscles
need abundant energy, which the liver helps supply. But toxic
chemicals and emotions also accumulate in and impair the liver.
Furthermore, as the heaviest organ in the body, the liver is
disproportionately affected by falls and whiplash. An organ’s
function and vitality are directly related to its motility, the
organ’s cyclical motion around an internal axis. The liver's
motility should be 2 to 3 centimeters in each direction in each
cycle, with 6 to 8 cycles per minute. This amounts to as much as
600 meters of movement per day!
The
average liver weighs about seven pounds. The body wouldn’t be moving
7 pounds 600 meters a day just for fun. Motility helps drive liver
metabolism. A liver without motility is about as effective as a
washing machine without an agitator. If your feet or hands are often
cold, you may have a liver impairment.
Need a Jump?
Kidneys cleanse the blood and balance electrolytes to maintain the
electro-chemical parameters the heart and CNS require. In this
sense, kidneys are the body’s main storage batteries. Deep breathing
relies on the psoas muscles, which move up to 4 inches on each
breath. The kidneys ride on the psoas. Therefore, if there is a
restriction on a kidney, you are just not going to breathe fully,
period, no matter how much you want to. The kidney is that
important: Your body will override your ego and cerebral cortex on
that issue every time. Because the psoas runs from the inner thigh
up through the groin to the lower ribs, a kidney restriction will
also shorten your stride. Turbo-kidneys or governors? The choice is
yours.
An
Ounce of Prevention
When
the body runs out of slack to compensate for a restriction on the
kidney, it will often sacrifice a joint, typically a knee and or the
lumbar vertebrae. By finding and releasing the causative
restrictions on the kidney (and other organs) beforehand, Visceral
Manipulation restores your body’s ability to compensate and prevents
injuries which might otherwise result in surgery and rehab.
Massage
is great for stress, relaxation, soothing tired muscles, and
flushing lactic acid. But muscles are only packaging. Muscles will
always be recruited to protect deeper structures. If you want your
muscles to be fully available for propulsion and work, optimize the
deeper structures.
A
restriction on any of the 195,000 miles of nerves, arteries, and
veins in your body can reduce the motility and function of the
heart, brain, or spine. So, avoid chronic fatigue and injuries with
routine bodywork. When you leave the starting gate, the last thing
you can afford is a sticky lung, a balky liver, or a parked
heart. With
Advanced
CranioSacral Therapy and Visceral Manipulation, there is no reason
to have these organs slowing you down when they could be enhancing
your performance.
Mike Macy
combines the most
advanced CranioSacral and Visceral techniques to help his patients
optimize their bodies and performance. Contact: (907)258-7261;
mmacy@acsalaska.net or
www.iahp.com/alaskacranial.
