Understanding Your Body
Understanding Your Body
- Your Synergistic Body
- Your Integrated Body
- Your Switches of the Body
- Your Subconscious Body
- Your Fascial Body
- Your Hydraulic Body
- Your Elastic Body
- Your Healing Body
- Your Energetic Body
- Your Historic Body
Understanding Your Body
These are Principles of how Your Body is organized and operates. Your Body is an exquisitely complex machine of many layered systems all working together in harmony. Understanding the complexity of each of these systems, which integrate with all the other systems helps us create Strategies to address underlying dysfunctions and improve performance. These Strategies are transformed into Techniques which are the exercises and movements we use to help Your Body heal, recover, and improve.
In this series we will explain some of these different elements and systems in order to provide a better grasp of how we, at Kineci, see and approach working with You. These are universal Principles which apply to everyBody. Too often traditional approaches seem to forget or overlook these Principles.
The beauty of Your Body is that everyBody is unique, special, and an individual. Although these are Universal Principles which apply to everyone, how each element is manifested and integrated is totally unique to that person. Traditional approaches tend to put people in a particular box or category and then use standardized protocols to apply to everyone. Traditional protocols don’t work because they are based on the average of the masses and are NOT individualized to You and YOUR Body.
At Kineci we believe each person is unique, special, and an individual with their own unique, special, and individual needs, desires, and goals. That is why Your Movement Prescription is developed specifically for You. Enjoy as you read along this series and we hope you glean a better understanding of the beautiful complexity of Your Body.
Your Synergistic Body
Your body operates as an entire system working towards the same goals. All parts of the body work as a coordinated system, in synergy, to accomplish a particular task. Applied Functional Science shows us that muscles work together to fine tune our movements by working in synergy.
When you want to walk across the room to pick up an object Your entire Body works together to accomplish the task. There are not certain muscles and bones that are trying to stop you from accomplishing the task. Some parts may struggle to do their fair share of the work. But they are not antagonistic to getting the job done. Your legs get you across the room. Your hand reaches accurately to the desired object. All other parts of the body work together in Synergy to help you successfully complete the task. Your entire Body works in Synergy all the time. We just have to make sure all parts are doing their fair share of the work.
Prescribed movements need to be coordinated.
Your Integrated Body
Your whole integrated body is more than the sum of its individual segments. All body parts work within the context of the Your entire body. They are not isolated tissues, joints, bones, and muscles. Every tissue of the body is connected to all other tissues through a beautifully complex system that is still beyond our scientific understanding to fully comprehend. There are so many delicate interplays of tissues, fluids, hormones, nutrition, environment, and energy that cannot be separated. Body, Mind, and Spirit are intimately interwoven.
Imagine an airplane all its parts laid out on a runway. As separate parts the plane will never fly. It is the relationships between all the parts that put together in the right way can allow the heavy metal plane to fly. Even if the parts are in the right place connected to each other properly but not turning on and working in the right sequence, the plane won’t fly. All the parts connected in the right relationships and working in proper coordination is the only way the plane and fly. Your Body needs.
Prescribed movements need to be integrated within the whole person.
Your Subconscious Body
Your movements are subconscious. When You are driven to accomplish a task your brain decides what it wants you to do. Your Body gets to decide HOW it will happen. You do not have to consciously talk to your muscles to tell them what to do and when. If you want to walk across the room your brain does not consciously say “quadriceps fire…hamstrings relax…abdominals turn on…foot pronate…”, that’s too much information to consciously process . Your Body will avoid pain and weakness. If there is a painful or weak area of the body it will try to avoid using that area. Your body and brain don’t like pain so it will avoid it if possible. It also takes more energy to ask weak parts to work, so your body will avoid using weak parts.
The scientific literature shows us that motor learning is most effective when provided in an environment for subconscious reaction, not conscious contraction. That means we train for Movements not just certain Muscles. The fun part is creating the exercise environment and set up to create the reaction and movement patterns we want. Motor learning is task specific.
Prescribed movements need to be purposeful.
Our Switches of the Body
The nervous system has a fantastically intricate method of Switches that turn on our muscles. The nerve receptors in the joints, soft tissue, and throughout the body are called proprioceptors. The proprioceptors transmit information from our body and the environment to coordinate our movement patterns. Science has shown us how we can talk to these Switches to turn on muscles.
Movement provides the stimulus to turn on these proprioceptors, the Switches, which then turn on the muscles. Different proprioceptors respond to different movements. Some respond to forward and backward movements, called the Sagittal Plane. Some react to side to side movements, called the Frontal Plane. Others respond to rotational movements, call the Transverse Plane. In order to active the most Switches in the most comprehensive way you want to move in all three planes of movement Sagittal, Frontal, and Transverse.
Prescribed movements need to turn on the switches of our body.
Our Fascial Body
Our bodies contain a web of fabric that connects all parts to each other, provides a subtle communication system, holds a history of all our experiences, and maintains all parts in their locations relative to each other. This is the fascia that surrounds all muscles, vessels, nerves, joints, and organs connecting all together within the body.
Prescribed movements need to be continuous throughout the body.
Our Hydraulic Body
Science reveals that our bodies are 60-70% fluids. We are a system full of fluids that need to be pumped throughout the body. Nutrients, oxygen, and chemical signals are all delivered by fluids. Movement provides the pump. As we move muscles contract, tissues tighten and compress. This squeezes the fluids from one area to the next. Venous and lymph vessels have one way valves to ratchet fluids up against gravity. Movement provides the squeeze to move fluids from one valve to the next working back up the body. Without movement fluids stagnate, and nutrients, oxygen are not delivered to all the tissues.
Prescribed movements need to pump the fluid of life.
Our Elastic Body
Our bodies are elastic beings. We can adapt, change, and adjust to our environment. We respond to stimuli to accommodate in a manner to be successful. That is how we get stronger; we adapt to a stress stimulus and become stronger to handle that load. Our bodies want to allow us to do anything, we just need to provide the right stimulus over time, and our bodies will adapt, we are elastic.
Prescribed movements need to stimulate change.
Our Healing Body
Our bodies are designed to heal. The key is providing the right stimulus to facilitate the tissues to repair, make new tissue, and heal. Different tissues require a different stimulus. Understanding what the right stimulus is for facilitating the innate healing response in the body is a primary element of recovery.
Prescribed movements need to be specific to the healing tissues of the body.
Our Energetic Body
Science has shown us that everything is energy. All matter has a vibrational energy that resonates in a manner to define distinct individual uniqueness. Our bodies project energy, absorb energy, and emanate energy. Our individual internal energy interplays with the energy we receive from the environment. All of this energy both projecting and receiving plays a crucial role in how well we can thrive within our world.
Prescribed movements need to stimulate energy production, and transformation.
Our Historic Body
Our bodies contain a record of all our experiences. Injuries, traumas, comforts, and joyful experiences are held as memories in all our cells and tissues. Past injuries, and traumas are recorded in the fascia, tissues, and emotions that shape our future perceptions of new experiences. These somatic (body) memories can manifest years later as restrictions and limitations in movements. Additionally our happy and joyful experiences are recorded and stored as well. Think of “comfort foods”, smells that elicit happy times, good feelings when seeing old friends or familiar places. All of these stored somatic memories shape how we perceive and interact with our world. Prescribed movements need to appreciate your body’s individual history and context.
Movement is what provides the stimulus to create change. Your Movement Specialist should be specific, scientific, structured, and strategic in how to provide movement education.
Movement Stimulates…
- Movement stimulates tissue repair
- Movement stimulates fluid exchange and nutrition
- Movement stimulates the healing process
- Movement stimulates energy transformation
- Movement stimulates happiness
- Movement stimulates Life
Movement education needs to be prescribed with proper:
- Dosage
- Application
- Environment
- Authentic driver
- Positioning for chain reaction
- Angle – direction – height – distance