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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Stiff Neck - Week 9

Happy Healthy Holidays to All!!
BN- I am continuing after next week and would be interested in any advanced knowledge
about Facial Refl.!
This past week I had the opportunity to 1/2 swap massage with MG and we both realized some pointers, so to speak. My tools have one end that is much sharper than what she was using and she seemed to like this on some points. I use the duller side on points like 0 and when massaging an area not just a point.
Using different tools, applying different pressure, and choice of sequences adds uniqueness to each massage. All my experimenting makes me want to understand how this type of massage works physiologically speaking because for some ailments it helps and/or totally removes or reduces pain. What I'm working on now for part of week 9 and 10 is: my big toe on the right foot started hurting on our am walk. started massaging point 365. At first I didn't feel anything on my chin, but my toe felt a little better. Now after 4 days of including point 365 in my routine my chin has one spot that is sore. Now you could say its because I've been massaging it, but My pressure or length of time is minimal. My toe is not hurting right now(usually gets worse with walking) but my chin has this minimally sore area that I was not aware of until I started massaging it. This all raises questions for me: If I massage this point more will it help or hurt? What about the massage actually helps? Is it all hit or miss as far as amount of time both massage time and how many days to keep including set point? I know some or part of the answers to my q's, and I become more confident in this craft the more I figure out for myself. However, using the blog as a sounding board and receiving other's experiences speeds up the process. If I could sit down and quietly read the whole of MFM's book maybe all the answers are there, but that won't happen for awhile. As I've said before: the beauty of this book is that its a useful resource and info. is easily accessible.

5 comments:

MG said...

You raise some good questions for which I wish I had definitive answers. My sense is that over time with practice you will be able to answer questions about length of stimulation, how many days to include a point, etc. As for if it will help or hurt, I would think it would only help as long as you are not overstimulating the point. In my experience, you sometimes get adverse reactions before things start to improve.
When you mentioned your big toe I automatically thought of foot reflexology and wondered what might be going on in your head/brain which corresponds to the big toe. Maybe there is something going on in your chin. Where on your chin does it hurt? What point is closest to that area? What part of the body does that point correspond to?

#reflexologyandyoga4balance said...

Rudi, M, - Happy Holidays.
I am sharing my experience with Point 365 which I have covered in previous posts since we are talking about questions. When I first worked on it it was extremely sensitive - I could not believe it. It continued for several days: as I dealt with it I remembered a yoga class where we were flat on the belly with the chin on the ground for quite some time; my chin did not hurt while I was doing it. However when working the area, the following question came up: did the chin resting on the floor result in soreness and did the soreness cause the occiput pain? I have been meaning to ask this question for a long time: If an acupoint is tense caused by pressure , will it result in tension in areas that are related to the acupoint? I mention acupuncture because Dien Cham is a synthesis of acupuncture, reflexology and massage amongst other healing methods. Marie-France does not go into detail as she aims her book at the general public.
I know of course, that when we look at the frog we are seeing the entire body on the face, so that is Reflexology, but even within Reflexology the same questions exist (certainly for me). So back to the question. So the answer to my answer is, I suspect, another question without answer, that is, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" This is a at the root a philosophical question. As for life in general my experience is that many questions have no answers, but that does not mean that we should not ask. My conclusion: As long as there are questions, things are fine in the long run, there is room for evolvement. As long as I observe and maintain a curious mind, I"ll be fine in the long run. Questions are great, occasional answers, too. The fact that Dien Cham helped my neck pain subside after just having been a few pages into it and without knowing much, makes me believe that it can help with many more serious issues down the road if we are just willing to be curious and involved in our well being; what we are doing here is keeping records of what is going on in our bodies (and minds) and how our practice of Dien Cham affects it. I believe we are doing on a small scale what Marie-France has been doing for a long time and which resulted in her amazing book. - BN

MG said...

Sorry, I guess I missed it in your post when you mentioned point 365. I don't have a visual of point 365 available and I am getting confused by parts of the body and their projections/connections on the feet and face. With each bit of information, I am ricocheting from the toe to the head to the chin and back, forgetting where the original pain was. But, in terms of understanding what’s going on in the body, maybe the location of the pain is not as important as the connection itself between these body parts, well, except to the person in pain.
It’s funny that you brought up the chicken and the egg, B. I am reading “Between Heaven and Earth (A Guide to Chinese Medicine)” by Harriett Beinfield and Efrem Korngold (Ballantine Books, 1992) from the study’s reading list and the chicken and the egg question just came up in the section on Yin and Yang. From the book,

“Because everything is in motion, all process is cyclic, and everything contains its opposite, the dilemma of what came first, the chicken or the egg, is transcended in Chinese philosophy by accepting them as inseparable agents of the process of creation. Chinese theory does not separate cause from effect; instead, the one invariably turns into the other in an ever-repeating cycle of metamorphosis… Which came first (linear logic) matters less than how they interact (systems, dialectical, relational logic).”

I’m not sure this offers a conclusive answer to any of the questions raised above but it may offer another way of looking at the pain in the toe/chin/acupoint tension, another way of asking the same questions?

#reflexologyandyoga4balance said...

M, Thanks for adding this comment and sharing your "Between Heaven and Earth" findings.
I like the term metamorphosis very much, (although I remember how the book by the same title (by Franz Kafka) freaked me out when I first read many moons ago).
If you think about it, it is very clear that everything always has to change that nothing is fixed, but let's think of the 'reality of our mind" for a second: most likely there'll be many issues we have made our mind up about and then it often seems like we are stuck; that is why a meditation practice is so helpful as we set time aside to spend time with the inner workings of our mind, we start recognizing patterns and once we know - BN

#reflexologyandyoga4balance said...

(oops) ..and once we know, we can start undoing and start the metamorphosis process. BN

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