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Student and Therapist Newsletter Archive
- Sciatica
+ Which technique should I use? - September
05
+ Comment from Al Pelowski, principal tutor
with The South African Institute of Cranial Studies. on sciatica- October
05
***QUESTION***
Hi John,
Found your web site very useful and your URL easy to remember. I
use it as my virtual business card. I have been treating a man in his
late fifties with sciatica. I have had some success but feel I could achieve
more.
Can you recommend any techniques
that you have found particularly useful for sciatica?
Thanks
J.P.
Brisbane.
>>>MY COMMENTS:
Glad you like the site.
I'm going to answer your question in two parts. Let me start
by saying no one technique is 'the' technique for ANYTHING. Techniques
are ways we get a handle on the bigger picture. And the biggest picture
is what you need to be available for.
I am putting it like that because describing it as 'looking'
for the biggest picture is way too active, eager, inefficient and INTURSIVE.
You need to ask yourself, what is really going on here?
Why has this person got these particular symptoms?
Why are the symptoms in this configuration?
What's the root cause of this situation?
Symptoms generally manifest physically, meaning they
show up in the person's body. But that doesn't mean the CAUSE of
those symptoms is exclusively physical.
Often EMOTIONAL issues will express themselves as
physical symptoms.
It doesn't just stop there, often the root cause of what
is going on has a physical component, caused by an emotional component
but the root cause is not emotional it is something DEEPER.
That may sound spooky or kooky to you depending on
your slant but I have seen it time and again, where the root cause was
deeper than physical and emotional issues.
How can that be?
Let's go through it one layer at a time.
Physical problems.
These problems are characterised by very physical causes
and descriptions, 'The tentorium cerebelli is pulled inferiorly
here, causing pressure there . . .etc'.
Regardless of the source of a pattern of a restriction, it
will show up physically. Becoming accurate in identifying the extent
and complexity of physical restrictions takes a lot of practice and is
a prerequisite for working with the deeper causes.
Emotional issues/causes.
Restrictions in the emotional aspect of the person can have
causes like, a person may need to leave a partner or job or it may be
an old
emotional abuse.
Emotional restrictions are more difficult to identify accurately
because it's very easy to start theorising about the person's problems
instead of simply receiving the information from the person's body in
the same way you do with physical patterns.
Core problems
These relate to how the person sees themselves in their lives,
their relationship with themselves, with God, with their idea of God.
A feeling that they're off track.
And no, you don't need to know what their track is.
Core problems can feel like fundamental disharmonies within
the person. They are the hardest to perceive because they are so
deep in the person.
Your ability to see and work with these core issues comes
with lots of practice and humility.
Their revelation occurs in the dynamic between you and the person and
what you have to offer each other.
Are you with me?
It generally works its way through the layers something
like this.
A disharmony in a person's core will affect them emotionally
and in turn affect them physically.
For example someone might think they are fundamentally bad.
This could manifest emotionally as anxiety and paranoia, which could manifest
physically as headaches and chronic fatigue.
The skill comes in being able to assess where the root cause
of the problem is.
Before you go charging off into the great mystery, let me
add this. It can be as easy to go the other way and start looking for
deep emotional and core issues as the root cause of a purely physical
problem.
'I just twisted my knee Mate!'
Now the second part of my answer is purely physical.
There are lots of different ways of creating sciatica.
It's a pain, which means there have to be nerves involved.
The pain generally is in the lower back and travels down one leg or the
other, sometimes both.
Have a look at, [in books and with your hands] the lumbar
plexus, the sacral plexus. How are the nerves on both sides of the
spinal column as they leave the vertebral foramina?
Scan the nerves up as far as the thoraco-lumbar junction.
Remember tight membranes can pull vertebrae together and pinch nerves.
Consider how long the person has been getting the pain?
Getting a sense of when and how the pattern of restriction was formed.
So, look particularly at the dural tube.
How are the membranes running?
Most particularly how is the cerebro spinal fluid moving?
Find ways to help it come into a harmonious flow.
It's all about flow.
Top
***COMMENT FROM AL PELOWSKI***
- On additional physical causes of sciatica.
John,
Some of the rootlets of the sciatic nerve pass through the psoas muscle
- a noted emotional contractor- - slightly bent over posture, unable to
fully extend hips without pain, affected leg externally rotated.
Another sciatica tip: usually on right side, I-C Valve, Caecum.
Yet other possibilities: Leg
length differences, real bony differences, or more likely due to rotations
in the leg from protecting an old sprained ankle or twisted knee -- most
commonly external rotation in the foot where there has been damage to
the ankle lateral colateral ligaments -- resulting in compression of the
S-I joint and thus irritation of the epineuria. "from the ankle joint
to the knee joint...etc" Remember the tune?
Yo. Ta for newsletter. Much
food for reflection
A
>>>MY COMMENTS:
Thanks Al. All very useful places to look for the
mechanics of the physical manifestation of sciatica.
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