The Tomatis Method® and finding your center

The Tomatis Method® is a sound therapy program developed by French ENT Dr. Alfred Tomatis. The implications of his discoveries are far-reaching because the auditory system is vital in both communication and body organization.

In my practice, I have found this program to be particularly useful when underlying balance and coordination issues may contribute to feelings of instability, lack of support, or fear of harnessing one's power. If you are in the LA area, contact me to determine if this method might help you.

3 Things: Shoulder pain relief

Try these three exercises to relieve your shoulder pain. Go slowly, do not push yourself into pain, and you will know if they are right for you. These three exercises encourage the shoulder blade to glide over the ribcage for easy range of motion.

#1 Thoracic spine stretch: This exercise enables you to connect spinal opening with shoulder blade glide. A stiff upper spine is often implicated in shoulder dysfunction.

#2 Dolphin: We are often moving our arms around in the shoulder joint. In this exercise, by moving your body weight through your shoulder girdle, you are stimulating the shoulder joint in a novel way.

# 3 Water bowls: This is an exercise I devised to coordinate movement of the forearm with opening of the ribcage and movement in the head in a way that trains the shoulder blade to find its range of motion. There are a lot of elements to it, so watch a couple of times before trying and imagine yourself doing it before you actually try it. Your arm should never be moving on its own as your head stays fixed. The point of this exercise is to free the head and neck movement while forcing the forearm to find it's movement pattern. The balance pods in my hands are merely there to challenge me at the wrist and forearm. Whatever you put into your hands should likewise be something you can balance on the palms of your open hands without grabbing it.

Body as an information process

There is a constant information exchange happening in your being. From your nervous system, to your digestive system, to your hormonal system, to your immune system, your felt sense of "self" is rooted in biochemical, electromagnetic, thermal, and pressure dynamics.

To understand this is to take a new approach to working with your body. Instead of a mechanistic view of your body as something to maintain in a contrived or artificial way, you can use your body to evolve your understanding of yourself and your potential. The body (and your uniquely personal experience of it) is the portal into a deeper self-knowing. To reference it is to complete a feedback loop of the dynamic, present moment.

What the hell does that mean?! Let me give you an application of that broader perspective in a very mundane example. Hip pain is often treated by strengthening and stretching muscles around the joint. But frankly, the body doesn't understand anatomical names of specific muscles or planes of movement. Technical words can certainly help us understand what we are experiencing by giving us more concrete and neutral language. But your body's understanding of its own hip is this: it is a major point of information convergence.

At a deep level, your body understands when it is aligned in a way that can direct the force of the weight it needs to support itself into the ground. If it cannot support the weight well, it might grip to stabilize itself. How does a body know if the hip joint can support well? There is feedback from the joint itself called proprioception and an overall sense of stability in the vestibular system. Some people will experience improved hip stability as a hip that moves smoothly, is painless, or feels open.

When you look at hip pain from that perspective, there are many implications to how you can resolve dysfunction. Is the midfoot moving well? Do the bones in the lower leg articulate well? Does weight transfer through the sacrum occur in the gait? This is a very different approach, and I welcome you to contact me to gain a different perspective on your particular issue.