A milestone

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Following up on my last post, where I wrote about never being satisfied of my accomplishments, yet trying to appreciate those achievements and celebrate progress, I want to share a recent milestone.

I recently started being able to do small squats using my quads, abs, and upper legs,  lying on a Total Gym machine. In this position, I have most of my body weight going through my legs, but not all of it. As you can see, my therapist is just helping to unlock my knees and bend my legs, then it’s up to me to push them back to straight. It takes me a lot of effort, as I have to use my arms to engage my lats (latissimus dorsi muscles), which engage my abs, which engage my quads. It’s strange that I can’t just tell my legs to move and that I have to use this sequence in order to get those leg muscles to contract, but I’ll take movement in the lower body, no matter how it comes.

I have to attribute much of this development to two major factors. The first is the consistent exercises I’ve been doing on an incredible technology from Germany, a standing vibration platform called the Galileo that vibrates side to side over 20 times a second, mimicking the movement of taking steps and sending a signal through my feet and up into my legs, spinal cord and brain. It has proven results in Europe and is just recently starting to become better known in the US.

The second factor is the knowledge and awareness of the body that I learned from my work with Alejandra in Maui, specifically the connective tissue in and around our muscles called fascia and the neural connections that exist within them. It was from her that I first learned about – and now fully believe in – the theory of fascia lines and how I could use certain muscles of my body that are under my control, to tap into and connect with other parts of the body in which I have less control. By constantly working on making this connection from my lats to my abs and lower body, it seems that a small signal is finally getting through. Now it’s on to working on this connection to make it stronger.

Alright, enough blabbing. Here’s the video. And now it’s on to the next achievement…  🙂

Making Magic in Maui (continued)

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Following up on my last post, I want to provide a bit more info and specifics on the rehab I did in Maui with Alejandra.

In my last post, I mentioned the emphasis on fascia lines and I want to expand on this a bit more. From what I have encountered, the conventional approach to muscles, ligaments and tendons is to think of them separately, evaluate the function of each specific part and to target that muscle (or one or two surrounding muscles) and strengthen, stretch, or stabilize that area in order to achieve the goal of improving it. For example, your biceps muscle in your arm performs a specific function, namely, to curl your forearm up towards your shoulder. Simple enough. But what about all of those other muscles that connect to your biceps? Or the muscles that connect to the muscles that connect to the biceps? How is it that some people may feel pain in their right shoulder which stems from an aggravation in the left knee?

Alejandra – and the growing number of practitioners who are incorporating the theories of fascia lines and the interconnectivity of muscles and fascia into their practice – approaches the body differently, especially when it comes to a Spinal Cord Injury and the damaged neural connections throughout the body.

On the very first day, Alejandra immediately recognized what abilities I DID have and what muscles I already had under control. She quickly assessed that if I engaged the parts of the body that I could control, then I could also engage connected muscles, nerves, and fascia and establish new neural connections. And that’s exactly what happened.

Over the course of just two weeks (which in a very slow SCI recovery world is like lightning speed), I was able to establish new connections, primarily with my abs and core. That means that I can now achieve a strong contraction of my abdominal muscles, by virtue of engaging the muscles in my lattisimus dorsi and targeting the fascia lines that run from the base of my skull, down my neck and upper back, wrap around my abs and down into my hips, thighs, and legs. I can’t overstate just how remarkable this is!

In this approach, the belief is that there are more neural connections that run through the fascia connecting our muscles than the muscles themselves. By acknowledging the potential power of Neuroplasticity (a concept I’ve discussed before, which is essential to my recovery), I am rewiring those damaged neural connections and finding new ways to connect signals from my brain to parts of my body that I previously could not move.

I realize this is a bit technical and might be hard to conceptualize for many readers, but I urge you to keep an open mind. It’s astounding what I was able to accomplish in such a short amount of time, and the progress I’ve continued to make because of the exercises I did with Alejandra. I’m including a couple more videos below.

In the following two videos, I’m lying on my side, with good spine alignment (something Alejandra emphasizes frequently) and the movements are both in a horizontal plane, that is, they’re not going with or against gravity which allows me to feel a better connection with my legs. In both instances, although the person is doing the movement for me, my leg would react, the muscles would contract and I was able to feel a great connection to my glutes, quads and legs.

In this last video, my spine is again in good alignment as the ball and the roller behind me are prompting me to sit straight, I’m using my arms to stabilize my core and the result is a fantastic connection to my legs that are doing this fast and fluid movement. This was a great exercise.

I’ve tried my best to highlight the unique nature of the work I did in Maui and show how this has helped me. It’s tough to put it all into words or images but hopefully I’ve provided a sense of why I found this therapy so beneficial.