Bodywork & Sensory Nerve Speed: Good News, Bad News, and Yet Again Good

Job's Body: Due to the speed differential of sensations, bodywork can provide the touch that overrides pain, shifting the mind to a more pleasant focus.

Unfortunately, this same differential allows us to ignore pain and problems that need attention; we can keep our bodies occupied with innocuous sensations that reach our brains more quickly.

For these sitations, bodywork can help us increase self-awareness, so that we do not continue to distract ourselves.

p. 180

Why We Don't Jump From the Frying Pan Into the Fire

Job's Body: Sensations carried by the Dorsal Column System, i.e. more detailed and more neutral impulses, arrive in the brain more quickly than the pain/hot/itch of the Spinothalmic System. This allows us a moment to assess a threatening situation before reacting, so that our "reflex withdrawal can be more appropriately tailored to the actual source of the pain and more effectively directed." p. 179

Ascending Sensory Pathways: Spinothalmic System

Job's Body: The slow lane. Travels at 1/5th the speed of the Dorsal Column System. Transmits sensations such as pain, hot or cold, crude touch or pressure, tickling, itching, and sexual feelings. p. 179

Ascending Sensory Pathways: Dorsal Column System

Job's Body: The fast track. Impulses travel 40-70 meters per second, as these paths are insulated with myelin sheaths and have fewer synapses to cross. They transmit fine tactile sensations requiring sensitive distinction. p. 179

My Special Purpose

Job's Body: "The goal of bodywork should not be to impose universalized standards of posture and movement upon an individual, but rather to help the individual to cultivate the mental awareness and the physical flexibility to continually adapt to the changing needs of the environment." p. 142

Hey Big Spender

Job's Body: Muscle makes up the majority of our weight and bulk and is the biggest energy consumer in the body. p. 133

Muscle requires constant electrical energy from its motor nerves for health and existence. Nerves stimulate muscle function and without this activity, muscles would eventually break down, lose their myosin and actin and be replaced by fat or connective tissue -- aka miasma. p. 136-7

The Vicious Circle of Chronic Tension

Job's Body: "Sustained [muscle] contraction reduces circulation in the area by squeezing the small arteries and capillaries which service the working cells with glucose and oxygen -- the more work, the more need; the more constant tension, the less the fuel delivery, the less the delivery the more difficult the work." p. 131

These tense muscles suffer from "deeper metabolic debts, draining energy from other parts of the body, producing ischemia and toxic wastes, creating discomfort and eventual disuse." p. 133

She: And disuse isn't going to help the situation any