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Ep 433 – Simons and Feldenkrais: A Retrospective Look with Doug Nelson

04/30/2024
A woman laying on a yoga mat with her arms and feet in the air.

Two names that are well known within the bodywork community—Dr. David Simons, author of Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual, and Moshe Feldenkrais, engineer, physicist, and founder of the Feldenkrais Method. Who were these pioneers in the bodywork profession and what can we learn from their origins?

Resources:

Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual: https://www.amazon.com/Myofascial-Pain-Dysfunction-Trigger-Manual/dp/0683083635

Feldenkrais Method: https://feldenkrais.com/

Author Images
Doug Nelson
Author Bio

Douglas Nelson is Board Certified in Massage Therapy and Therapeutic Bodywork, beginning his career in massage therapy in 1977.  Seeing over 1,200 client visits annually for decades, he is also the owner of BodyWork Associates, a massage therapy clinic in Champaign, IL. with 21 therapists that was established in 1982.

He is the founder of NMT MidWest, Inc., providing training in Precision Neuromuscular Therapy™ across the USA. He has personally taught more than 13,000 hours of continuing education and is the author of three books. Doug is a past president of the Massage Therapy Foundation.

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Anatomy Trains is a global leader in online anatomy education and also provides in-classroom certification programs for structural integration in the US, Canada, Australia, Europe, Japan, and China, as well as fresh-tissue cadaver dissection labs and weekend courses. The work of Anatomy Trains originated with founder Tom Myers, who mapped the human body into 13 myofascial meridians in his original book, currently in its fourth edition and translated into 12 languages. The principles of Anatomy Trains are used by osteopaths, physical therapists, bodyworkers, massage therapists, personal trainers, yoga, Pilates, Gyrotonics, and other body-minded manual therapists and movement professionals. Anatomy Trains inspires these practitioners to work with holistic anatomy in treating system-wide patterns to provide improved client outcomes in terms of structure and function.             

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Full Transcript

0:00:00.0 Speaker 1: Are you a healthcare practitioner interested in improving your client outcomes? Then it's time to discover craniosacral therapy, a gentle, hands-on manual therapy that releases restrictions deep in the body to relieve pain and dysfunction and improve overall health. Upledger Institute International is recognized worldwide and offers a full craniosacral therapy curriculum. Learn from the institute named for the developer of craniosacral therapy, Dr. John Upledger. Visit upledger.com to see a full listing of classes and begin your craniosacral therapy journey today and receive a discount when you register early.

 

0:00:45.6 S1: Are you looking for a company that empowers your growth and development? Look no further than the Elements Massage Brand, where all massage therapists have the opportunity to thrive through the Elements Massage Career Advancement Program. In the Elements Massage Career Advancement Program, Elements Massage studios recognize, reward, and uplift their massage therapists, rewarding continuous learning, commitment, and growth. The Elements Massage Career Advancement Program includes professional, elite, and master levels where massage therapists will enjoy higher commission rates, access to continuing education and development opportunities, and unique career growth opportunities to propel them toward a successful future. Evaluate your career and apply to an Elements Massage studio today. Visit elementsmassage.com/careers and take the first step towards a fulfilling journey. That's elementsmassage.com/careers.

 

[music]

 

0:02:00.9 Speaker 2: I'm Doug Nelson, and you're listening to the ABMP Podcast, a podcast that speaks to the massage and bodywork community. This is a story about maybe a name that you know, but perhaps a life that you do not. Amazing people have amazing lives, and often if we know them in one context, we don't really know about other parts of their life and other ways that they have made a difference in the world. And certainly that is true with our first person that we're gonna look at, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, who was given one of our nation's highest honors, the Distinguished Flying Cross. And he was awarded this for being the first human to go 102,000 feet into the stratosphere, likely the first person to see the curvature of the Earth. And he did this in a tiny sealed capsule lifted by a helium balloon the size of a three-story building. And they launched this from Portsmouth Mine in Crosby, Minnesota, for a 32-hour flight that included about 25 experiments and observations. And all this happened in August of 1957.

 

0:03:04.6 S2: And who are we talking about? We're talking about Dr. David Simons, who we know as one of the authors of the book Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: A Trigger Point Manual, which he wrote with Janet Travell in 1983. So we know him in the role of musculoskeletal medicine, but it was much more than that. And he had an amazing career before that, that really, honestly, the rest of the world knows him more for that than his work really in the field of musculoskeletal medicine. And it gets even more interesting in some ways because all this takes place in the deserts of New Mexico, framed by the Sacramento and San Andreas Mountains. It's the site of Holloman Air Force Base, which is just south of the Trinity site, which is where Oppenheimer and the scientists of Los Alamos first tested the atomic bomb. And all that's really interesting because of the popularity of the Oppenheimer movie that just came out a while ago.

 

0:04:10.4 S2: So let's, you know, Simon's early childhood, it's also really interesting. And there's something quite powerful about this. One, his father was a physician. Two of his uncles were also physicians. Another uncle was a dentist, and they all practiced together in the Simons Medical Clinic. And you can bet from his earliest age, David Simons knew the plan was he was gonna be a physician and he was going to practice in the family business and probably take it over. And to his dad's disappointment, that's not what happened because life had other plans for him. And just one thing about the flight that he did that was so groundbreaking. His dad died about eight days before the flight took off. So his father never got to see his son make such a difference, really, in the world, which is kind of sad. And there's another story about the power of mentorship that happens in this. So in their independent medical clinic, they also had this young man who came in and did laboratory work for them. And in the upstairs of this kind of big house that was their clinic, this young guy would come in and do all these lab tests. And young David would go up there and hang out with him. And so this person really instilled in David the love of science.

 

0:05:36.7 S2: And then they would talk about other things like space exploration and what the capacity for humans would be in that and what the possibilities are. And this guy was also way into ham radios and how you could take stuff apart and put them back together again. So Simons got interested in that. So you could see all of these influences coalesced to create the things that would happen for Dr. Simons in the future. So, in fact, he did go to medical school. This was done, really, with a program through the Army Specialist Medical Training Program. So he did that. And then he was assigned to Wright Air Force Base in the aeronautics laboratory. And he met this guy, Dr. James Henry, who was putting a program together to explore the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Oh, yeah, right. In those years, I'm sure that was seen as like crazy stuff. But given Simons' interest, he was intrigued and he said yes. And so he joined a program where there were. Yeah, what a program. It was Dr. Simons, Dr. Henry and two monkeys.

 

0:06:43.1 S2: Yeah, that was that was pretty much it. And what they did is they they would send laboratory animals up in rockets and, you know, different at different heights to measure physiologic stresses. It seemed reasonable in terms of, you know, seemed fairly safe what they were doing. Actually, quite safe. But this company called Wison Research in Minnesota floated this idea, maybe a bad pun, about creating this massive helium balloon with a little steel capsule underneath it that could go up to 100,000 feet and do so for hours at a time. And so this project became known as Manhigh.

 

0:07:25.0 S2: There were so many variables at this time and so many unknowns. What was not known is, again, how safe is this? The laboratory animals at lower altitudes seemed to do just fine. But then at one point, one of Simons' superiors came in and said, "Do you think, are you confident that a man could survive at the kind of altitude that this company is proposing?" And Dr. Simons said, "You know, with all the work I've done, I'm pretty confident." And he said, "Are you certain?" And the answer is, "Well, of course not. Science is not about certainty." "Are you confident enough that, like, you would do this?" Simons said, "Well, yeah, I am." And the guy said, "Great, you're in." And so that's how it began. So Simons found himself as the pilot and the scientist in this grand experiment to send a human where no human had been before.

 

0:08:27.7 S2: So, again, there were so many unknowns, like, for instance, you're gonna go up in a sealed suit. I mean, what is the heat tolerance for this? And just, you know, heat and cold, because it's all based on, you know, this is gonna be over a 24-hour period. It's going to get insanely cold when the sun goes down. And then it's going to get really hot when it comes in. How will the person in the capsule handle this? And again, this capsule is about the size of a phone booth and it has about six suitcases filled with scientific stuff in it. Like, whoa, boy, there's this thing called claustrophobia, right? Like, is the person, and you're up there all by yourself, how will the human psyche deal with these kinds of stresses? This was not really known. And under those stresses, can you make good decisions? Because this is not like present day stuff where you can just kind of take over the controls. So, given his medical training, what Dr. Simons was supposed to do is, again, design all these different experiments and do the work beforehand to try to take out any of the unknowns that they could.

 

0:09:37.4 S2: And the story is fascinating about all the experiments that he did, and then set in place the kind of physiological stresses and the psychological stresses and how they deal with them. And it was all good until, yeah, there was this funding thing. Like, here we go again. There was like a budget crunch. And then Congress decided, "Oh, we're gonna cut budgets and we're gonna take away anything extraneous." And you can imagine at that time that this program was seen as extraneous. And even the company who made the balloon, which is a private, independent company, they actually footed the bill for the rest of it because the government wouldn't give them the money to do this, even with this tiny, tiny crew of people. So weather, all sorts of stuff made it very difficult for this to go on. They didn't know if they had the money. Then the company said, "We'll pay for it."

 

0:10:29.6 S2: And then it's back and forth, back and forth. So they finally saw a little window in the weather. And if they didn't take it, they probably wouldn't fly for months. And then all the money would be gone and the program wouldn't happen. And there was a storm coming. So this quiet morning out of this mine pit in Crosby, Minnesota, they took off and they took off from a mine pit so that they could elevate for a little bit before they actually hit any kind of surface winds 'cause the surface winds needed to be under like four miles an hour. But up they went. Everything is good. And they were monitoring as much as they could from below, like his heart rate and respiration. And there was communication, some of which they did honestly by Morse code, some of which from radio contact, which was all good until it wasn't because then his heart rate and respiration wasn't transferring anymore.

 

0:11:24.8 S2: So the equipment malfunctioned and the people below got a little worried because again, all the decisions are being made by this person up there. So he was up there and made it to 102,000 feet. And again, the first person to see the curvature of the earth. He was so spellbound by what he could see out of this little porthole that well, he forgot to eat for many hours. And then with the stresses physiologically and lack of food, even his speech was getting a little mumbled and they were worried down below that he was maybe losing it a little bit and couldn't make good decisions and reminded him to eat and things got better. It's so interesting, all the stresses and things that happened at the time. But in a way, mission accomplished, time to come down. Except the balloon wasn't budging.

 

0:12:17.8 S2: He did all the stuff and the balloon was staying up there. And then finally he's descending only to find out that the storm that they had kind of avoided to take off was still below him. And at that time, they thought, "Okay, go to like 70,000 feet in your descent when we could finally start moving because storms, they thought, didn't go above 55,000 feet." Oh, guess what? That's what they thought. But nobody had been above that. And yeah, in fact, all of a sudden Simon sees lightning and hears thunder around him and lightning with this long trailing antenna they had to communicate. It's probably not a good idea. So that was the first of the thing is nothing like being caught in a thunderstorm. And then there was something that monitored the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels and that malfunctioned.

 

0:13:10.9 S2: And suddenly there's too little oxygen and way too much carbon dioxide in the little capsule. And so that doesn't do much for decision making. Add to the fact the storm, the lack of descent, then all of a sudden he's descending way, way, way, way too fast. And then finally it gets stabilized and he lands in a farm field in Aberdeen, South Dakota. I can't imagine this. Here comes this like capsule floating down and boom, hits the ground in this plowed field. And this farmer and his son come out on these workhorses and look over at this capsule that opens up and this guy gets out in a space suit. And the only thing Dr. Simons could think of at the time is, "How are you today?" Imagine the farmers thinking like, wow, that's not something you see happen, you know, 1957. Like, wow, just crazy.

 

0:14:16.0 S2: So to add to the craziness of all of this, so they finished the flight, they're doing the debriefing. It's really sad because the tape recorder that Dr. Simons was recording a lot of his observations in turns out didn't actually work. But they still had a lot of data that they could, that they had learned from this experiment. And then they sent Dr. Simons to this International Astronomical Federation, which was seen as kind of a fledgling organization of people who were interested in space around the globe. And they met in Barcelona, Spain. This was on, the flight was in, his flight was in August. This was in October. So it was very soon afterwards. And then at that conference, while he's there, something really remarkable happened. Sputnik, the Soviets had sent, you know, a satellite up circling the globe, and this changed everything. And suddenly, space travel wasn't so far-fetched anymore. And it became a real space race.

 

0:15:17.6 S2: And this was then the beginning of the Mercury program and John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin, and all the names that we know so well. But all that, the predecessor to all that, and what set the stage for this was Dr. Simons and the amazing research that he did before we all knew him. So I hope you found that really interesting. And there's more.

 

0:15:45.0 S1: Let's take a short break to hear a word from our sponsors. Anatomy Trains will be holding our flagship Anatomy Trains Structural Integration, ATSI, training in beautiful Vancouver starting September 16th, 2024. Progressively build your anatomical knowledge, hands-on manual therapy techniques, and most importantly, seeing and understanding postural patterns and developing strategies tailored to individual needs. We warmly invite you to apply today and bring your bodywork career to the next level. Visit anatomytrains.com for more. Let's get back to our conversation.

 

0:16:30.3 S1: So another name that you're probably familiar with is Moshe Feldenkrais, the founder of the Feldenkrais Method. His insights into neuroplasticity and human function were far ahead of his time and have influenced thousands of therapists. So Moshe was born in what is now Ukraine and moved to Belarus in 1917. When Palestine was set back then as the home for the Jewish people, Moshe set out for Palestine by walking, and he was 14 years old. I mean, literally, he left his family, took off at 14 years old, and walked across the Russian frontier during the winter at 14. To make money along the way, he did crazy stuff like joined a traveling circus, learning how to do acrobatic skills just to make some money so he could continue his journey. And he was a little bit like the Pied Piper because by the time he actually made it to Palestine, there were 200 kids who followed him just because this charismatic young man kind of drew people to him. And so 200 of them arrived in Palestine. And, there are conflicting ideas about where he got his physical prowess. Maybe it's the acrobats. Maybe it's the exposure to the teachings of GI Gurdjieff, who was a really interesting philosopher.

 

0:17:46.2 S2: But in any case, he brought observation skills to... At that time, when Arabs were attacking the Jewish settlers, these attacks were typically done in hand-to-hand combat, typically with a knife. You know, instinctively, you tend to raise your hand to defend yourself. Moshe actually just did some really interesting stuff. He used that analytic mind. He took scores of pictures of the process, analyzed the movements, and figured out a way to turn that kind of your normal reflex of defense and protection into something that could disengage the attacker. He ended up writing several books on self-defense and developing a whole system around this. And during that time, he also injured his knee, which is really kind of interesting and will surface later in his training because he, you know, surgery had like a 50-50 chance of being successful. And that's not what he was... He didn't like the odds. So he decided not to do that and that he would continue to just work with it.

 

0:18:50.4 S2: He also became fascinated with auto-suggestion, with hypnosis, and the role of the mind really in the experience of pain. So in 1933, Moshe moved to Paris to get a PhD in engineering. And while he was in Paris, he had the chance to meet this Jigorō Kanō, who's the founder of Judo. And Feldenkrais was very interested in Judo, but he was more interested in Kanō and Judo than Kanō was interested in him because Kanō was a little hesitant to teach non-Asians. But Feldenkrais was persistent, showed him some of the manuals that he had written in self-defense. And as Kanō reads through them, he thought, "Well, this is amazing." But he was still reluctant. So at one point, Feldenkrais said, well, just come at me with a knife. Well, I think you probably know how that turned out.

 

0:19:42.4 S2: The knife went flying. And so Kanō took him under his wing. And ultimately, Feldenkrais became one of the first non-Asians to get a black belt in Judo. And it's also part of how he paid for his schooling to get his PhD in engineering. And if you're wondering, so Feldenkrais ended up working in the lab of Frederick and Irene Joliot-Curie, who and these are the people who had been awarded a Nobel for their work with radioactive elements. And since Feldenkrais was an excellent physicist, the couple needed a container built that could house the heavy water as it generated particles that bombarded the atom. Without this discovery, truthfully, there would be no atomic bomb. And it was made possible in large part by the work of a physicist, Feldenkrais, who would go on to influence the field of physical rehabilitation in amazing ways. So there's that.

 

0:20:35.3 S2: But remember, this was 1940. And France wasn't exactly a very safe place to be if you were Jewish. So Feldenkrais and his wife, Yonath, decided to leave France really just in time as everything was closing in on them. They fled across France as the Luftwaffe was bombing and strafing the roads behind them. I mean, the more you read about it, it's like the stuff of a James Bond movie. But make it they did, through this arduous process, getting out really on essentially the last boat out of France. But they ended up working with the British, which is really interesting. Feldenkrais helped working on the technology that would become sonar, which was so important in detecting submarines, and then even taught like hand-to-hand combat to the British paratroopers as they prepared for D-Day. So what an amazing story about someone, again, that we know about his work and kind of is associated with the human potential movement. And oh, my goodness, before that, what a life. And it's interesting because in both of these people, I was lucky enough to meet and learn both of them. Honestly, looking back, I was really young.

 

0:21:53.4 S2: I had no idea of the extensive personal history, behind the person who was in front of the seminar, the class, leading me. I had no idea the history behind them. If I did, would I have acted differently? Maybe ask different questions? Yeah, probably. But honestly, that opportunity has passed forever since they're no longer with us. But, perhaps the larger lesson here is that each person that we meet comes to the moment of our meeting with a history that we just don't know and honestly have no clue about. But it's ours to learn from. All we have to do to learn from it is to be curious, be respectful, and ask, you know, ask to learn more about what brought them to that moment, what lessons were learned, what influences were there? I think anybody, when you do it prospectively, in a way, a life doesn't make sense. But retrospectively, you can see with Dr. Simons, with Feldenkrais, how all these disparate pieces all came together to help create the tremendous influence that they had in our field. So, here's to celebrating that personal history in the names that we might know, but lives we did not. I hope you enjoyed this.