Ep 427 - Connect, Encourage and Acknowledge with Cindy Williams

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0:01:57.9 Cindy Williams: Hello fellow practitioners. My name is Cindy Williams, and I'm so happy to be here as your guest host today on the ABMP podcast. I'm a 24 year massage and body work practitioner, as well as a freelance educational author and content writer. My passion lies in supporting both practitioners and clients by guiding them toward their own innate capacity to develop and thrive. While health on every level is ultimately an inside job, in the best circumstances, it's a team effort. Today, I wanna talk to you about a subject that has been personally powerful for me after years of struggling with chronic pain that resulted from a severe accident in 2008, and that topic is how positive communication with the body promotes change and healing. As I have exhaustively explored, what I felt like endless options to manage my own challenges, I've gained knowledge and wisdom that has allowed me to be of service to others who have similar challenges or even different challenges, really. Pain is pain regardless of the catalyst.

0:03:03.4 CW: And while pain is perceived through physical sensation, it's far more than a physical experience. It's intertwined with our emotional and mental states. There's no way to disentangle these aspects of ourselves. Let's look at it like this. What if you have a job where you work really hard, you have a specific role within a team of people or an organization and you give it all you've got? You know that everyone's work depends on each other, so if one person falls short, it will affect the outcome for everyone. Then all of a sudden, one of the team members gets sick or injured and your boss places their workload on you so that everything continues to move forward smoothly and is planned. So you work extra hard to the point of exhaustion. You find yourself feeling under pressure and fatigued, but you're still managing to get both jobs done, perhaps not necessarily to high standards, but enough to pull your weight as well as the weight of the colleague that you're covering for.

0:04:09.9 CW: Then one day your boss comes into your office and says, "What is wrong with you? Step it up. You aren't working at the high standards I expect from you. You are failing me". Now, tell me, how would that make you feel? I'm guessing either angry or discouraged because no one likes to be put down. You would likely either try harder and get even more fatigued or you would throw your hands in the air and say, "Enough". Maybe you would start out trying harder, but eventually if this continued on, you'd just give up, and inevitably this would affect the whole team in a negative way, from a productivity standpoint as well as attitude. What if instead your boss said, "Are you okay? You look really tired. You've been working really hard lately and look like you could use some help. How can I support you? Please don't feel alone in this. I've got your back". Now, how would that make you feel? Would you breathe a sigh of relief and say, "Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I need help. If you could offer me some support, I would feel so much better".

0:05:23.1 CW: Well, guess what? Our bodies are no different. Time and time again as I've worked with clients who experience stress and subsequent pain, they tend to communicate very negatively with the part of their body that hurts. If you haven't noticed this yet with your clients, start paying close attention to their words. Statements like "My stupid neck, my stubborn back, what is wrong with my foot? Or this damn knee just won't work right". I have heard outright anger directed from a client to the part of their body that's in pain. We might not realize it, but this type of negative accusatory and unsupportive communication with our bodies is not helping them heal, quite the opposite. It's very likely that the attitudes we give to pain are causing the pain to get louder, literally to yell back, either saying, "Please, help me", or possibly even, "Screw you. I'm doing my best here. As a matter of fact, you are the reason I hurt".

0:06:28.9 CW: We have to embrace the fact that we are in a relationship with our bodies and all too often people treat their bodies like they're an enemy. I ask clients, what activities in your daily life cause this area to hurt worse, and what are you currently doing to support this area of your body? Now, I don't ask this to blame them of course, but with genuine care and concern, I ask them to consider where they might take responsibility for their contribution in the exacerbation of the pain, and I empower them to realize that they can be loving and supportive instead. That support could come in the form of self-care like an Epsom Salt soak, specific rehabilitative exercises, taking time off or easing up on an activity or sport that makes it worse and so on, but it doesn't stop there. The way a person relates to and communicates with pain is perhaps the most powerful therapeutic tool of all.

0:07:30.5 CW: Think of it like this. Your relationship with your body is no different than a relationship you have with someone you love. If you criticize or put them down, the relationship will not thrive. But if you instead cultivate healthy communication skills, even the most damaged relationship can repair and heal. As a manual therapist, you become part of this relationship, and you can affect how the client's body responds in three ways, how you approach the body, how you communicate with the body, and how you teach clients to approach and communicate with their own bodies. Let me give you a practical example using a three step process of connect, encourage and acknowledge.

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0:09:06.2 CW: Imagine you're working on a trigger point that just won't release. Some therapists might be tempted to just keep going deeper or use a technique that is more aggressive to sort of manhandle the body into submission. And frankly, clients might ask you to do this because we live in a culture that's been taught, if there's no pain, there's no gain. In my experience, it isn't beneficial to force a release with aggressive approaches and techniques. Instead, try finessing the body. Start first with connecting. To do this, back off and give the point some space, soften and soothe tissues immediately surrounding the point. Slowly working your way in. Then return to the point and apply a static hold while simultaneously silently communicating with the body in your mind saying, "I see you've been working hard. You must be so tired. I'm here to support you". Then encourage, I say in my mind, "It's okay to relax right now because there is no task that needs done, nothing at all that you need to do", then acknowledge.

0:10:20.9 CW: If I feel even the slightest shift or minimal release, I say, "There you go. That's it. Yes". With clients who I've worked with at least once before, I ask them to do the same. I tell them they need not say anything aloud, but to silently tell this point, "I see how hard you're working for me and I'm very grateful for all you do to carry the load I place upon you or to support those around you or to compensate for this injury", or whatever the case may be for that particular client situation. This all happens in a short span of time while you're holding a point or lightly massaging a muscle or holding a joint at its end feel. I think it's really important to take our time with these areas because the nervous system often needs that time to take in the stimulus and feel safe and supported enough to let go. So, connect, encourage, acknowledge, just like with people, these three steps go a long way.

0:11:23.4 CW: Time after time between the two of us, at least some level of release occurs. It's a team effort and it's nothing short of amazing. You can do this same thing for an overall hypertonic muscle, a joint that's restricted during passive range of motion. Really any situation in which the tissue feels resistant or stuck. I want to point out that in many cases, I do not say this aloud. The intention is enough because it does communicate through your touch, but if you have clients who are really into this concept, you can absolutely do all of this allowed. It reinforces the practice for them so they feel even more comfortable doing it for themselves. I also reflect back to clients what I'm hearing them say when they describe the pain in their bodies with negative language. I gently say, "Hmm, did you notice how you just described that to me? I'm curious. Would you be responsive if someone used those words with you, even though you are working really hard for them?" Of course, you have to feel your clients out to be sure they'll be receptive.

0:12:30.7 CW: But my experience is that as long as you approach this as an opportunity for positive awareness, that will very likely result in them feeling less pain, they're open to the feedback. So, shifting our communication and encouraging clients to do the same within the bodywork session, especially while directly contacting the areas of tension, stress, and pain can result in powerful shifts. Try this with your clients and see for yourself, and better yet, try it on yourself. And please report back to me how it goes. I love hearing stories of affirmative healing. I am very passionate about supporting individuals from all over the country through awareness in four areas, mindset, movement, consumption, which includes anything you put into your body through the senses, not just what you eat, and of course, community. To learn more, check out my website @imaginehealth.com. Thank you so much for tuning in with me today. Cheers to Health.