by Mitch Hauschildt, MA, ATC, CSCS
There are a ton of things that we can do in the therapy world to improve outcomes. Many times we take a complicated approach, trying to upregulate tissue, downregulate tissue, impact pain receptors, and build new neuro pathways. These skills are important to have and many times warranted in their use. But, many of us (self included) fall into the trap of over complicating things with many of our patients. At the end of the day, the brain is much, much smarter than we are, so most of the time we simply need to restore homeostasis to the area, and let the brain take it from there.
Homeostasis is defined as the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes. Practically speaking, finding homeostasis in the outpatient therapy world is about normalizing tissue in order to allow healing to occur and optimize movement patterns. We can think about achieving this a lot of different ways, but all of them involve using some sort of a stimulant to bring awareness and attention to the area in the mind’s eye.
In the Rocktape courses that I teach, we discuss the term “Kinesthetic Flashlight”, which is one way of looking at this concept. The idea is that we use tape, IASTM, cupping, flossing, etc to make the brain more aware of the area. Logically, one would think that if there is an injury or dysfunction in an area, that the brain would be fully aware of it and almost hyper-focused on the area. Unfortunately, the opposite is true much of the time. There is pain in the area because the brain has lost sight of what is going on and backfills the forgotten space with a painful response (think alarm signal). By shining a light on it, we bring awareness to the tissue and dysfunction, nudging the brain to restore some semblance of normalcy.
In the dry needling world, we also discuss homeostasis by introducing stimulus to the local area. The advantage that needles brings to the conversation is that you are introducing the stimulus deep inside the tissue, which can’t be done with other tools. The research supports that by placing a needle into the local tissue that we get a cascade of events that takes place, including chemical changes that can assist in healing and normalizing tissue.
Robert Schleip refers to this process as reflexive activation. His theory states that when we introduce a mechanical stimulus to tissue, it sends a signal to the central nervous system. Then, the CNS makes a decision as to what to do with it and subsequently sends a signal back out to the local tissue, usually resulting in a normalization of tone in the local area. Reflexive activation works under the premise that we basically need to relax a bit with our desire to make big changes and simplify our approach to the mindset of introducing a mechanical stimulus to an area and let the brain do the rest. It knows what is needed.
No matter how you define the process or the tools you use, there is tremendous power in bringing awareness to the area to promote normal tissue and homeostasis. The brain can do far more than we can. Simplify your approach and watch the body at work.
Leave a Reply