[log in to unmask] writes:

<< My aunt (retired fysio) told me a funny story about low-back pain.


One of her friends (also ex-fysio) had been having backache for some time and
decide to go to a PT. It didn't help much however. Then she went to another
and another and a manual therapist and an osteopath etc etc. Nothing seemed
to help. Then - by accident - she told her local opticien (guy that sells
glasses) about her backache. He told her that her new glasses might be the
problem. It appeared that her walking-pattern was slightly, slightly
different when she didn't had her glasses on. She decided to test this theory
by wearing her old glasses. Guess what happened...: abracadabra... the
backache releaved.......>>

***  Herein lies an interesting tale for all of us.  No wonder there appear
to be so many therapists who enjoy a good measure of success in treating back
pain, even with what appears to be minimalistic intervention - it seems as if
very small differences in posture or movement may be associated with back
pain if something is not done to disturb the body from its metastable state
of disturbed functioning.   Several of us have periodically discussed on the
Supertraining discussion forum the possibility that certain nonlinear dynamic
(NLD) or 'chaotic' processes may be involved in human movement - well, the
above case history would appear to illustrate this principle in vivid action.
 To read these discussions, search the archives of this group for terms such
as "chaos" and "nonlinear dynamics" at:

<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Supertraining/>

This does not mean that only new glasses would solve that back problem -
there probably would have been several other minimalistic or apparently
trivial approaches that could also have helped.  Maybe some abdominal
exercises, mobilisation, some hypnotic techniques, heat embrocation, trigger
point therapy, stretching, acupressure, shiatsu, physio ball drills ... some
transversus or piriformis intervention.  In fact almost anything that somehow
offered sufficient perturbation to cause the body to be 'strangely attracted'
to a more comfortable state of functioning may have worked just as well.  The
accumulation of a series of various unsuccessful interventions might even lay
the foundation for the last advantageous straw that heals the camel's back.

If the patient's body experiences that triggering event in some therapist's
offices, then a powerful emotional relief will immediately correlate the
healing with that therapist and what was used on that specific occasion -
even though neither may have been directly involved in the final resolution
of the problem.  In other words, what Carl Jung called synchronicity could
also have been lurking in the patient's footsteps.  Clearly, if the therapist
schedules several weekly visits over an extended period of time, the chances
of such synchronicity happening increase - is this why some therapists
virtually sign patients up for long term contracts for "readjustment",
"attunement", "energy balancing" or some other semi-mystical procedure.

All too often, therapists who have grown proficient at using a given
technique or who have a special emotional relationship with that technique,
tend to ascribe healing to a SPECIFIC single technique or combination of
techniques.  In fact the healing may have been the result of some GENERAL
process which indirectly provided the necessary and sufficient perturbation.
Even the placebo effect created by a caring healer touching the body to relax
or tense the body in a specific way, or the voice and message elicited some
mental response which allowed the body to be attracted back to a more
comfortable functional state.

Even the awareness or pressure applied by a "healing magnet" may serve as one
of these general therapeutic triggers and the result has very little  to do
with electromagnetism or "quantum healing" or whatever someone thinks is
involved.  All that we may have seen in action was yet another suggestion
that nonlinear or chaotic processes may be implicated in many healing
situations.

Maybe we need to be much more circumspect about ascribing healing to a
SPECIFIC intervention and leave some room for the possibility that other far
more GENERAL, apparently remote, processes may have been major players in the
overall healing process.  Maybe research sometimes needs to be better
controlled to rule out the possible effect of GENERAL processes.

In the case of certain coaches producing excellent results in sport, like
those whom we have been discussing recently, the athlete's success may have
been largely due to that coach providing the final trigger in the training
process that was begun a long time before the athletes even reached that
coach.  This is typical of nonlinear dynamics, even though many coaches might
not like to hear that sort of revelation.  Maybe there is a lot more
synchronicity behind any given coach-athlete combination than we hitherto
have been willing to admit.  That is one of the reasons why some of the
humblest caddies can sometimes help some of the world's best golfing pros to
correct various frustrating problems and return to winning.

Dr Mel C Siff
Denver, USA
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Supertraining/