Feldenkrais And The Dentist

For many years I suffered from chronic low back pain that would come and go but always seemed to be worsened while I was working on patients or sleeping. Though my yoga practices helped me to alleviate this pain, I continued to create tension and pain in my low back area on a daily basis without knowing why.

For many years I suffered from chronic low back pain that would come and go but always seemed to be worsened while I was working on patients or sleeping. Though my yoga practices helped me to alleviate this pain, I continued to create tension and pain in my low back area on a daily basis without knowing why.

As a holistically oriented dentist I attract many alternative minded patients, and one of them who happened to notice a pained expression on my face mentioned the Feldenkrais Method as something that had helped her. I went to a group meeting, liked what I heard and decided to get some individual therapy. What I learned was not only extremely helpful with eliminating my back pain, but I also found out that I had unknowingly been using Feldenkrais methods and philosophy with my TMJ patients for many years with great success.

Moshe Feldenkrais was a brilliant physicist who worked with the world-famous physicist, Enrico Fermi. After he was told he needed surgery on both knees with an 80% chance of not being able to walk afterwards, he decided to take a couple years off to find out what he could do for his knee problem. As a result of his own research and testing on himself, he was able to heal his degenerated knees and never had an operation on them for the next 50 years until his death. Other suffering people were interested in how he accomplished this feat of healing, and teaching and treating them eventually became his life’s work.

The Feldenkrais method is essentially achieving health and flexibility through awareness training. The gentle exercises and techniques are designed to wake up the body’s natural ability to heal and regenerate in areas that have been chronically controlled by tension and the stress response. Wherever we have chronically tensed areas in our body there is a withdrawal of awareness, natural control and coordination. Using Feldenkrais methods natural control, functional coordination, a sense of internal easiness and comfort come in to the body.

My Feldenkrais therapist, Harvey Arkin, helped me become aware of frozen areas around my low back that I never knew existed. The gentle techniques he used began to unlock these frozen areas painlessly and the pain that I was so used to living with began lessening and eventually went away. I found out that the painful area was only the tip of the iceberg of frozen muscles. He also helped me become aware of my poor posture and walking habits that were contributing to my chronic pain. H also gave me ways to correct these stress-producing habits.

Occlusal compression

In my dental practice I treat many various TMJ disorders. The group of symptoms ranges from a low-level of tension and discomfort to sharply acute or chronic pain and dysfunction of the jaw. Almost always my patients had occlusal compression habits such as daytime clenching or night time bruxing. I soon realized that I treated my patients with a similar approach to chronic pain and tension. I wake up my patients awareness on what they do that brings on the chronic head pain and tension in their jaw muscles using gentle manipulations and testing.

Precise occlusal appliances are sometimes needed that automatically turn off the desire to clench or brux. Also, simple exercises are also given that weakened the power of bad habits and increase the healing potential of each patient.

These realizations have helped to reinforce the wisdom of using gentle and “ soft”, techniques to release patients from the grip of chronic and painful tension states. I have added other holistic treatment techniques over the years that have increased my ability to help more patients, but my fundamental philosophical approach has remained constant and very much in the spirit of Feldenkrais.

TRY THIS:

1. If you wake up in the morning with low back pain, try rotating your pelvic area in a horizontal fashion. If you’re back has been rigid for a longtime do this exercise very slowly and gently. You can use a towel and place it behind your back and swing your arms while holding the towel creating a rubbing sensation. There is a natural tendency to rotate your pelvis slightly in the opposite direction while the towel moves side to side. Within a minute you will start to feel a release in your low back area. A horizontal movement of half an inch will have a wonderful effect.

2. Many people walk in a fashion that creates a lot of tension and strain in the low back area. The pelvis and back remain rigid while walking. A simple and not always easily learned way to walk out of back pain is to make sure your hips are rotating horizontally forward and backward while your shoulders rotate in the opposite direction as you swing your arms freely. Though it may take some practice, this loosening of the upper back and lower back while walking will release the frozen low back muscles and give pain relief in minutes.