Feeling lines of balance:

Between these axes, I saw in my mind’s eye, the stack of balancing rocks in my client’s photo. All of a sudden I realized that I was balancing the shoulder just like   finding the delicate lines of balance in the rocks. Because of his side-lying positioning, I felt subtle lines of gravity under my hands that seemed to go right into the middle of his upper chest. As I tried to follow these lines, he started taking deeper and deeper breaths. His shoulder and arm started to make slight reflexive jerks. With each one he would sigh and breathe even deeper. I could feel deeply into his chest. It seemed as if I was balancing many rocks – some near the surface and some very deep inside. I could align the lines of balance as I felt one level after another. His shoulder girdle relaxed and collapsed in towards the ribcage. And the shoulder released its anterior rotation.

Periodically I would check the shoulder for movement using Trager and find that it moved more and more freely. Finally he took a deep sigh and many tears started to flow. His shoulder had completely let go for the first time in our sessions.
After the session was over he reported that he could breathe freely for the first time since he was 12 years old. He had beet shot with a small caliber rifle. The bullet went through his upper chest entering just above the left lung and exiting in the rhomboid area between his lung and his spine. The wound had healed many years ago but the scar tissue was tight and painful. With the decompressions the effects of the gunshot wound completely disappeared. He felt that the scar tissue had softened to normal.

Activating proprioceptive rather than neuromuscular responses:
As with yoga we are teaching the client to interact with different body parts through proprioceptive and felt sense communication. Rather than asking clients to engage muscles we are encouraging them to join in with their proprioceptive awareness. ‘So doing, we can mostly avoid triggering the neuromuscular system with its preset gamma sensory motor limits. This could be extremely beneficial for those persons whose neuromuscular systems have been partially compromised. It also sets up a parallel system for growth in somatic awareness. Perhaps the most surprising result of this kind of interaction is that clients can become involved is producing their own tissue responses. Clients can also feel their own reflexive releases and feeling linked-relationships (Anatomy Trains) to other parts of the body. This is effective and reinforcing because clients are learning to be their own healers.