Chronic Pain

What is Anatomical Balance?

  Put...Anatomical balance is an ideal upright state where the body's weight rests on the skeleton, specifically the sacrum. In that balanced state, the muscles can perform their work, then relax and recuperate between tasks while the skeleton supports the body's weight.

  Muscle Management's goal is to present modalities and useful information about the body that are easy to understand and will aid you in regaining and maintaining your physical balance and health.

The price of adaptation:
   The human body performs many tasks, including self-repair, maintenance, and an incredible ability to adapt. We fall, get up, pay too little respect to the pain (we have more important things to do), adapt to the pain, and move on with our busy lives. But at what price? Over time, how many adaptations can we maintain and still function without interfering with those self-repair and maintenance abilities?

  Indications of excessive adaptation can include increased aches and pains throughout the body, deterioration in balanced posture, loss of mobility and flexibility, and even shoe wear and callus pattern changes.

Thoughts on The Berry Method® of Corrective Massage.

  Lauren's massage system approaches the human body as a mechanical structure (among many abilities, he was a structural engineer). The primary component of the human structure includes a central support tower (skeleton) with (muscles), levers, fulcrums (bones and joints), and a hydraulic system (blood and lymph) that includes pumps and valves. When in a state of balance and ease, the body's weight is supported by the central support tower, while the guy wires are responsible for movement and stabilization, and the hydraulic system manages the lubrication, nutrient delivery, and much more.
Imagine these components after a hard fall while skiing, heavy manual labor, or hunching over a computer for hours. The body might react to these tensions with a tightening of the muscles and compensation adaptations in its foundation region of the lower back—the location of some of the body's most prominent bones and muscles. There may be no visible indication of any potential lasting problem, as the skin would quickly heal over any underlying muscular distortion.
   However, the trained therapist might observe that the underlying tissue region has distorted. Any stress within this heavy tissue will compensate the lighter muscles above and below to maintain its automatic and continuous objective of a balanced relationship with gravity. 

  This style of bodywork/massage is termed "corrective" as the intention is to relieve tensions in muscles, tendons, and ligaments, correct distortion, and thus return the overall "structure" to a healthier state of balance and ease. This includes repositioning and stretching the underlying tissue and moving the body through the natural range of motion, often diminished due to adaptive compensation.

  Lauren continuously observed that function and structure were directly related, and any improvement in balancing the structure would improve the body's overall functioning. The primary goal is not to "heal" the body but to remove interference and allow the body to use its incredible innate abilities to heal and maintain itself.
The Lauren Berry Method® gives postural balance and ease a tremendous amount of respect.