Chronic Pain

What is Anatomical Balance?

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.

My 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 balance and posture, loss of mobility and flexibility, and even changes in shoe wear and callus patterns.

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 components of the human structure include a central support tower (skeleton) with muscles, levers, and fulcrums (bones and joints), and a hydraulic system (blood and lymph) with 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 provide movement and stabilization, and the hydraulic system manages lubrication, nutrient delivery, and 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 muscle tightening and compensatory adaptations in the lower back—its foundation region, home to 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 be compensated for by the lighter muscles above and below, maintaining its automatic, 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 consistently observed that function and structure were directly related and that any improvement in balancing the structure would enhance the body's overall functioning. The primary goal is not to "heal" the body, but to remove interference and allow it to use its incredible innate abilities to heal and maintain itself.
The Lauren Berry Method® gives tremendous respect to postural balance and ease.