Perceiving Elusive Motilities
A Natural Health and Wellness Essay.
Infection Motility
Recently a biodynamic practitioner emailed me with questions about Infection Motilities. Here is my response to him.
Developer of integrative Manual Therapy, Sharon W Giammatteo has not written much about Infection Motility or what has come to be known as Immune deficiency motility (IDM) publically but in classes she teaches the skill of palpating and working with many different motilities. In general there are two kinds of motilities. There are normal motilities that are healthy reflections of life such as a steady heartbeat; the cranial rhythm, which is thought to be a reflection of the circulation and rises and falls in the production of cerebral spinal fluid; the expansion and contraction rhythms of the visceral system described by Jean Pierre Barral; or muscle rhythms, described in medical literature as being 40 hertz per minute. In disease processes, these healthy rhythms become imbalanced or weakened such as an arrhythmia, a ratchety cranial rhythm or as in Parkinson’s disease a slowed muscle rhythm.
There are also perceptible rhythms that are only felt in disease or injury processes like Infection Motility, described by Sharon W Giammatteo. She also describes PFMs or rhythms that are reflective of Physical Functional Medicine. Working with the Liver PFM for example is thought to be like a remedy or energetic supplement for the liver.
Immune Deficiency Motilities (IDM)
Feeling, perceiving or palpating the Immune Deficiency Motilities seems to be an indication that the immune system is not functioning ideally. There are of course a number of reasons why the immune system is challenged: a bacterial or viral infection, heavy metals, or some other toxin or irritant, stress, autoimmune disease, injury and more.
One reason you might perceive an immune deficiency motility is that something good is in the wrong place. This is found in Leaky Gut Syndrome, where the wall of the digestive system lets things out that should not go out and lets things in that should not come in. It is a permeability problem, often referred to as dysbiosis. The “good bacteria” from the gut are only good when they are where they should be. Blood is only good where it carries nutrients to the cells and carries waste products and toxins away from the cells. When due to injury there is blood inside the knee joint, it is not good and can show up as a immune deficiency motility.
Resistance Therapy
Treatment of motilities can be resistance therapy. I think of it as using your hand, your energy, your mind to say to the person on a cellular level: “Stop for a minute and look at what you are doing. Is this really the best way?” Resistance can take the form of resisting a movement, an opening and closing, an expansion and contraction. Resistance can also take place along the edges of the shape of the motility. Motilities can be a feeling or representation of what is going on.
If you were going to develop a way to perceive what is going on in the cells, what would you do? What would resistance therapy look like? How would you communicate with the body and say, pay attention here?
Would you put your hand on and feel for subtle pulsing, vibrations or rhythms?
Would you feel for an energy disturbance in an organ or a certain set of tissues?
Would you see with your inner eye a color or a shape that represents or symbolizes the health of the tissue? What would resistance therapy to a shape or a color look like?
Would you dowse and find an area you are drawn into? Would you use your knowledge of anatomy to select the two points from which to dowse?
Would you look at pictures of sepsis, dopamine, serotonin, viruses, bacteria, estrogen, calcium, or affected proteins like huntingtin or gluten?
Would you notice what anger feels like in the tissues or disgust in the basal ganglia?
Would you feel for the shape of oxygen at the acupuncture point Lung 1 and then feel along the meridian for differences or changes?
Would you ask question and use muscle testing to find out where the problem or solution is and feel how that tissue feels different from the surrounding tissue?
Would you look at pictures of bone structure and wonder what a healthy bone rhythm feels like or how circadian rhythms feel?
How do you work with individuals to help them overcome their challenges?
Rhythms in the Medical Literature
“Rhythm is a product of biological structure (Mathiot, 1982). An accumulation of mutually entrained rhythms protects the individual components from wild fluctuations (Glass, 1988). Rhythm produces the expectation of continuity and changes in rhythm signal new experiences. These changes may be signaled by alteration in tempo or by the lengthening or shortening of the beats themselves. Obviously, varying rhythms can grow to share a common pattern only if they have the flexibility to adjust to one another. The capacity to be both repeating and flexible in the nature of that repetition is essential. (Pg 45 Brown, P. (1991). The hypnotic brain : hypnotherapy and social communication. New Haven: Yale University Press.)
“Of all the rhythms of human life, perhaps none is so central , none is more closely linked to what makes us human, as the rhythm of face to face interaction. The ability to create a relationship, to share a context, is the important human skill. To regulate the rhythm and tempo of the interaction is as important as the entrainment of any other cycles of activity and light, food and digestion, with the coordination of brain centers. Just as synchrony of these functions depends on the aggregation of a group of smaller elements, so too does human interaction. These rhythms provide the basis for how we know each other and share our lives.” (Pg 45 Brown, P. (1991). The hypnotic brain : hypnotherapy and social communication. New Haven: Yale University Press.)
Muscle Rhythms
“In the last 50 years, researchers have delved into the presence and implication of muscle oscillations, frequencies, vibrations, rhythms and physiologic function. One such rhythm is the Piper rhythm at 40 Hz. There is also extensive support for the idea that human skin and hands can perceive vibrations in the range of 0.4 Hz to over 500 Hz. From the field of Integrative Manual Therapy (IMT) comes a technique based on the palpation of muscle rhythms and the resistance of these rhythms while contacting synchronizers or reflex points for improved muscle function, normalization of muscle tone and decreased pain.” Burnham, K., T. Giammatteo, et al. (2009). “Muscle Rhythms: A Manual Therapy Approach to Muscle Physiology.” Explore! for the Professional 18(2).
Palpable Vascular Motilities and Joint Circulation
“Integrative Manual Therapy practitioners, Craniosacral therapists, Osteopathic Manual Therapists and many other practitioners use their hands and palpation skills to find areas of dysfunction and treat them. Recently further validations of palpable rhythms in the body, which can be used to assess the circulatory system have been published.” Burnham, Kimberly. (2014) LinkedIn Blog. Palpable Vascular Motilities and Joint Circulation.
Clinical Use of Circadian Rhythms
“Physiologic and psychological processes exhibit rhythmic fluctuations, known as circadian rhythms, which are adaptable to changes in the environment, particularly light, temperature and stressors. The word circadian comes from: “circa” or about and “dian” or a day, a 24 hours period. The field of chronobiology examines circadian rhythms and the how human responses are affected by these rhythmic fluctuations. Many practitioners in both traditional medicine and complementary medicine use these circadian rhythms diagnostically and clinically. Chronobiology is a term derived from chronos (time), bios (life), and logos (science). Chronotherapy is defined as the use of treatment timed according to the stages in the sensitivity-resistance cycles. Burnham, Kimberly. (2004) Clinical Use of Circadian Rhythms.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on January 21, 2015.
