More oops I did it again ….

We all wonder why after an injury or issue has healed and after several weeks of feeling pretty good, bang it flares up again, why? Last week I explained so factors influencing why this happens, now I want to explore the physiological aspects.

The Physiological Law of Facilitation (the path of least resistance) The law explains why old injuries flare up under stress.

When an impulse has passed once through a certain set of neurons in your brain to the exclusion of others, it will tend to take the same course on a future occasion, and each time it does, the resistance will become less.

An analogy of this would be the image of rain on a dirt hill each time it rains the pathway becomes more entrenched, larger, and more intricate spreading out to nearby pathways.  So once a nerve learns a pain pattern it tends to repeat it even in the absence of the injury. So the effects of stress to your mind and body can be a trigger for this response to kick in.

But wait, there is good news!

The Law of Facilitation can be maneuvered to help a massage therapist make the benefits of their treatment last longer. You may be wandering how can this be?  In massage, patterns of imbalance which result from trauma, or from habitually stressful patterns like poor posture can be addressed.  So your body should adapt to changes taking place in the musculoskeletal system and create new pathways.

The body likes sameness, which produces habitual patterns. When a pattern is established, it does not take as much stimulation to activate the response.

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