Many injuries in our life come, are healed and are gone. But sometimes an acute one grows into a chronic one and pushes us into a state of daily struggle with even the simplest tasks and that’s a different story.
In 2012, I was enjoying one of my regular sports practices when suddenly I felt it, a tiny, sharp needle-like twinge in my lower back. It came and was gone in a second, so no thoughts about something serious going on.
But my body’s protective mechanism remembered a tiny but ignored twinge very well. The following morning there it was, a fully presented lower back spasm and pain all around. I was barely able to lift my right foot 6” off the ground.
A few days after the injury was gone and after applying various folk’s remedies with no relief, I had to change my strategy. I went looking for a lower back specialist. Day after a day, week after a week, and treatment after a treatment passed with no success. The strongly rooted muscle compensation running through my body along with the weakness from a herniated disk and numerous inappropriate treatments over a period of 6 years had led my lower back to develop a subluxation of L4 & L5 vertebraes. The most recommended suggestion to get better I came across was “a surgery” which I was afraid to undergo.
It took me a while to finally realise that learning to manage the chronic pain and accept the situation was not how I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
Hopping to find answers to my chronic pain and suffering I decided to study the neuromuscular physical therapy. Here I met Bev Porrino and heard talks about a kind of magic method focusing on muscle’s compensation patterns. Just rub some points and your body will function as it should do. Too much voodoo stuff for my brain at a time when anatomy, physiology, trigger points and releasing techniques have already created an explosion within my head. I took the course but my pain, at maybe 6 – 8 out of 10 daily was not gone. I started looking for other treatments again.
One day, a good friend of mine lent me a USB flash drive comprising various muscle treatments and techniques. Exploring each of them I saw one where a young lad performed rubbing, activation and re-test to a rugby player with quite amazing results. I wrote down the areas to be rubbed and started my daily sessions, twice or even three times a day. Only a few days later the magic of the activation technique started releasing its power.
I could feel a completely new stronger energy running through my entire body. And, the most important thing, feeling only 2-3 out of 10 pain. This method got my entire attention so I decided to investigate more of this “voodoo” stuff.
I remembered Bev, my classmate from the NTC College talking about this method so I emailed her to get more info and luckily heard that the founder of BeActivated, a powerful and unique technique, Douglas Heel will be teaching a course in Ireland. There was no way I would miss this opportunity and I booked it immediately.
The course was absolutely astonishing. And “Explosion vs Implosion”, one of the body’s main principles, was greatly explained by Doug. He helped me to understand what’s been going on within my body, even prior to my lower back injury.
Knowing your enemy, in my case a strongly rooted compensation pattern constantly working in an implosive/body destroying mode, was a half of the battle. Then, understanding an appropriate treatment with the ability to re-train my body’s natural functioning, therefore working in an explosive mode, was the second half of the battle.
Encouraged by the effectiveness and simplicity of activation method I’ve repeated level 1 again followed by the level 2, but this time with an occasional, almost no discomfort within my lower back. Through being able to help myself I’ve decided to share this knowledge and skills with those who need it most and I began working as Registered NMT, Body Activation, Deep Tissue & Sport Massage Practitioner https://powerfullybalancedbody.ie in Dublin.
Doug, thank you very much for spreading your knowledge and teaching us an extremely useful tool to help ourselves and others too.