Athena Jezik - Hips & Lower Back Massage Therapy
Transcript
00:00This is Athena Jezik and this is a demonstration on low back work. I'm getting some lotion
00:07on my fingers and my hands to put on her back.
00:14Where typically where a lot of people have pain and discomfort in the low back is in the SI area,
00:22which is the SI joint, which is the joint that comes between the hip, ilium and the sacrum,
00:33which is right in this area here. There's a lot of muscles that attach into this area,
00:38big leg muscles, there's also back muscles. It's quite an active area. It's the stability point in our body.
00:47And a lot of us have low back pain because of the way we sit, either at our computers or in our cars,
00:53and we have low tone in our abdomen, so we're not able to support the back the way it needs to be supported.
01:02So here I'm just assessing the muscles a little bit, and then I'll show you the techniques that I use.
01:11There's a lot of roughness going on down here.
01:16So to take my thumb along here, and I'll take my finger so you can see it better,
01:22and just assess going along the muscle, and this is not with a lot of pressure,
01:27this is just feeling the more superficial muscles,
01:33picking up whatever you're feeling, letting the hands communicate with the body.
01:42And the same thing over here.
01:49And there's a bit of roughness, or sometimes you feel little micro-tears,
01:56it feels like little bubbles, little packing bubbles in there.
02:01Oftentimes what that is, is little tears in the sheath that goes around the muscle,
02:08or it can be a little bit of lactic acid buildup.
02:15You can usually tell when it's a tear, they're pretty obvious, they're pretty big, I don't feel any in her.
02:21Now here's the sacrum.
02:23This is an important joint to stay mobile.
02:26The sacrum needs to be mobile from the hips.
02:30It's real important.
02:32What happens as we sit, we sit and we compress this area,
02:37which makes it pretty immobile, and when it's immobile like that,
02:40then we begin to feel a little bit more back pain because we're stiffer.
02:47So here I just have my fingers on the edge of the sacrum,
02:51and I'm again allowing the sacrum to do what it needs to do.
02:55It'll begin to move itself around to try to find a new position,
03:01or to just loosen itself from the hip bone, or the hip bone from the sacrum.
03:11We're not feeling the movement of the hip, but that is also taking a little bit of movement.
03:18And when the sacrum rocks back and forth like this,
03:21it's like a teeter-totter going up and down.
03:25That's usually a sign that the sacrum is trying to break away from something,
03:30to break loose, because the normal position, the normal rhythm of the sacrum
03:35should be a forward and backward kind of a rocking position.
03:43So when it's going back and forth, it's definitely out of what it should be.
03:51But it does that, and it gets itself loose, and then
03:55we're doing a similar technique that we've done earlier.
03:58We demonstrated earlier getting knots out,
04:01going deeper and deeper in as the body pulls in.
04:06Use that same technique down here,
04:09even though there's not a knot per se that we're on.
04:13We're dealing with trying to get muscles to move, bones to move,
04:18reposition themselves.
04:21So to go slowly and be invited in is always going to give you a lot better result,
04:28because the body is allowing it, it's ready for it, and it's asking for help.
04:35One thing about the more subtle work is
04:39total yielding to what the body wants has to be the therapist's main objective.
04:46It's not a therapy of deciding what to do and then trying to force the body into something.
04:51It's really allowing the body to do what it needs to do,
04:55and just following that anatomy so that it's able to find its way to a new position.
05:02It's not what we're used to.
05:04We're used to being in control,
05:06and we're used to being a little more brutal on the body.
05:10That's what we're programmed into.
05:16So there's a lot of people that have a little bit of issue about not being able to feel things
05:22into a pain scenario.
05:26It doesn't have to be painful to get results.
05:33Anybody that's had cranial sacral work will know you barely feel anything
05:38and the results are phenomenal.
05:43Now my right hand is stabilizing the sacrum.
05:56Okay, and now there's a lot of looseness there.
05:59The muscles are much looser all along here.
06:04I'm finding that L5-S1
06:08and I place my fingers on either side of the spine there, right at L5-S1,
06:15coming right in there.
06:17Then I place the rest of my hand on the sacrum.
06:20I'm going to get ready to do a traction.
06:22I take this hand up to the base of the skull
06:27and get it between the occiput and the atlas.
06:32Then I allow my fingers to be invited in to where I can get between the vertebrae
06:36and all the way down to where I'm feeling the dural tube.
06:42The dural tube is that membrane that goes around the spinal column.
06:48Whether I'm actually on it or not or feeling it energetically,
06:52it doesn't matter because there's a lot of activity right now going on.
06:56Once I'm there, I just push a little traction,
06:59pushing a little bit upward into the head
07:02and giving a drag downward and giving a stretch to the entire spine.
07:07This also allows the sacrum to be able to open up
07:10and to find its place.
07:17To see the position of the sacrum,
07:19I'm going to place my fingers on the sacrum
07:23and to see the position of the sacrum,
07:25I'm going to just rest my hand there
07:28and it is moving in a forward-backward rhythm.
07:33There's no more wagging.
07:39And the muscles here have a lot more smoothness to it.
07:46If I had, if she was a client of mine
07:50and I was working her for an hour,
07:53I may take a cup along here.
07:58But if I don't take a cup along here,
08:00it's changed enough that I would be happy with the results
08:03of what it's changed to.
08:13And there is a little low back release.