ADAM Therapy
Introduction
I have had the good fortune to have worked with the Alexander Technique, and over twenty years I developed and advanced a new therapy method of "Physiohealing" – The ADAM Therapy.
The proposed Work is based on, minimal motions, eventually proceeding to the larger movements that communicate new ways of using our bones, muscles, and joints to the brain.
During this period I was taught by numerous people whom I treated, many of whom I was able to help. I witnessed the same truth time and again: when persons assume responsibility and decipher their muscular/motor patterns, they may greatly improve their functioning, relieve pain, increase flexibility and more…
There are many precise and interesting examples of long-term healing achieved through this method.
1. Enhanced Therapist/Patient Sensory Evaluation
Work taking place in a therapist/patient environment must reach the desired level of awareness and attention in order to achieve realization, and this necessitates creating the appropriate calm and relaxing conditions. These conditions may be established during a preliminary sincere conversation.
Once these conditions have been established, the next step involves a preliminary examination, during which the ADAM Therapy commences, and potential motor flow and current obstructions existing in organs are revealed, in accordance with the twelve "objective" possibilities of spatial movement existent in the body as a whole.
Work is carried out by the patient through the therapist's hands, opening new potentialities and fostering subtle (minimal) motor capacities directed at points where movement is obstructed or blocked.
During the lessons, pupils learn how to sense new potentialities (dozens during each lesson), which are actually combinations of the primary axis directions and their accompanying sensory intentions, some of which enter the patient consciousness. Conscious attention may be considered a type of spiritual organ or muscle that must be exercised, which aids us in developing our will and awareness of precise sensations, and bolsters confidence in our ability to situate sensation correctly.
The body's capacity to learn and comprehend may be compared to new cerebral software, designed to study, choose and print the habits of thousands of small motions, that later join the revised array of larger movements permanently imprinted in the body.
For example, a child learning how to ride a bicycle falls quite frequently.
Following innumerable failures and revisions, the moment of balance arrives, and this capability remains in place for the rest of the child's life, presuming he or she is healthy and functioning.
2. Re-evaluating Basic Sensory Perception
As we are now, why is it virtually impossible to sense the sources from which our movements emanate?
This fundamental problem is derived from the deficient sensory evaluation prevalent in contemporary cultures.
One of the problems we encounter on the way to healing is incorrect evaluation of our body's state. For instance, when a person wants to turn his or her neck in a certain direction, the sensation of turning appears in the neck itself, while actually what's being turned is the shoulders or perhaps the ribs.
Let's look at another example: A man is standing in his normal standing position, but his body is tilted forward, which greatly impedes good posture! However, he is familiar with this posture and feels no "natural" need to repair it, even though it is causing increasing damage to his neck.
As soon as he starts treatment and the guide points out his mistake and helps him correct his posture, the man will try to transfer his body weight (his center of gravity) towards his back. His brain will interpret this action as something that may make him loose his balance, and therefore, and this surprises people who are not familiar with this field, he must issue an instruction resisting this backward motion.
As we've seen, we must, and we can improve our sensory evaluation.
However, we do have an additional obstacle – the perpetuation of malfunction resulting from the power of habit. Let's look at an example from everyday life, for instance, a man who prepares a salad for his lunch every day, always using only one vegetable –tomatoes salad! Apparently that's the only vegetable readily available. He has to eat this same tomatoes salad day after day. Obviously, after a few days of this, he'd rather give up lunch altogether, which, nutritionally, is not good for him. This is exactly what we're doing when we use our limited and defective motor habits for years – we are relinquishing positive potentialities and creating ill health.
So what's to be done?
Clearly, in the case of tomatoes – all the man has to do is add other vegetables and vary his diet. As for our bodies we must develop new sets of habits, through giving new and different directions to various parts of our bodies; sets of habits that will permit increasing freedom in our physical bodies.
4. What is the work in ADAM Method Therapy?
The Work is carried out through the therapist's hands, which, through touch, sense the motor potentialities of the pupil's joints, bones, tendons, blood vessels and muscles. Using a treatment table, the guiding therapist examines the habitual patterns of bodily movements and all of the potential directions, and checks for "hot" or "cold" areas (tension or flowing neural energy) over most of the body. The guide checks whether muscles are cramped or relaxed and examines muscle tone ranges in various postures, based on a three-tiered scale: relaxed/passive, primed/active, or flexible/neutral.
The examination includes checking the six primary directions – the body's motor arteries, which are: up and down, clockwise and anti-clockwise, and front and back. As well as the six additional intentions: in and out, near and far, and left and right. Objective motor direction refers not only to one's habitual sensation of gravitational force (towards the center of the earth – down, towards the sky – up), but to movement along an inner sensory axis, accompanied by a sensory intention:
The Up – Down vertical axis: Everything sensed in motion towards the crown of the head is up, and everything sensed as moving towards the feet is down (whether one is in a horizontal or vertical position).
The Clockwise – Anti-clockwise revolving axis: The sensation of clockwise motion is towards the right, and anti-clockwise motion is towards the left.
The Near (contracting) – Far (relaxing) sensory intention: The "pushing and pulling" (contracting or relaxing) movements within limbs are sensed as "pulling" or moving farther away, or "pushing", getting closer, within the limb's joints or at the point that the limb is attached to the body.
The In – Out sensory intention: A "folding motion" of the limbs between joints or at the attachment points to the body, sensed as moving in or out of the habitual posture considered centered.
The Left – Right sensory intention: One has a clear sensation of leaning to the left or the right. Every deviation from a centered position is sensed as leaning (rather than rotating) toward the left or the right.
Let's take a person suffering from wry neck (Torticollis) as an example:
An examination reveals that whenever he tries to turn his neck towards the left or right, or when he wants to bend over, his neck hurts. In severe instances, he sprains his back. He is undoubtedly using his neck incorrectly, or trying not to move at all – remaining immobile and contracting his muscles.
If we compare the brain to a computer, the moment the brain receives an indication of pain from the neck, it blocks motor ability for that part of the body, silencing the disturbance, expressed as a sensation of pain relayed from the region of the neck.
In fact, the brain will allow minimal non-painful motion, so that the affected body-part remains vital.
We "penetrate" this minute interval with our senses, examining and demonstrating the six primary directions: up and down, front and back, clockwise and anti-clockwise, as well as the six additional intentions: in and out, near and far, and left and right.
If, for example, the blockage in the neck is in the "down" direction, we may reach the blockage by counting just a few millimeters, adding a small interval in the same direction and then relinquishing the direction, creating a minute shock, a ripple, as it were, in the opposite direction. This is repeated in all of the other directions, and very slowly, a low pain threshold interval of 2-3 millimeters is formed, as the muscle increasingly relaxes. This is where healing begins!
As a result of the pain, the person was stiffening his neck to prevent motion, and in time, the area was damaged and lost its flexibility.
Aided by the guide's hands, the pupil's body can be taught how to reopen its minute motor capability and its exact location in the affected region, allowing painless functioning; and thus, the brain "understands" and sends new instructions to improve existing potentialities and facilitates increasingly unobstructed motor ability.
Work on the Being-state Energy:
Once we have practiced for a certain time the work on Enhanced sensory evaluation and the six primary directions – the body's motor arteries – as well as the six additional intentions, we can start to work with this new approach to perceive the State of Being:
The therapist will first examine the 4 essential Energetic Sensory-Points: Two in the center of left and right palms and two in the center of left and right soles of the feet. Through these points he or she can determine
• The energetic state of the patient • The degree of "openness" existing in the blocked limbs.
The therapist starts to work from the periphery, through the fingers and toes, the head, the torso, and the spinal column.
With the help of the therapist's hands, applying the sensory evaluation on the degree of openness in the limbs, the patient starts to feel the flow of energy in these 4 sensory-points as warm vibrations. Then, he or she can proceed to work on the next energetic stage:
6. Work on the three primary Energetic (transmutation)'Centers of Being':
These three Energetic Areas can be considered as the three "centers of gravity" of the human being's three main functions – Mental, Emotional, and Physical.
These central areas are located as follows: The Mental center-of-Being gravity in the top of the head – Fontanel and Cranium Fascia,
The Emotional, in the Sternum and the Diaphragm,
And the Physical center-of-gravity is located in the Pubic Bone and the Pelvic diaphragm.
The therapist start to activate the three energetic areas, by using the enhanced sensory evaluation, the 12 directional special movements, opening them slowly to full, fine-tuned energy sensation. The patient participates in this process and starts to feel the flow of energy in these 3 centers of gravity as flowing warm vibrations.
At this stage, both of them direct their attention and enhanced sensation along the central axis, head, and spinal column, where the 12 Being–States (Being-Centers, chakras) are located.
The therapist will put his hand or connect mentally to the location of each one of the 12 Being-Centers and start to activate it. We know that these locations in the body act as terminals through which energy enters and exits, interacting at the level of each Being-Energy center, as well as ascending or descending to the next center.
This reciprocal metabolism is a synaptic process, similar to the neural commands originating in our brains. The energy flow may be compared to passage through semi-permeable membranes, defused by the density or concentration of the energetic resonances.
When the patient begins to feel the movement of energy in this area, he will be able, with the help of his guide, to sense with his available full attention, the connection between one of the three Energetic Center of gravity, with one of the 12 Being –States along the central axis:
Gradual opening proceeds in both places, and the energy vibrates accordingly. This procedure is similar for the other two Energetic Centers of gravity with their own particular requirements.
These specific healing with its Mutual-action combinations and their full meaning will be studied in depth in specific workshops of the ADAM Method School.
It is important to understand that the healing process takes place in the brain's "inner vision" as well. One may take advantage of the Mind in order to envision a mental image of movements developing in all twelve directions and freeing the blocked areas. ADAM therapy opens the physical body, the 3 Energetic Centers-of-gravity and the 12 state of being, freeing the balanced flow of the patient's vital energy.
Several possibilities arise at this point of the ADAM Therapy:
a. Motor ability in the affected area is physically blocked, but we can mentally envision the potentiality of movement in all twelve directions or in some of them..
b. Motor ability in the affected area is physically blocked, and we cannot mentally envision the potentiality of movement..
c. Motor ability has not been affected up to a certain point, but the affected limb cannot move beyond this limit..
d. There is no physical blockage, and we can mentally envision full movement beyond this limit..
e. We can visualize the energy-flow sensation, the vibrations in the different Being-States along the spinal column, also as tone radiance and absorb the healing effects of Being-Energy therapy.
7. The Fruits of ADAM Method Therapy:
Immediate Results:
• Immediate relief of localized pain, as a result of steady improvement of posture.
• Marked improvement in qualitative functioning of affected area, as well as enhanced capabilities
in dealing with physical and emotional stress.
• Feeling of wellbeing, as a result of replenishment of energy depleted by shock to affected area.
• Renewed confidence in self-healing capabilities and interest in self-observation and self-study.
Long-term Results:
• Increased flexibility. The body responds accordingly and adapts rapidly to changes.
And the Spirit is strengthened too!
• increased ability to cope with the problems or accidents one encounters in the course of one's life.
• Realization of the potentiality of Working on oneself through natural means, bolstering confidence in
one's ability to cope with physical and emotional difficulties, and preventing nervous collapse.
• Accumulation of subtle orientation abilities, allowing the "tune of Life" to traverse one's body
harmoniously.
• Enhanced ability to objectively envision One's Self, and communicate positively with one's live
environment.
For the improvement of the Personal sensory and energetic Evaluation:
Sense, feel, and relate in the right way to yourself and others.