When it comes to our physical healing and health, many of us tend to focus on the obvious parts of the body like the muscles, ligaments and bones. We go to a chiropractor or osteopath to get a physical adjustment. If we have sore and aching muscles, we’d hit up our massage therapist or myotherapist. If we are trying to recover from injury, we tend to go and see a physiotherapist. Most of us wouldn’t even think about the state of our organs unless something is drastically wrong with them (i.e. they’re failing us)!
Therapies like kinesiology and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) are great because their holistic approach takes into account with the organs of the body on various levels. However, what I’ve discovered from my recent biodynamic craniosacral therapy seminar was that from a physical perspective, it is possible to sense the organ itself and through this, we can actually sense whether there are any restrictions in or surrounding an organ. Like any other tissue within the body, organs can have their own restrictions – whether such restrictions are based on other tissues (like fascia or ligaments) or based on the holding on of emotional stress. Everything in the body is connected in some way, so it makes sense that if there’s some sort of restriction in the body, it could have an impact on something else, that something else could very well be an organ.
To give you a quick example of this, let me take you on a quick anatomy lesson! Let’s take a look at the large intestine.
In terms of connective tissues to the large intestine, the right colic (heptic) flexure contains a ligament that connects the large intestine directly to the liver and the the left colic (splenic) flexure has another ligament that connects the large intestine to the spleen. So already here we have organs connecting to other organs.
To go further, behind the large intestine lies various connective tissue including the much talked about psoas, which is the deep hip flexor muscle that can be the cause of lower back pain in many people. In terms of nerves, the ascending and transverse colon are innervated by parasympathetic fibers coming off the vagus nerve and the descending colon is innervated by parasympathetic fibers from the sacrum.
So how might issues with the large intestine affect us? A “kink” around the splenic flexure could result in you being unable to eliminate properly and could lead to pain, restrictions in the motility or mobility around the right colic flexure could lead to a pain around your liver area as the ligament there is pulling down, too much congestion in your intestines could lead to issues with your psoas leading to restrictions or pain when walking or running.
In terms of the potential emotional impacts on our body, given that the large intestine is responsible for finishing off the digestive process and eliminating things from our body that we no longer need, a common theme with the large intestine is the need to hold on and not let go (sounds a bit like constipation doesn’t it?). Stop being stubborn because if you let go of what no longer serves you, you allow more room for something that does 😉 Let’s just say that there were some people in class who were having some bowel problems and after 1-2 treatments around this area, it all came out!
So you can see that organs can play a vital role in your health and well-being – not just on the physical level but on other energetic levels including the emotional. From my own personal experience, I had some interesting things come up like past lives and a very angry inner child! I can definitely attest to the fact that working with a few organs may actually really help with some other issues that you have in the body (whether they’re conscious or not).
Next time you come in, maybe consider trying a cranio treatment on some organs and see how that works for you 🙂