This is part two of a series. If you haven't caught up on what I'm doing with Human Garage, see the other posts here!
Today was my Core Release day with Human Garage.
I was with Alex, a motion mechanic I hadn't met yet. He started our session by sort of assessing where I was at after the last time. This session was definitely not as emotional as yesterday but he did go back over some of the areas they worked on, trying to release more. Especially in my quads because there's still a lot of tension in there and he mentioned that it was a lot like peeling back layers. They took away a layer yesterday and he got some more release today. They're incredibly sore, but that's sort of part of the process. That they just go over and over the area until the release happens. I did feel like in the tightest part of the left quad, some of the same burning sensation up and around my back (perhaps my psoas on the left side) and also the burning sensation sort of near the intestinal area and hip area on the left side similarly to what i felt on the right side, last time.
We talked about how I was feeling and what I was hoping to get from my work with Human Garage. He had read my file and was familiar with what I had said upon my initial consultation, he also had Jen's notes from the previous day, but he also asked me.
mood lighting
I was really struck and impressed by this. One of my issues with the western medicine machine is that everything is so separate. You see a neurologist for issues with your brain, a psychologist for emotional issues, a gastroenterologist for your gut health etc. In my experience it is rare for these doctors to work together in an efficient manner to get to the root of a problem. Many emotional consequences come from your gut health being out of whack. But if you go to a psychologist for anxiety, they are likely not going to tell you to examine what you're eating or to test you for leaky gut, despite the fact that it could be causing your anxiety. It was cool to see these practitioners, working on different parts of my body, within the same business, really communicate with one another in the way that I hope more MDs will. It means they're more likely to catch connections between body parts or symptoms.
Alex worked on my core, but it mostly felt like he was working on my guts. I laid on my back, he'd put his hand on the right side of my abdomen (actually, near the ileolcecal valve), have me breathe and just sort of let my body allow his hands to go deeper in my abdominal cavity. It wasn't difficult for him to dig around in my guts and I don't know if that's because I'm really open to healing that part of my body or I'm not very protective of it. It felt like a very non invasive way of releasing the muscle. Then he did the left side. It felt like I had bubbles in my stomach or intestines. I was actually surprised that him working on the front of my abdomen didn't make me need to go to the bathroom. Usually when someone rubs on your guts, it makes you have to poop!
He worked on the muscles between the ribs. He worked on the back which felt like the upper psoas (the psoas wraps up around to your spine). It was pretty tight but didn't really hurt when he released it. It was easy to chat with Alex the whole time. We talked about how he got started at Human Garage. Like a lot of the practitioners I am familiar with in functional/natural/gut centered health he had his own journey of healing that led him to become a practitioner. (Other examples are: Garry Lineham, Dr. Ruscio, Sarah Ballantyne, Chris Kresser, the list goes on...) These people educated themselves and then chose to share their knowledge to help heal others.
The last thing to release was the diaphragm. The rest of the core release allows the diaphragm, once released to really allow you to breathe a full breath. All the sitting we do and shallow breathing we do prevents us from taking those healing, relaxing and oxygenating full breaths.
When he was done with my core (of all the release days, it's the shortest, i was done after an hour and a half or so) he went back to my legs and got them to release a little bit more. I asked if there was something else I could be doing to make sure that I was letting go of it all. It was really difficult, in the face of the extreme discomfort, to not tense up the rest of my body. He said that I was doing it, just breathe and try to relax. It's about stretching my legs and focusing more on the mental aspect of what am I storing in there? what am I holding onto? what are we breaking down and what are we trying to let go of? I do leave feeling a lot lighter and I do I notice a difference in the way that I'm walking for sure.
At the end of the session he had me walk it off and i felt like i was walking around with my chest puffed up. I felt very powerful and joyful. I was smiling. As a woman and as a sensitive person, I feel like i walk around very physically closed off and hunched over. I had a swagger to my walk from the core release, my hips were swinging in opposition to my arm. I felt great.
I did talk with Alex a little more about the overall Human Garage process today and about how the process of unwinding is the first step in realignment. They remove the tension from muscles and fascia and then you go into biomechanics sessions where your movement is assessed and you're given exercises to help your brain re-train your movement patterns. I understood the overall idea of Human Garage, but every day that I go, and we chat while on the table, I gain a little bit more understanding.
