Does Age Make a Difference?

When using a manual therapy technique is it better to change how I do it depending on the age of the client?

At first glance it seems that people are people and if it is a gentle technique one size should fit most. After all we have the same cranial bones or fascial planes or vertebral bones so techniques just need to account for size and structural integrity considerations. But when I consider human neural development and how that changes over a lifetime I seriously doubt that one size fits most.

 Manual techniques are methods to change how a person can move. They provide more options in what the client's structure can do (whether or not the client uses the new ability) and/or how the client uses their current structure and/or get the client to perceive they can move in a manner they had never thought of before. Usually, its some of all three but most are weighted to one particular area.

 The physiology underlying all three of these areas changes as we age. Physical structures strengthen and then weaken over a lifetime. The brain and nervous system undergo major changes in the first 25 years of life and then goes on a course of editing and correlating information to become more efficient and keeping us who we choose to be. And the structure supporting the nervous system degrades with age generally. (This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just a change. The structure of my automobile has degraded over its 16 year history but it still performs far better that I need it to for my lifestyle.)

 So, it makes me wonder - Do I need to think about how to adapt techniques to more closely map the age related changes we experience as humans? And is it chronological age or experiential age?

 I have been considering this because of my work with ReTensioning. ReTensioning techniques help people to rest with their structure closer to physical neutral (minimal physical activity and structural stress) than they do habitually. And there is the clue - habitually. A habit is a shortcut we use to set the nervous system into a coordinated cascade to do something with minimal conscious effort. We know if the habit "worked" because after we do it our body feels "right", it feels like what we expect ourself to feel like. It feels like "me".

 But what if our feeling and what it means are at variance? For example, what if you think you are resting in neutral but you are actually doing a lot of unnecessary muscular work. That's right, you are working instead of resting. Now to change that you need to change your idea of how resting in true neutral feels because generating the familiar feeling creates work, not rest. And that, to no small degree, requires you change your idea what rest should feel like when you ask, "Does this feeling match my idea of what rest feels like?”  and more generally, “When I feel this way is it really “me”? Consequently, when I do ReTensioning with a client, or any manual technique, I am also nudging them to ask, "Does this change fit in with my idea of 'me'?"

 I wonder about adapting techniques to fit the changes in how we answer those questions as we age. Consider how the nervous system develops. Humans spend the first 2-3 years of life building a huge number of neurons for our nervous system. Think of it as just growing a farm with every plant you may ever need covering all the land you have, every square foot. Then we spend the rest of our life adapting and reshaping that system mainly by deleting and changing connections between the huge number of neurons. Think of it as tending the farm to grow the crops we have decided we want, we cut back the ones we won't use, put some paths and roads in, clear an area for the house, etc. Less plants but more useful production.

 So, what is the criteria we use to edit our nervous system? We eliminate the things that we don't conceive of as "me". As we age, we accumulate more and more refinement in defining "me" and quickly inhibiting that which is not. We could veer off into a deep philosophical discussion of how "me" is defined and developed but my point is that on a biological level our electrochemical nervous system changes with age and experience to meet a general criteria - " Be Me". Changes that are largely driven by what we choose to think and do. Most people become more consciously aware of who they have chosen to be as they grow. They become more effective and efficient in implementing that idea and much quicker at avoiding or stopping things that are not "me".

 In light of this understanding, it seems obvious that when I am working with a client and some of their habits and thus their idea of who they are, I should recognize the changes in how they implement their identity over their adult life. I make alterations in my approach between young children, adolescents and adults based on biology and social development but I have not truly respected the biological basis of continued identity development throughout adulthood. Particularly the fact that on a hard wired level we refine and alter the way we implement whatever we need to do to be "me". If I want to assist a person to change then I think it would be even easier if I helped the client use the system they were already using in order to change themself.

 So how do I modify my techniques? How would that alter doing cranio-sacral work, or ReTensioning or myofascial release? Quite honestly, I am just beginning to explore this idea. My initial experiments seem to show that if I do less and let experienced/older clients discover more, positive change happens faster and is more integrated.

 I have some exploring to do. I hope you do too.