Why Bodywork Works

These are exciting times for bodywork. Biology is undergoing a renaissance due to the development of new live imaging techniques and advances in AI which can track what the body is doing in real time. Entirely new organs are being named, while familiar organs are revealing functions no-one knew they had. Scientists are unpicking the ways that mind, body, and environment interact. New findings in fields such as epigenetics and systems biology are now able to explain many of the previously inexplicable benefits that people gained from skilled manual & movement therapy (bodywork).

How can hands-on bodywork enable lasting health changes? Are you interested in health-maintenance strategies which reduce the need for pharmaceutical or surgical intervention? Or are you looking for scientific explanations for your subjective experiences from bodywork?

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In preparation….

Bodies are plastic—well, they show ‘plasticity’. In the same way that plastic can be melted and remoulded into different objects, so your body is constantly re-moulding itself according to need (within certain constraints).

The make-up of every cell, organelle, molecule, is constantly turning-over, being replaced, repaired, or recommissioned. Nothing in the body is static. Liver cells might be broken down because their constituents are needed elsewhere. Yes, you have had that same scar on your leg for twenty years, but it has been in perpetual turnover.

There is a constant assessment of priorities.

Plasticity makes us fit for purpose. If you work as a labourer, you need strong sturdy muscles with powerful lines of stable connectivity and leverage through the body. In response to mechanical load, muscle cells are recruited and given better blood supply while attachments to bones are strengthened. At the other extreme, as a professional dancer, you need to be flexible, and your strength and power needs to be different. Each of us inherit differences between our bodies, but much of our form and function is a response to how we live our lives—the demands we put (or don’t put) upon our body and mind.

Body (including our brain) remoulds around what you actually do and avoids wasting energy maintaining forms and functions which you don’t need. Economy is survival.

If I am cycling all day, every day, my leg muscles get stronger as my body’s resources are re-organised. The lines of tensile strength needed to cycle are thickened; even the bones to which they attach are made denser. On the other hand, if I give up moving altogether and sit immobile at my desk (say, writing a book!), my bone density will drop and my muscles will become flaccid and weak. This is, of course, the reason for weight loading in the gym; strain it and it will get stronger. It is also the reason for the old maxim “Use it or lose it”.

Neuroplasticity

The brain shows a great deal of plasticity (called neuroplasticity). Although we are born with an outline organisation, it is our experiences which fine-tune structure and function to meet demands. Practising mathematics or music may not seem relevant to you in school as it may not lead to a shining career, but the mental exercise will change your brain such that you can use it later as an adult in useful ways. Neuroplasticity is why our early experiences are so influential; they mould the way our brain works.

There is a phase of heightened neuroplasticity during infanthood [e.g., between birth and 2-3 years of age during which the number of synapses (junctions) in the brain increases from 2,500 to 15,000 per brain cell]. However, neuroplasticity continues to a lesser degree even into old age so our mind and body are not fixed in stone. We are certainly less ‘plastic’ as we get older, but we can still change. In fact, studies show that doing/learning new physical skills is an effective way to stay youthful because it stimulates growth of new brain cells and new connections throughout the body.  Staying youthful is not about keeping your mind active but about giving your body new things to do.

Bodywork: movement therapies

Let’s say you take up yoga, Pilates or tai chi and you are asked to perform a new movement which you have never done before. It will be difficult because the pathways between brain and body are either not there or are not particularly well developed. If you can almost do this new movement, the line of instruction that is already there will be enhanced in the same way that driving up and down a country lane will widen it until it becomes a bigger road. In fact, the analogy does not do the mechanism justice as what happens is that the country lane is automatically surfaced with thicker tarmac and nourished with service stations until you have a fully serviced motorway.

More amazing still, our body can also create totally new highways between brain and body that have not existed before. Surprisingly, this requires your attention—more specifically, your engaged intention. It is our intention (mind), our attempts to perform a new task which stimulates new neurons to head off in the right direction, travelling along fibrous pathways of supporting glial cells to their destination where they mature into new connections. Just intending, trying, is enough to set this process of growing new pathways in play. Not only do country lanes automatically turn into fully serviced motorways just through usage, but new roads are built from your attempts to go in a new direction.

Mind moulds the body.

The importance of practice

Many of us tend to give up when we try something new but cannot do it straightaway. Practice is the answer. We have to practise new actions even when we cannot yet do them successfully because the body needs time to redeploy resources and make new connections. The body will not make such a resource redeployment wastefully. It will not adapt to every move you make but only make structural reorganisations if those new processes are likely to be needed in the future. For example, there won’t be much physical and mental re-organisation after one yoga class! But the more you include a new mindful movement in your life, the more chance there is of physical reorganisation being triggered because it becomes apparent that this new action is now a new ‘need’ rather than a one-off event you are unlikely to bother with again.

You have to attempt the new action for your body’s remoulding to find a way. Growing new nerve pathways takes time.

Make it Matter

Physical and mental change happens faster if this new skill has meaning to you. In martial arts it is said that you need to repeat a new move at least 1,000 times before your body has worked out how to do it. However, this practice may be a waste of time if you are not engaged with the new action. For the body to redeploy resources, it needs to know it is important. Engagement is the best way to do this. Therefore, you need to be mindful during practice. What you do with your mind is as important as what you do with your body.

Studies show that we can encourage plasticity through exploration or play. By slightly changing your practice of a new skill rather than repeating endlessly exactly the same move, you can speed up the formation of new connections. Your mind’s exploratory interest triggers redeployment of tissue.

As you can see, there are good reasons for mindful engagement with movement. Our body and mind reshape themselves. Plasticity is therefore one way by which movement therapies change you physically and/or mentally.