Last Christmas I had a months holiday from my Emmett Clinic. Doesn’t sound like a big deal does it! My first day back at work, I am excited to get back into it again, the client lays on my table, I put my hands on and oh no, why couldn’t I feel much under my hands. I had a moment when I felt like an Emmett Technique newbie again in my finger tips. The Emmett Technique is taught with visual and movement assessment skills too so I still knew what I was doing but I felt like I had lost my left arm, thankfully not for long though :)
It never occurred to me before how focused/connected certain parts of the brain must become to your fingertips when you use touch as a full time career. I treat people with my hands 8-10 hours a day. The touch learning progression is so stealth, that you don’t even know how sensitive your fingers are getting, or how much more you can feel under them, or how much better you are getting at assessing with them, till someone turns it off for a minute apparently :)
I was busting to have a look around and see what I could find that would explain what happened. Our brains are soooo cool!!!!! This is just a small amount of what I actually found to explain my hands sensitivity, enjoy!!!!!
The Blind reading braille was one my first places that I first looked into that might explain the sensitivity in our fingertips. I don’t know about you, but I close my eyes to better see/feel things when fixing bodies sometimes.
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How does the brain process Braille?
We put this question to Dan Goldreich, associate professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada...
Dan: - So, to answer your question, we need to understand how the brain processes both touch and language. With respect to touch, when we move our fingertip over objects such as
Braille characters, receptors under the skin produce electrical impulses that race at about 50 meters per second through the nervous system and up towards the brain. This pattern
of electrical impulses, a sort of neural Morse code, activates a part of the brain's parietal lobe - roughly halfway between the forehead and the back of the head. This tactile
area of the parietal lobe helps to decode the neural impulses, in order to infer the shapes of the objects that touched the skin. Read more of this story @ http://www.thenakedscientists.com/…/questions/question/2864/
:)
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How brilliant is that :)
:Apparently anyone who uses their hands a lot
will have the parietal area of the brain more active/larger in an MRI scan than people in other fields that don’t. You know I had never accessed this part of my brain properly
till I started my first Emmett Course. I remember when I started not being able to feel a thing under my fingers. I had no idea what anyone was talking about when they said they
could feel muscles moving or changing under their hands in class, it was so frustrating.
:)
So, you have to get your hands on a lot of people/clients, do a lot of the same moves repetitively over weeks/months/years. Then the brain to hand/fingers pathways open, different for everyone depending on the way the brain interprets all the information under the fingers, the sensitivity in the finger tips gets louder and louder and you learn to be a way better therapist and help more people.
I love that don’t notice the changes as they are happening, you are too busy taking care of people & loving what you do.
Have you heard of the Vest by David Eagleman? He is in the movie I attached to this post, watch it to the end, he has created a vest that sends vibrations into the body different
vibration with every diferent word, now deaf people are starting to understand the vibrations of peoples words in conversations when wearing the vest. He explains beautifully how
new path ways are created in the brain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c1lqFXHvqI
Emmett Therapists of all levels and varieties, you will get better and better at your craft the more people/animals you get your hands on. The more people you get your hands on
the busier your clinics will get, the busier your clinics get the better your senses will work, the more variety of people you make feel better. Win win win win!!!! I love Emmett,
being a therapist & my fingertips 
:)
The above words are my interpretations of what I have watched and read so far and how my brain proceed it. I bet yours will be different after you have read and listen to the same thing. I love that we are all so different and yet so the same!
Thanks for reading
Rusty Boterhoek
