Self Healing - Dormacy
- By Chris Hardwicke
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- 29 Jun, 2018
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What is Dormacy?
I have coined the term “Dormancy” when referring to my clients and their particular physical problems. My observation is that rest simply produces “Dormancy,” not healing. A lack of pain or other symptoms while sitting on the bench or avoiding particular movements is NOT healing.
If your passion is tennis or running and you must stop participating in order to feel no pain, are you healed? Are tennis and running causing your pain? I say “No.” How do you explain the millions of people who do these things with no pain? Do you “heal” when you stop participating and subsequently re-injure when becoming active? I feel that we create dormancy through rest and have a return of symptoms when we resume activity. Avoidance is not to be confused with healing.
In the past, before we began Frontier Movement, we often referred our clients to other modalities when their old injury sites would activate. Eventually some of them felt no pain while pursuing these modalities. Indeed they were mostly sitting down, lying down, or holding poses that did not challenge the offended joints. However, many were grateful to have no pain, especially those with chronic back pain.
After a few weeks, months, or even years they would return to the gym and as soon as their work level reached the old intensity, speed and/or resistance, the vast majority would have a full return of symptoms. You cannot name a “healing” modality to which we did not refer clients, all with poor results.
Often they blamed our workouts for CAUSING the return of their pain but this fails to explain the hundreds of thousands doing these same movements with NO PAIN. These same people would say that their back is healed but they still cannot play tennis because tennis CAUSES their back to hurt. That is not a healed back! These other “healing” modalities had only served to allow the real problem to go DORMANT. As soon as you return to life’s playground you will be on the sidelines again as your dormancy ends.
I have had clients with chronic back pain tell me that some modality healed their back. If I simply ask someone with a dormant back pain to do a somersault you would think I was asking them to do a back flip! They are scared, and they ought to be! They are not healed. Possibly they can go through their days without pain and we all know that to be valuable in the beginning, but they are “on the bench” not in the game. If you are avoiding ANY particular movement you are not HEALED.
So how will we ever heal if each time we reach the same level of work/performance, the pain surfaces and then we are instructed to stop? I was personally in this seemingly never ending loop for years.
We are fight or flight, hunting and gathering animals. In our DNA are all the tools for energy creation. Through the Kreb’s cycle, we can convert ALL food to energy. We can live in excess of 40 days on water alone. We can walk 300 miles without anything other than water. Though it is occasionally not evident, we are the most highly evolved animals on Earth.
To better understand how we create more energy, we would do well to visualize a spiral. If we follow the line of the spiral we see that it moves up and then levels out, reaching an ever-increasing height. The same is true when we create energy. Our energy levels cannot simply rise straight up. We must also level out to create energy (rest).
If you have been sedentary for a long time and one day you decide to go jogging for a couple of miles, you will be tired for several days after. You will need to rest. Tiredness is the downside of the spiral. From just that one run, you have created more energy that is yours to use AFTER recovery. This increased energy is the upswing of the spiral. If you continue to run and rest, the spiral will go up and level out with the net result being a gain in energy. Our heart becomes bigger and our lungs more toned, the relevant jogging muscles are stronger and more efficient.
To return to our car analogy, our engine has become bigger and stronger. When running a couple of miles no longer challenges us we have ADAPTED to our running regimen. At this point, if we do not run faster, farther or longer we will not continue to increase our energy. Our current level of running will MAINTAIN our current level of ADAPTATION (energy level). If we stop running we will gradually go back down the spiral. If we do not allow for full recovery through proper sleep we will also see a drop in performance. Sleep is an important part of the leveling out of the spiral.
In a nutshell, we must work hard enough to go higher “up” the spiral, and then rest, through which we will adapt to higher and higher levels of energy.
You can feed all the fuel you want to a weak engine and it will still not go faster. You can cleanse the fuel lines all you want and you will not increase YOUR performance if your engine is small and weak.
We have total control of our energy level. We are responsible for creating our own energy. If you do not have any, you have created the weak engine I am talking about. It is very easy to look to cleanses and supplements, but a strong engine can run very well for a long time on junk food, much as putting cheap gas in your car often takes 100,000 miles to have a negative effect.
In our car analogy, we fixed everything but the engine and still we had no better performance. A big difference between human engines and car engines is that if you park your car in the garage for a few years, the engine remains just as powerful. The human engine, however, will actually shrink. Your entire system can get clogged by parking it on the couch too long and not taking it out for a good drive once in a while. If you only drive it to work and back it won’t continue to run well for long. You will see what I mean when you finally “floor it” and black smoke pours out of the exhaust! It may even stall! Quick, before it’s too late, let’s make this thing run right, faster, and longer.
Why don’t you have some coffee, sugar, or fruit? That ought to pick you up! How about an energy drink with some wild sounding jungle herbs? Most of us regularly look for energy in a particular food or drink and we are eventually forced to acknowledge that it does not work.
We have an epidemic of blood sugar problems (hypoglycemia) that affect an estimated 60% of this country. In fact, most companies give workers a break at 10 a.m. and often this is not because they are generous, but productivity has markedly slowed. At this point you have only been at work for two, at most three, hours! Certainly you are not already out of energy. Notice that your break room is filled with caffeine, candy, and salty and sweet carbohydrates in hopes of kicking you back into productivity.
Further notice that the great ‘medication stations”—convenience stores— that are filled from one end to the other with these items! I can fix your “Blood Sugar” problem such that you can fully access energy you already have, but that will NOT create more!
Many alternative modalities promise to remove “blocks” to your energy or increase the flow of energy. Often “cleansing” of some type is recommended. Notice that removing blocks and increasing FLOW are NOT the same as creating MORE energy. For a better understanding of energy, I shall use a car for my analogy.
Let’s say that the tube that carries gasoline to the engine (the fuel line) is clogged. The car runs poorly. When you clear the “blockage” you “increase the flow” of fuel to the engine. While this is important and I often recommend energy-flow work, you will NOT have MORE energy, but full access to the energy you already had.
How about if the carburetor is not mixing the air and gasoline correctly? Again the car runs poorly. Many vitamin and supplements companies make “increased-energy” claims based on improving your fuel mix. While supplements and diet can sometimes correct nutritional deficiencies, you will only have better fuel, not more fuel. This is very important as better fuel is necessary for high performance. Many people in third world countries suffer from malnutrition and cannot perform well. However, you and I are likely getting everything we need for our day-to-day performance and even our “weekend warrior” athletics. Body builders, high school, college and professional athletes may well need supplements if their diet is less than perfect but I’m willing to bet that quality fuel is not your problem.
For now, let’s assume that your fuel system is clean enough and you eat a good enough diet. If this is the case, and most often it is, the cause of your lack of energy is that your motor is small and inefficient and that nothing you put in the gas tank can change that!
