Matt,
I think what I was trying to get at is that I feel it is the harmonious balance of the features that is attractive in a more symmetrical face and not symmetry per se. I would say the same of spinal curves, or of acid-base balance, or anything else. It's harmony that matters.
A harmonious system is always moving. It is in a dynamic state of balance. It never rests in the middle, but only passes through it briefly as it continually adjusts itself around this point of reference. Even our faces are always moving and often, the most beautiful and moving thing about someone's face is an idiosyncratic and asymmetrical facial expression. Take the Mona Lisa, for example.
So, symmetry and straightness are points of reference for adynamic equilibrium about which the human organism continually re-organizes itself through time. We can help our patients to reconnect with these inherent points of reference but if we impose them from outside, we risk adding unnecessary stress to their system, as we may compromise the adaptive compensations that are maintaining the system in a state of balance.
I would go so far as to suggest that the exercise programs you prescribe help your patients not because they develop new motor patterns but because in re-learning how to move, they are re-connecting with their internal points of reference. They re-discover their own sense of symmetry or balance or whatever we wish to call it and in so doing they find new and more economical adaptations and their movement can continually adjust itself around this improved sense of orientation.
Below is an abstract of an article that explores a mechanism for how this might work, from a Neuroscientific perspective. The essence of the idea is that touch healing therapies work (at least in part) by helping us to re-model our sensory maps. If anyone is interested, I could email or post the whole article.
I would be most intrigued to hear what you think of this as a possible explanation for our work.
Best wishes,
Ben
THE JOURNAL OF ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE
Volume 13, Number 1, 2007, pp. 59–66
©Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
DOI: 10.1089/acm. 2006.5245
Cortical Dynamics as a Therapeutic Mechanism for
Touch Healing
CATHERINE E. KERR, Ph.D.,1RACHEL H. WASSERMAN,1and CHRISTOPHER I. MOORE, Ph.D.2
ABSTRACT
Touch Healing (TH) therapies, defined here as treatments whose primary route of administration is tactile
contact and/or active guiding of somatic attention, are ubiquitous across cultures. Despite increasing integra-
tion of TH into mainstream medicine through therapies such as Reiki, Therapeutic Touch,™and somatically
focused meditation practices such as Mindfulness- Based Stress Reduction, relatively little is known about po-
tential underlying mechanisms. Here, we present a neuroscientific explanation for the prevalence and effec-
tiveness of TH therapies for relieving chronic pain. We begin with a cross-cultural review of several different
types of TH treatments and identify common characteristics, including: light tactile contact and/or a so-
matosensory attention directed toward the body, a behaviorally relevant context, a relaxed context and repeated
treatment sessions. These cardinal features are also key elements of established mechanisms of neural plastic-
ity in somatosensory cortical maps, suggesting that sensory reorganization is a mechanism for the healing ob-
served. Consideration of the potential health benefits of meditation practice specifically suggests that these prac-
tices provide training in the regulation of neural and perceptual dynamics that provide ongoing resistance to
the development of maladaptive somatic representations. This model provides several direct predictions for in-
vestigating ways that TH may induce cortical plasticity and dynamics in pain remediation.
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