On Reflexive Techniques and RDTs

My cat knows how to ask for food. It's simple and it makes sense. She's figured it out, and so have i. Just signals, feedback, and recalibration. If time eventually proves us both wrong, it will not stop me in the meantime from doing what we know from experience to consistently work.
My cat knows that, too. She meows. I get her snacks.

In testament to the soundness of the initial thought behind (let's generalize) reflexive techniques (or attempts at development of such), if you toss the idea around, people will say they've heard about it somewhere. I'm no genius. I'm certain someone else must have figured these things out. Perhaps a tribe somewhere. Perhaps in the same place JPB first heard of VM from. Perhaps it's just the RCTs that lag.

We have all known about reflexive inhibition and have used it as a tool in clinics for the longest time now.
Has not everyone on these fora used indirect muscle energy techniques, positional releases and lymphatic drainage and vascular restarts? If the monosynaptic reflex is so well described that no one questions its validity, how hard it to imagine that people have tried to utilize it as a treatment mechanism? Isn't that initial notion behind METs?
Do you now think it might be possible to use relfexes as a treatment mechanism?
Let's stretch that notion, then. How often do see a purely monosynaptic reflex in practice?

Programmed reactions occur in response to noxious stimuli. They are never just monosynaptic in the living organism, are they? Stick your finger in fire and watch several muscles fire off automatically. Pull off a great prank to Startle someone and a well choreographed set of muscles set off a startle and guard reflex. Several muscles in response to one stimulus. Think about it.

Now, what if you could do specific stimuli on purpose, with the intent of reversing or stimulating established reflexes? Could you not then stimulate muscles, that reflexively atagonize targetted muscle groups? Could that be a way to reverse guarding and relax even groups of muscles along synergistic patterns?

Most curiously something i say at every sharing session we've ever had is echoed in your boards: "If I have been able to see farther, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants."
(Sir Isaac Newton)


I'm trying to remember who said it first, but there is "nothing ever new under the sun - just a new understanding, or a rediscovery of what was lost." (My paraphrasing.)

Has anyone here ever tried to meet with the best minds they could, with the intent of solving something, of doing something better?

What happens when you do that with every single good technique you come across?

"Take what is useful, discard what is not." (Parapharased from Mas Omaya)

Have you ever had an "a-ha" or "eureka!" moment when it all just suddenly made sense? Could not something new emerge from that moment, from that idea?


This, if anything else, is an invitation to test everything vigorously. Test what you know. Test what you don't know. The blind faith of acceptance is not much different from the blind faith of rejection. These things are so well primed and fueled by fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of what is unfamiliar. Fear of what could destroy acceptance or the status quo. For us, it has just been a choice:
Do we keep doing what does not work, or what does not work so well? Do we keep doing something for which the evidence is so well stacked against? Do we succumb to fear, or do we choose to see what works?

Do we test everyhting, or are we fine with the rut we're stuck in?

Do we want better for our patients, or do we just stay in the boat we've always been stuck in?

Depends, doesn't it? Does your boat work?

The best description i've heard of insanity stems from the NLP community:
Insanity is when we "keep doing what we've always been doing, and then continually expect different results."


These are just thoughts.

Perhaps that is where evolution starts. A thought.

My cat meows a certain way, motions to the shower, then to the faucet. I get her a bowl of water. She meows approvingly, assuring me i've got it right. I'm well trained. She trained me well. Faster than any teacher and master i've ever trained with.

Meow.