Cultural Influences on how we perceive the body.

The effects of cultural impressions on how we view the body and the client in front of us.

Soma Solutions — developing the skillset of higher palpation, higher, patient interaction to begin really treating your client from here.

Hi, this is Joseph with Touch Sense, and today I'd like to share a few thoughts with you on, um, our cultural impressions and how that affects the way we perceive the body and the way we perceive the person in front of us. Um, it, it seems like it would go without saying, but we really often don't stop to consider the effects that our family conditioning, our cultural conditioning and our educational background have on our perception of the body in the West. We have, uh, continued to break down the body and finer and finer parts, and that started, you know, we have a long tradition of that anatomically and the way we look at the body. In fact, there was a big departure in, I don't rem I think that might've been galand, I don't really remember, but, um, where some of the more esoteric or intuitive aspects of perceiving the body were in at odds or in conflict with what they were seeing anatomically.

And they wanted to, um, explain things with what they were seeing anatomically. So, and we, we have that for sure that we have not let go of that, and it leads to certain strengths and it also leads to certain weaknesses. For one. Um, one of the biggest weaknesses, I think it would be putting it all back together. We're seeing the whole, and now this whole or holism is, is an interesting concept. It's been around for a long time, but it, it's, uh, it, it, it's a, it's an interesting thing to consider. Um, to me there's very little that is, um, that people like to talk about non-dual and these kinds of things. And I think they're saying holism to me that I could be wrong. Not really a philosopher in that way, but in the body, we, we have an arterial and venous system. We have an efferent, aernt nervous system. We have sensory motor control, we have contraction along elongation of muscle. We have contraction, elongation of tissues. You know, we have inspiration expiration of the breath. So everything is really, you know, we have cell division, we have cell death. I mean, these things, there's a constant turning over and, and, and a and a constant cycling. And to me, a cycle itself

Points to the revolving nature of a dual order, so to speak. Um, and, and that can be really helpful in treat in working with the body, because you can see how, where, where in the system there's an imbalance. I wanna share a quick story with you. A colleague of mine, uh, had a, um, I don't know if the, if the young, the person was a recent grad or just towards the end of her studies, but, uh, my co my colleague is an acupuncturist and he had this chiropractic, I'll call her student, uh, come in and observe with her. And after a few sessions of watching her take the pulses, take the, um, do an intake, ask questions, interact, build rapport, things like this, she asked, uh, my friend, my colleague, if, if, if, uh, she could take her pulses and tell her what she thought.

So she obliged and did that. And as she kind of revealed what she had felt and gave her a diagnosis, so to speak, you know, loosely, um, the, the, the young lady actually kind of teared up a bit. My friend asked, um, is everything okay? What's going on? And she goes, so you did that without x-rays, without labs, without, you know, uh, you, you know, a, a big you a pile of a big, uh, intake. You just observed me, took my pulses, asked me a few questions, and had a synopsis of a place to begin to treat. Uh, that, that's, that's, that's a good hands-on. She's not a hands-on therapy, she's an acupuncturist. But, uh, but it's a very similar model. Um, and you know, it, it points to, I thought the comments on the labs and the, and the, uh, x-rays and the diagnostics were priceless.

Not that those don't have value. Obviously they have value, but it's not like we need them to begin to treat. And in fact, I would say that we, they often get in the way, um, of developing the skillset of higher palpation, higher, uh, patient interaction. Because what we do is we end up looking to the x-ray, looking to the labs for what we're going to do. You're treating essentially the labs and you're treating the, the, um, x-ray, you're treating the person in front of you, but you're seeing this other, this other image. Uh, so I'm kind of looking at the time and that's, that's gonna have to do it for right now.

We're seeing the whole, and now this whole or holism is, is an interesting concept.