The reversal of proximal and distal

There’s this shoulder lesson, the one that has proven to help people with injured shoulders who seemed to be beyond help, and has proven to help them in record time too. Hands-on, you could say, miracle healing. The kind of lesson that makes people travel for half a day – for a one hour session.

I was teaching a verbal-instructions-only version of the shoulder lesson, in standing, in a One-On-One via Skype, when suddenly the generality of the strategy became apparent to me.

Usually we move our arms, and stabilise our torsos, and this lesson works because we stabilise the arm, and move the torso instead. It’s a bit like ordering food instead of going to the restaurant. While the result seems to be the same – we get food into our stomachs – it’s a very different experience. Especially if you ordered-in during the entirety of the past six months and find yourself in a wonderful restaurant for the first time since the first lockdown.

But even without the anticipation, even if your shoulders are just fine, these kind of movements can make you feel better. They might be worth trying just for the learning experience, the deeper understanding of connections and inner workings.

I’ve seen clearly how the „reversal of proximal and distal”, or whatever you want to call it, can be applied to the hip joints, and how we could include or exclude everything above the pelvis.

I’m trying to get a feeling of how it might be applied to every joint, coming from every side, and to include and exclude any number of joints. What does work, what doesn’t? What does make sense, what doesn’t? What does have meaning, what has not?