12 Comments

Wonderful article! I met with Dr Farris in November of 2015 and I did his exercises as directed. By February my dystonia had abated and my balance was so improved that it was doubtful that I had PD.

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Great, thank you for sharing confirming first hand experience of this. How are you doing now?

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Later in 2016 I stopped doing the exercises and took my progress for granted. Then I was struck with several very intense stressful events and began to get lost in them and decline.

I have been up and down since then. More strength, balance, and fluidity but more intense dystonia.

Reading this article encourages me to read his book and get more specific exercises for the status of my condition now.

When I saw the asymmetric reactive pattern in the baby, I saw myself.

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Sorry to hear you have had setbacks. I hope the book helps. Also do take a look around his online program - has lots of targeted exercises and useful info https://dystoniarecoveryprogram.com/

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Thank you. You know the healing process is a mysterious dance of moving forward and stepping back. I downloaded a sample of his book to start with. I had looked at the online program several years ago but I will give it another look based on your recommendation.

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Fascinating. Thank you for boosting this knowledge, Gary.

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I have been wanting to write this story and get it out into the world for a while...

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Thanks so much for all the resources. I've ordered - Why children are mad and what to do about it. I have 2 grandchildren and can see that all of the family including extended family need to equip ourselves to be good wise and loving, mentors.

I've been continuing to learn how to truly relax, unwind to help heal my tinniitius. Im picking up lots of little nuggets. I now understand why its a slow process, there's so much to learn.

Thanks for your time.

I hope to buy your course. Just budgeting for treatment presently.

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Glad to hear it has been of help!

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Very interesting, Gary. I had a skirt through and will read in more depth later.

I've often found myself dissatisfied with Reich's basic notion of muscular armouring being the core issue. It seemed clear to me, when working with people for years, that the more extreme cases had muscles that had been evacuated rather than armoured. Their nervous system had literally "disowned" areas of fascia, rather like an animal playing dead to avoid predation.

Great article. Thank you.

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Thank you. The connection you observe that the more extreme cases are "evacuated" and the connection with playing dead reminds me of this excellent paper https://www.complextrauma.uk/uploads/2/3/9/4/23949705/dissociation_following_traumatic_stress.pdf - where they have two stages to playing dead/freeze response - first a rigid stage or "Tonic Immobility", and then a more extreme "Faint or Flag" stage where the muscles go floppy and flaccid. So maybe your people who are mor extreme are stuck in the floppy stage and less extreme in the rigid stage?

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Yes, that would make sense. Usually the super-rigid ones aren't much interested in therapy but if they should become so, they make rapid progress. The floppy ones are much more interested but it's very hard for them to move forwards. Whilst the core origin of these types I would imagine to be genetic, I think a reinforcing aspect is how the child aged 2 deals with parental control.

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