There are 2 mobilisers available at my London office at The Back Shop. Drop by anytime during opening hours and mention my name for a free try. Alternatively I now have one at my  home in Kings Langley and because it folds up and can be carried as easily as a suitcase, it can be brought to you in your home too, by appointment.

View the little film I made…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItBNyy63QWg

In her editorial Anna says The Alternative ‘ introduces you to the complementary practitioners we can personally vouch for.’ This is certainly true in my case, as over a course of 10 sessions no stone is left unturned! I think the article has been very well done because although Anna doesn’t go into particular detail about her personal process, she nevertheless conveys a great impression of the quality and value of the work, and has included some choice quotes! See what you think….Stella front cover     S.T Stella Mag 310313     from the Editor

The common wisdom is that there is a “perfect” posture that we can somehow achieve and stay in all day. This is not the case. Life is movement for human beings, and movement is life. We do not have roots, we have legs.

Doctor Posture is the UK distributor of the LimbIC Chair. Call to arrange to view & try out this most significant leap forward in seating technology in London. Each LimbIC chair is made to order according to the dimensions (height, weight, leg length/diameter etc.) & the personality of the purchaser. Prices on application, roger@golten.co.uk or 07956 514 522.

Doctor Posture, author of “The Owners Guide to the Body” says we human beings were not designed to sit! The chair was originally an emblem of authority, like a throne. Committees, boards of directors, and academic departments all have a ‘chairman’. Endowed professorships are referred to as chairs. It was not, in fact, until the 16th century that sitting became commonplace. In Europe, it was owing in great measure to the Renaissance that the chair ceased to be a privilege of state, and became the customary companion of whoever could afford one.

The whole idea that you must “park” your body in order to apply your mind in study, work and any kind of creativity is severely flawed & the problem with the standard kind of chair is that it is an immobile device which promotes inactivity. Recent research is backing Doctor Posture’s 30 years of experience, showing that not only is sitting “not good” for human beings, but that in fact it is positively bad news, and not just on a physical level with muscle atrophy, elevated blood sugar, blood pressure etc., but also psychologically.

Sitting (on the LimbIC Chair) is not only healthier, it can, in fact, make you happier, more creative, focussed and lively because it stimulates the emotions (via the limbic system) to connect energy and thought. It’s the only chair to combine the latest research in neuroscience and ergonomics, so rather than treating the body as a separate and rather inconvenient (Cartesian) appendage, it is acknowledged & integrated as an vital extension of the nervous system and the brain.

Dr. Kunzler’s LimbIC chair is the only chair that not only permits but facilitates movement in all directions with its unique split leg support mechanism, which incidentally removes any pressure on the coccyx. It is a breakthrough in design, and will help to reform our sedentary society. This device creates the possibility that office & computer based work will not signal the demise of the healthy human being, something that the recent research is strongly suggesting.

Here is what Kunzler himself said recently about the evolution of the LimbIC chair;

“I started with the brain; can we make a device, not even necessarily a chair, that helps our bodies & follows our brains, thoughts and activities? At the outset it was called the wearable seat, a method of affecting our emotions, concentration & mental and physical states, but also to hold the body lightly and freely, like a mother holds her baby, allowing any safe movement or posture.

From that I started investigating how body and brain work together from the point of view that the spine is an extension of our brain and the body is an extension of the spine. It was time for an experiment: Could we make a chair that, just by the way it touches you, makes you do skiing movements? – and the answer was YES, and people also experienced sensations of flying, gliding, euphoria, JUST WHILST SITTING IN A STATIONARY CHAIR IN THE LAB AT M.I.T.

The next question was, which “state” is the most perfect, balanced, and free? We asked people & researched literature & mythology. The answer we came up with was a feeling of weightlessness, an enhanced sense of touch, motion, and self & optimal interaction and inspiration between body and mind. Things that people typically have to train for for years in meditation, yoga, etc., etc, we were able to do for you in seconds or minutes.

We investigated, experimented and built many prototypes, all of which are still at M.I.T. and which led towards a minimal seat just to hold the body, adding surfaces for emotional & cognitive effects, and creating medical benefits for the sedentary in the area of posture, discs, muscles, sense of balance, freedom, purpose, creativity, energy, movement, inspiration & empowerment.

WHILST ALL OTHER chairs start with sitting and how to improve that with cushioning, lumbar support, whole body movement while still sitting, etc., THERE IS NO GOOD POSTURE FOR SITTING, so they are starting with what’s unnatural, bad for us, pain, etc.

By starting with the brain and looking at the body as an extension of the mind, we started with what’s good for you, what you want and what creates magic in your life: leading to the possibility of a freer and fuller expression of who you are.”

Dr. Patrik Künzler, MS

written on a LimbIC® Chair

You will also find out more about Zen Swimming, a great way for ordinary swimmers to become excellent swimmers and quadruple the benefits that they might currently be getting from this most popular of recreational activities.

While we are on the subject, I am expanding my home visit business, who do you know who has a swimming pool at home and would like to receive a free Zen Swimming lesson? Yes that’s right – for FREE. All they have to do is get in touch to arrange. a mutually convenient time for me to visit

What a piece of work is man
How noble in reason
How infinite in faculties
In form and moving
How express and admirable
In action how like an angel
In apprehension how like a god

Shakespeare

Man is the most complex system in Universe, apart from Universe itself. Fuller

How does nature build such astonishingly complex structure? Nature always uses most economical means, so the passage from economy to complexity requires a superb and highly efficient “building block” 

In a life spanning more than three quarters of the twentieth century the independently minded American thinker, Buckminster Fuller always insisted that he was a discoverer rather than an inventor, seeking the most economical way to build structure, ergo the way nature does.

“I didn’t set out to design a house that hung from a pole, or to manufacture a new type of automobile, invent a new system of map projection, develop geodesic domes, or Energetic-Synergetic geometry. I started with the Universe — as an organization of energy systems of which all our experiences and possible experiences are only local instances the principles operating in Universe, I could have ended up with a pair of flying slippers” (quoted in Ency. Britt.). 

“I am not a creator, I am a swimmer, a dismisser of irrelevancies”

Gravity itself is a tensional force. For instance the 25,000-mile diameter Earth is on a 92 million mile long piece of string keeping it in orbit around the Sun.

At the other end of the spectrum, Donald Ingber has been looking at and experimenting with the structure of microscopic biological cells since 1975. In 1998 his paper “The Architecture of Life” was a front-page feature in Scientific American, reporting on experimentation that proves that tensegrity design is an excellent “fit” in terms of explaining intra-cellular design and structure.

What you imagine is what you touch” Ed. Maupin PhD

Stephen W Levin MD has developed tensegrity thinking as applied to the gross musculo-skeletal features of the body in a number of papers from 1980 onwards. His synthesis of the shoulder girdle in one paper explains the extraordinary features of a joint that is so mobile that it’s strength is unanticipated by conventional analysis. www.biotensegrity.com. More recent contributions cover the pelvis, spine and the importance of the soft tissues, all highly relevant to this discussion

Abstract

Tensegrity structures, those whose integrity is maintained more by tension rather than by compression have provided an intuitively very satisfying conceptual model for how the human body is organised on a gross level. They are used in Hellerwork & other Structural Integration Practitioner trainings to demonstrate an alternative to compressional structuring, the kind most visible up to now. Tensegrity architecture is now being scientifically acknowledged and verified to be the way Nature actually builds her structure from a subatomic to a cosmic scale (as Bucky Fuller preached), and the human body, last bastion of unconsciousness, is included. This recognition may stimulate some fundamental advances in the way we take care of our bodies.

The Big Picture

Gravity itself is a tensional force. It’s a force that operates invisibly over millions of miles, and even more mysteriously, when you consider that it does not exist in isolation – only as a relationship between two objects.

Structural Integration is a systematic programme of myo-fascial manipulation originated by Ida P. Rolf PhD (1896-1979).

The goal of structural integration work, or S.I. for short, is to optimise the organisation of the human body with regard to the strongest force acting on us in our whole lives; the force of gravity. Rolf can be regarded as one of the great early pioneers in the development of the human potential movement in the early 20th century, along with FM Alexander, Moshe Feldenkrais, Milton Trager and Joseph Pilates. It was Rolf who first recognised the primacy of the fasciae and the importance of gravity in the development and functioning of human structure.

The S.I. protocol utilises the plasticity of the fasciae, the tissues that surround, envelop and contain the various structures of the body, to optimise the overall relationship of the person to the planet and the parts of the musculo-skeletal system to each other. S.I. falls within a general therapeutic area known as somatic education - education of the body through the body, and it is further distinguished from other modalities by the discipline and direction imposed by the line of gravity.

The fasciae are a part of what is known as the connective tissues of the body, distinguishable in embryology as part of the mesoderm, as opposed to the endoderm (digestive tract) and the ectoderm (nervous system). The mesoderm or connective tissues include bone, muscles, ligament, tendons and surprisingly, the blood. Connective tissue connects and mobilises the body, and is highly developed in athletic types, whereas an academic may be more ectomorphic or an opera singer endomorphic.

That backache was the best thing that ever happened to me

I first came across this type of therapeutic work in 1982 when an acute lower backache had me in enough pain to try something new and different. After one session I was intrigued, and after three I knew I wanted to learn the technique and that it was to become my vocation in life. It was 7 years earlier, whilst completing my Bachelors degree at KeeleUniversityin International Relations, that I first came across the work of R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), universally know as Bucky.

The University bookshop was a welcome refuge from incomprehensible and irritating studies in micro-economics and I clearly remember picking up James Meller’s Buckminster Fuller Reader and reading a few sentences about how ‘economics is defined as the study of the allocation of scarce resources, but that there is no scarcity’. This subversive thought intrigued and inspired me. Later, at the age of 88 Fuller was to sum up the facts as he saw them:

“..The total of all energy used daily – 95 percent wastefully – by all humans for all purposes aboard Spaceship Earth amounts to less than one-millionth of 1 percent of Spaceship Earth’s daily income of expendable energy imported from the Universe around and within us.”

At Keele, extra-murally, I was a member of an improvisational dance movement group led by Georgiana Gore PhD., and influenced by an obscure contemporary of Merc Cunningham, Don Oscar Becque, who had taken the impulses of modern dance into the area of structural exercise. I performed as a dancer in the Keele Musik Circus’s performances of John Cage’s Theatre Piece inLondon,Edinburgh &Zagreb, and developed an enduring interest in movement studies.

 Bucky’s statement intrigued me, and I bought the book, which turned out to be the first acquisition of what is probably now the biggest collection inEurope. Certainly the most well thumbed; as I completed my reading of all 24 books, and other related titles by 1986. By this time, and quite serendipitously, I had already been back toSonoma,Californiato train with

Joseph Heller (1940 -), a student of the great pioneer of Structural Integration, Ida P. Rolf PhD (1896-1979), and the founder of Hellerwork in 1978, which takes the bones of the Rolf method and adds the flesh of movement awareness training and mind/body dialogue. My first visit to theUSA had been in 1981 when I attended the World Frisbee Championships. When I arrived back in theUK after completing my basic training to begin my practice in July 1983, it was the month Bucky died, at the age of 88, in Pacific Palisades in California.

Tensegrity as a new conceptual model of anatomy

It is by using the concept of Tensegrity that Fuller developed from Kenneth Snelson’s sculptural pieces that Heller has been able to dramatically communicate the vital and innovative idea that infuses his conception of anatomy. The idea that it is the soft tissues that hold everything in place and that the bones are keeping the soft tissues apart was a radical conception which is almost impossible to visualise without a model of tensegrity, and tensegrity itself is almost impossible to visualise without a 3 dimensional model in hand. Fuller/Snelson structures made the invisible distribution of structural forces visible for the first time, by completely separating the tension and compression.

Snelson with Fuller in 1949

Kenneth Snelson, originally a painter, met Fuller at the eclecticBlackMountainCollegesummer school inNorth Carolinain 1948, where he had come to study with Joseph Albers, Wilhelm de Kooning and others from the Bauhaus group. Fuller’s talk on the first evening electrified Snelson and the entire student body as he introduced his energetic/synergetic mathematics and the concept of the design science revolution.

“… these studies in forces are a rich source for an art which celebrates the aesthetic of structure, of physical forces at work; force-diagrams in three-dimensional space…” Kenneth Snelson

That winter Snelson integrated Albers and Fuller’s influences within himself and developed sculptural pieces based on what he called “discontinuous compression”. Snelson presented Fuller with his invention the next summer, and Fuller saw the solution to questions he had been pondering for 20 years. Tensegrity, the word coined by Fuller, is a contraction of tension and integrity, is the name of a class of structure whose form is maintained not by compressional, but by tensional forces. It’s the difference between a brick building and a tent. What holds up a T.V. mast? It’s the balance of tension in the cables. Tensional and compressional forces are not always easily separated because they always and only co-exist, so, in truth, all structures combine these forces. It’s just that compressional forces dominate a brick house, and tensional forces dominate tensegrity structures.

In a tensegrity the tensional forces are continuous and the compression elements are “islanded”. In terms of the body, each bone is floating in a network of tension. This is an important development in the history of the understanding of the body, because it underlines the notion that the body is more of a whole system and less of a collection of parts. It explains how one part can affect another seemingly remote area in terms of pain, sensation or function. Other examples of tensegrity at work are the wire-spoked wheel, where the load on the hub is suspended from the spokes above, in contradistinction to a solid or wooden spoked wheel where the loaded hub pushes down, and the suspension bridge, which although it relies on massive end columns for stability it utilises tension to span remarkable distances.

Fuller’s Geodesic domes are a further class of structures that can be considered to be tensegritous. Although the triangulated struts are all rigid beams they nevertheless display the key features of a tensegrity – loadings are distributed throughout the system. Some struts will be under compression and others under tension, in fact the load analysis is too complex for standard engineering models. Fuller maintained that geodesic construction would allow domes of unlimited size to be constructed. His vision of a 2-mile wide dome over New York Citybeing a poignant example, given the Sept 11^th, 2001 outrages.

Another key property of a tensegrity construction is that it is most economical in it’s utilisation of resources, giving maximum performance per unit of input. This, Fuller believed, is how nature always builds her structures

Everything is connected to everything else in the body, which we knew anyway, but now we know how. Working with isolated parts of the body is never going to make a difference that lasts, for instance the neck depends on the underlying position of the ribcage, as does the shoulder girdle. Fixing a neck doesn’t work without addressing the whole shoulder girdle/ribcage assembly. Truly holistic, the S.I. protocol always addresses the whole body, with the systems understanding of proceeding from the whole to the particular, so that “problems” can be put into the context of the being and can be transformed into opportunities, and the “fix” is permanent and intelligent, because there is a degree to which the system has learned something.

In taking the idea of the primacy of the fasciae further, the anatomical picture that develops shows the photographic negative of what traditional anatomists have laboured over for centuries, which is not to say that their work has been in vain, but that analysis is seen to been just one way of thinking, and that there is another way, the way of synthesis, which in the West appears to stand on the shoulders of analysis, even though in the East it is more immediately accessible. What do I mean by this elliptical statement? The fascial network is the “inbetweenness” in the body; that which separates adjacent structures, keeps them apart and, paradoxically, joins them together. It’s a continuous tensional system, keeping the compression members, the bones, apart and wrapping all the organs and securing them in their correct locations.

From a synthetic point of view we can then highlight the importance of this fasciae; it’s what Dr. Rolf called the “organ of support”. There is seamlessness inherent in the fascial system which is obscured by the analytical tendency for every specialisation of this ubiquitous tissue to get named separately. The most important fact to know about fasciae is the Doctrine of the One Fascia: There is only one fascia. All the ins and outs and nooks and crannies are local examples of something that connects everything as well as keeping it separate. What a paradox!

If it were possible to dissolve the body in a vat of special acid which removed everything except the fascial structure, we would be left with a perfect representation of every detail of the body, but empty of content. The essential connectivity would be revealed. Every nerve would be represented by its myelin sheath, every bone by its periosteum, every organ by its investing fascia and every individual muscle fibre by the individual fascicles. not only that, but the brain would be outlined by the delicate meninges, faux cerebri and tentorium. London Cranial Osteopath Jeremy Gilbey has been using the Tensegritoy, a construction toy kit, to illustrate and teach the reciprocal movement in the cranial system.

Turning our attention to the bones, have you ever wondered why they have all those protuberances, those bumps and lumps especially at the ends of the long bones, and the fascinating spines of the vertebrae. Perhaps understanding can come again through looking at the geometrical tensegrity structure, which could be thought of as a schematic conceptual and simplified model of idealised human structure.

In their function as the “spacers” of the network of soft tissue tension, the bumps of the bones serve to increase the distance and angular advantage of the ends of the guy lines that suspend the ends of the bones, maintaining the distance between them and allowing for movement.

As Dr. Rolf says in her magnum opus, The Integration of Human Structures,

“Verbally, fascia is often confused with muscle. Muscle is enclosed within the fascia, as the pulp of an orange is contained within it’s separating cellular walls”

The soft tissues are kept apart by the bones; otherwise we would coalesce into a big blob. The origins of the tension elements must be remote from the insertions in order to have span and do their work.

At every level of anatomy, gross and microscopic, this design is immanent; the bones are suspended and animated by this fantastically detailed network of cables, sheets, tensioners, stabilisers, bands and straps.

Looking at the spine itself, each vertebra in held in position by tiny muscles and ligaments spanning one vertebra to one another above and below, each in turn. Other, bigger straps span two or three at a time, distributing the load evenly along the back. Its only when the structure is overloaded, goes out of alignment and the normal curvature distorts, that uneven loading starts compressing the inter-vertebral discs, which are normally spongy shock absorbers and not designed to bear the weight of the whole structure.

The tensegrity mast is a great way of conceptualising this superb design. Man-made Tensegrity masts are very rare. Very few people have developed the ability to build them. Apart from Kenneth Snelson’s sculptures,

Tony Gwilliam, a collaborator of Bucky’s in the 60′s, now living inOjai,California, has built some. On an overall conceptual level the tensegrity model illustrates the way stress is distributed throughout the system, economy in the use of resources, and the general sense of lightness and “bounce” in a well-ordered body.

The gravity of the situation

When a body is misaligned it can lose this ease and literally falls into mis-use and dis-use. Compressional forces begin to dominate and serve as an emergency fallback mode to maintain mobility, albeit compromised, and the laws of hydraulics come into play, which state that liquids cannot be compressed.

The sad fact is that 90% of the population is probably stuck in fallback. Unless you’ve been Rolfed, Hellered or spent significant time doing some highly intelligent integrative psycho-physical discipline like The Alexander Technique, Yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi, Chi Kung, certain martial arts, or reached a high stage of gymnastic or dance development you may have forgotten what’s possible for your body and cannot conceive it in the mind as a result.  Do you remember being a carefree child, being able to roll on the ground, leap in the air, climb a tree and bounce on the bed, all before breakfast? Have you seen gymnasts somersaulting and spinning, ice dancer’s triple salkos, dancers pirouetting? If you have you know that tensegrity is the only way that this is possible, that being in perfect harmony with gravity allows grace, effortlessness and beauty in movement, that the paradox of gravity is that it allows an equal and opposite ground reaction force to animate and lift the body

There is that irreducible state epitomised by the couch potato slumped on his sofa with the TV remote control, ribcage resting on belly, neck disappearing into shoulders which themselves are jammed onto the upper ribs. This is the perfect picture of a body that has given up the fight against gravity and is being “organised” by compression. You might say this guy is in a grave situation. Our bodies are organised in opposition to gravity, indeed our development depends on it, and we spend the first 6 months of our lives trying to figure out how to lift our heads and sit up by ourselves. This vital developmental process, which continues with crawling and eventually standing and walking is easily disrupted by products such as recliners, car seats, inappropriate clothing, footwear and babywalkers. Most of us in these unnatural times have probably skipped one or two developmental stages such as crawling and the persistence of infant reflexes is noted in many with learning difficulties

Each milestone in a child’s early physical development is such an achievement as to generate spontaneous applause from siblings and parents. Well done Johnny! Even years later there is little or no attention or intellect applied to the human achievement of uprightness, or the way we sit, walk or stand. Deportment is considered a redundant art as we hunch through the day, interrupting our somatic slumberings only with an occasional outing to the gym, where we gaze distractedly at a TV monitor as our bodies operate on the modern equivalent of a hamster run

Gravity is both the organising and disorganising force in our lives, depending vitally on our orientation towards it. The paradox of gravity is that without it there would be no “up”. Are we Gravidynamic, “in the flow”, tensionally organised around a vertical axis or are we burdened by our own mass, dragging ourselves around in compressional mode, supported more by the density of our structures than the designed extensibility. It is a fact that most materials, except stone, are stronger under tension than compression, and this includes the connective tissues. The fasciae are tremendously strong, and in fact the bone is more likely to splinter than the surrounding periosteum (the fascia that wraps the bone) is to tear, shin splints being an example of this phenomenon.

Wholeness & healing

This is the gospel of Rolfing: When the body gets working appropriately, the force of gravity can flow through.  Then, spontaneously, the body heals itself.

Ida P. Rolf, Ph.D.

Joseph Heller’s background in aerospace engineering and Mathematics may suggest a mechanical orientation to his development of Rolf’s ideas, but in fact his influence on the field of Structural Integration has been in a surprising and opposite direction. Joseph Heller was known as a “soft” Rolfer (in terms of physical pressure) prior to his leaving the Rolf Institute and founding Hellerwork, and he became convinced that the effectiveness of Rolfing would be greatly enhanced by “educating the driver” as well as “servicing the vehicle”. By engaging the client in the process and developing the educational aspect of the work he was able to make Hellerwork one of the most powerful and effective personal growth tools available.

“In the future I see Hellerwork at the forefront of a new discipline of Psychophysical Integration helping us to reintroduce the body’s wisdom back into our culture. This new discipline will have far reaching consequences in the fields of fitness and performance. It will change our concept of ageing and what to expect from our bodies and our lives as we grow older. It will impact our views of education and the design of training procedures. It will influence ergonomic design and the quality of our work environment. Most importantly it will make us aware of our personal ecology and lead us to deal most effectively with our planet’s ecology.” Joseph Heller

This educational impulse covers two major areas, firstly in “movement education” clients are coached in the simple arts of movement; the way they sit, stand and walk. Due to our general unconsciousness about how we do what we do this is simple but not easy. The Structural Bodywork element of Hellerwork is creating more choice in movement, the Movement Education element is about exercising that choice, and moving away from habitual patterns, or at least reviewing them on a conscious level and determining what’s worth keeping and what to change, and how. Moving from improved structure to improved functioning is partly automatic and partly constrained by mental and psycho-emotional habits in addition to the physical.

This leads on, secondly, to an investigation of the mind/body connection. How did thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, opinions and emotions affect my body and my relationship with it? Through long experience and observation Joseph Heller developed themes to each of the sessions in the S.I. protocol which provide a hook to hang a conversation on and a place to start in the client’s own personal process. As with the other elements of the Hellerwork process, this can, and is approached by Practitioners in a variety of ways. Psychology is one of four major study areas of the Professional Training in Hellerwork (The others being Movement, Anatomy and Business Practice Management), and several approaches are taught; including Hal Stone’s Voice Dialogue and Ron Kurtz’s Body oriented Psychotherapy.

“When the whole body and the whole being are included in the educational process, the rate and depth at which learning can occur is truly staggering” Joseph Heller.

Roger Golten.

36LangleyHill

KingsLangley

Herts. WD4 9HE

& InLondon

Tel: 01923 400521/07956 514522

Email: roger@golten.co.uk

Web: www.golten.co.uk

The Players

Ida P. Rolf PhD. www.rolf.org

Joseph Heller. www.josephheller.com

Kenneth Snelson. www.kennethsnelson.net

R. Buckminster Fuller www.bfi.org

Donald E. Ingber PhD www.hms.harvard.edu/dms/bbs/fac/ingber.html

Stephen M. Levin MD www.biotensegrity.com

Ed Maupin PhD. www.edmaupin.com

]]> http://www.golten.co.uk/articles/tensegrity-human-structure/feed 0 http://www.golten.co.uk/articles/ace-of-element http://www.golten.co.uk/articles/ace-of-element#comments Fri, 18 Nov 2011 08:29:22 +0000 admin http://www.golten.co.uk/?p=337 Written for the Shaw Method Newsletter (www.artofswimming.com)

Ace of Elements

Water, the ace of elements. Water dives from the clouds without parachute, wings or safety net. Water runs over the steepest precipice and blinks not a lash. Water is buried and rises again, water walks on fire and fire gets the blisters. Stylishly composed in any situation – solid, gas or liquid – speaking in penetrating dialects understood by all things – animal vegetable or mineral – water travels intrepidly through four dimensions.  Tom Robbins.

Fluidity of normal human structuring: hydraulics.

All life is watery. Every living cell has a water content essential to its functioning. In overall terms, human beings turn out to be about 60% water. Even bones in our living bodies are 50% water, with of course organs and blood at much higher levels. Human structure could be described as fluid hydraulic rather than solid mechanical. Part of the economy of construction and flexible strength of the human body is due to the incompressibility of fluids.

Strength of a tree

The power of water is elegantly demonstrated by the way that living trees can support their own weight. In a big tree, a bough growing out of the main trunk might weigh 5or more tons. You try holding a weight out at arms length all day, and this tree has been doing it for hundreds of years, and its relatives for millions of years before we even showed up on the planet!

Enormous amounts of water are continuously elevated through the one-way, antigravity, capillary valving systems…the tree’s high tensile, fiber cell sacs are everywhere full of liquid… Liquids are noncompressible, yet distribute their local stress loadings evenly in all directions… sometimes in an ice storm the tree freezes, the liquids cannot distribute their loads, and the branches break off and fall to the ground…This high-tension sac’s web design with its hydraulic-compression coping and pneumatic shock absorbing is much the same structural system nature employs in the design of humans Buckminster Fuller www.bfi.org

Tensional Integrity

Hydraulics, together with the concept of Tensional Integrity (tensegrity), goes a long way towards explaining the remarkable properties of our bodies to absorb and distribute stress evenly. You could say that a Man is water’s way of colonising the land; we are systems of water bags – a bit like the air balloons twisted into animal shapes by the conjuror at a children’s party. Tensegrity, as discovered by Ken Snelson in 1948 and developed and named by Bucky Fuller, has recently been shown experimentally by Ken Ingber at Harvard to be a good “fit” in terms of explaining how individual cells adapt to structural stress. It also works at the macro level to describe the interaction of the bones and the soft tissues. Without the soft tissues, and especially the branch known as the fasciae, we are literally a pile of bones on the ground. See www.intensiondesigns.com and www.biotensegrity.com

Fascia

It is the enveloping network of the fasciae, or wrappings, that both connect and animates us. Muscles are the power units that move the system, but the fascial network is a pre-tensioned structure the integrity of which is maintained by continuous tension – a more elusive concept harder to see in structures – not surprising when you remember that gravity itself is a tensional force, invisibly operating to hold you onto the Earth, the Earth in it’s orbit around the Sun and the sun in orbit around the galaxy!!!

This shift to looking at the tensionally organised fascial network requires a shift to looking at the body through fluid rather than solid mechanics.  There’s been a seemingly inevitable tendency to apply a Victorian iron bridge model of struts and beams like a Brunel bridge to our conception of the human structure. Your body is more like a finely spun suspension bridge without the massive end supports - harder to visualise at this point in time perhaps – tensegrity models being so thin on the ground.

Fuller’s geodesic domes have many tensional elements – but it’s hard to see which of the triangulated struts are pulling tensionally and which are pressing compressionally. In the Fuller/Snelson tensegrity structure the forces are separated out for all to see, the bones are floating in the network of cables, and keeping them from coalescing into a big knot.

To understand the role of the fascial system think about looking at a photographic negative – what you see is the opposite of what shows up in the photograph proper. Now think of your conception of the body – bones and muscles, organs, tendons, ligaments and nerves. Let these, the contents of the body recede into the background and highlight the system of bags, the fasciae which wrap, envelop, separate and at the same time connect every part of these contents. These fasciae are the context for the content.

Anatomy

“When you take a system apart, it’s no longer a system”                                                   Russell Ackoff

The study of anatomy began with the public dissection of executed criminals at the beginning of the Renaissance. In many ways anatomy was the first science, the epitome of the analytical method - literally cutting bodies up to see how they worked. Putting them back together in terms of understanding has taken about 500 years so far. There’s a big difference between the massive amount of data & information yielded by analysis of the parts, and the understanding and knowledge that arises from an overview to see the true relationships between the parts of the body in context. Ackoff says there are 5 kinds of content in the human mind; data, information, understanding, knowledge and wisdom. It’s a hierarchy. Given the complexity of life, human structure and indeed the human being, it’s hardly surprising that this is ‘work in progress’

Aquatic ape hypothesis

Human shed salt-water tears in common with water-dwelling mammals such as whales and dolphin, and unlike all other primates. Similarly we have relatively hairless bodies and abundant sebaceous glands like hippos that spend most of their time in the water. The hair we do have is streamlined. Stand a chimpanzee under a shower and you’ll see what I am getting at – its hair does not flow with the water direction but sticks out in all directions. Deprive most animals of water and they can survive 25% dehydration. Human beings die with 15% dehydration. Even the unique faculty of the human voice is connected with our relationship with water. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that we have an extraordinary affinity with H20. It was Elaine Morgan who wrote up and brought to popular attention Sir Alister Hardy’s extraordinary 1960 theory that stunned paleoarchaeologists into a silence that continues to this day. Best introduction to the AAH is via Algis Kuliukas www.riverapes.com It’s easy to think that those early bones dug out of the parched and arid Olduvai Gorge by the Leakeys belonged to desert-dwelling hominids. In fact they lived on the shores of a huge lake, which filled the great African rift valley at the time they were living. This evidence suggests that humanity had a semiaquatic stage in its evolution. We almost went back into the water like the true aquatic mammals seen today, the cetaceans.

Dr. Batman “you are not sick, you are thirsty!”

Dr Feyredoon Batmatghelidj, one of Alexander Fleming’s last students at medical school (St. Mary’s, Paddington) went home to Iran and got caught up in the Ayatollahs revolution, so caught up in fact that he was imprisoned and only avoided execution by agreeing to work as prison doctor. Over a 5-year period, through desperation and an absence of any medicines, he started prescribing water to his fellow

inmates. Gradually he realised that many conditions could be alleviated with an intake of this wonderful colourless fluid. www.watercure.com  By fortunate coincidence I first heard about Dr. Batman’s work in Mt. Shasta, the little known Pacific Rim volcano at the head of the central valley of California. From here the Sacramento River arises and flows south to meet the Fresno River and form

the San Francisco bay. The water here is so good that Mt. Shasta city water department pumps it straight to the municipal supply without treatment or chlorination, and people drive from miles around to fill their bottles from the spring. So if you want to taste water like nectar, water so good that it’s all you want to drink, visit Mt. Shasta, where, incidentally, my teacher Joseph Heller lives and works these days. www.mtshasta.com

Research in Germany concluded that children between the ages on one and four often drink too little. 1-4 years olds are especially sensitive to dehydration and should drink almost one quart a day, besides what they get at meals. On average, they drink a third less than this – and not always by choice. The researchers found that in 1 case out of 5, a child’s request for something to drink was refused by the parents!

Swimming in chlorinated water for long periods is unpleasant and drinking it isn’t a very good idea either. There are also problems inherent in mineral water, distilled water, and the popular jug filters. The best solution to the drinking water problem is reverse osmosis, a technology that arose out of the need in the electronics industry for pure water. www.pureh2o.co.uk If you do drink tap water, run it into an open top jug and let it stand for an hour before drinking. Because Chlorine is a gas at room temperature, it will boil off and the water will taste sweeter.

Water in Universe.

Earth is the only place in the Universe with substantial quantities (oceans) of water in liquid form. Anywhere else except inside this biosphere this water, and that includes us, as we are watery creatures, would either be boiling, evaporated, frozen or incandescent. In fact even here on the home planet, the actual amount of water is surprisingly little, compared, for instance with the mass of the Earth itself. Imagine a steel ball 12″ in diameter to represent the Earth. Now breathe onto the ball, and imagine the water condensing from your breath onto the surface of the ball. That, proportionately, is the relative quantity of water compared to the size of the planet. The Earth is 8,000 miles in diameter; the deepest ocean is as deep as Mt. Everest is high (about 5 miles). On that steel ball the proportionate depth is three one-thousandths of an inch – far less than the depth of the ink on this page.

The extraordinary fact that the solid form of water floats, ice that is, is not just important for your iced drink. Think about it: if ice sank, then long ago all the available water on the planet would have been locked up at the bottom of a frozen ocean.

There is so much that is fascinating and important about water. I hope this short article gives you food for thought, or should I say water for thought, and that you follow up by looking at the web links and doing your own research. Other topics could include water birth, Michel Odent’s research on the importance of seafood and EFAs for brain development, the recent world water report, Dr. Emoto’s work on the memory of water, Johann Grander’s work on the revitalisation of water and more about the unique chemistry of water, the universal solvent.

My own book The Owners Guide to the Body has a section on water and more information about the tensegrity & fluidity of the human structure.

Roger Golten drinks 4L of pure water every day (during the day so he doesn’t have to get up in the night). As well as an accomplished frisbee player (World Championships 1982) he recently compled.

The Shaw Method swimming diploma course and is a Hellerwork Structural Integration Practitioner, in which he trained in 1983 in California and has been practising ever since.

 See www.golten.co.uk for more information

Who was it who coined the term “Spaceship Earth” and was talking about the environment in the 30′s? Who was it who penned the following ditty?

Environment to each must be

all there is that isn’t me

Universe in turn must be

All there is, plus me.

Richard Buckminster Fuller was born on July 12th 1895 and died on July 1st 1983 Here is a man who made a lifetime’s career out of thinking for himself, and not taking anything for granted. Almost universally known as Bucky, he was first and foremost an outstanding individual human being. He was well known for his extraordinary ”thinking out loud” lectures which could go on for many hours with no notes. 5th generation of his family to go up to Harvard, he never graduated, having been thrown out twice, but returned years later to receive a honorary doctorate, and was to receive nearly fifty other doctorates and 150 other awards from all over the world, including a Gold Medal from the RIBA in 1968 in London.

Uncategorisable, but often described as architect, although he never qualified as one, and also characterised as a modern day Leonardo, a polymath and comprehensivist (this last term self-styled) Bucky was a master of the neologism, – he made up many new terms to elucidate his thinking: and he also popularised a number of little known words which had not been in common currency before, such as Synergy, the behaviour of whole systems unpredicted by the behaviour of the sum of their parts, now almost over-used, but virtually unknown before Bucky’s use of it.

Bucky always started from first principles, never assumed anything and was convinced he could explain anything to a willing listener – like the intricacies of nuclear physics to a child, as he did on many occasions. Having been in an extreme situation – about to jump into Lake Michigan and drown after the death of first daughter on her 5th birthday, and losing control of a business he was involved in, from the age of 32 Bucky dedicated the rest of his life to an experiment. calling himself Guinea Pig B, to find out what one penniless individual could achieve by being committed to making sense rather than money. After a two year period when he did not speak at all, he was to live another 56 years and pen 28 books, circumnavigate the globe many times to speak to hundreds of thousands of people, patented 24 inventions, touching many lives and inspiring a generation of students along the way, and rarely stopped talking! Bucky’s personal philosophy was summed up as follows: To make the world work for everyone, in the shortest possible time, without ecological offence or harming anyone

He patented many ideas in service of this powerful idea – most famously the geodesic dome, of which millions have been constructed and which provided the inspiration for the Epcot dome in Florida, and the US base on the South Pole. The significance of this method of construction is that a modern lightweight dome encloses the greatest volume with the smallest amount of resource, an embodiment of Fuller’s principle of doing more with less. The other key feature of geodesic domes is that they are fully triangulated structures, taking advantage of Fuller’s recognition of the importance of triangles and tetrahedra. Domes are becoming almost ubiquitious – the Eden Centre in Cornwall is based on a series of interconnected domes, the Millennium Dome of course, with it’s tension skin construction, and the Centerparcs resorts being current manifestations of the concept.

“I didn’t set out to design a house that hung from a pole, or to manufacture a new type of automobile, invent a new system of map projection, develop geodesic domes, or Energetic-Synergetic geometry. I started with the Universe — as an organization of energy systems of which all our experiences and possible experiences are only local instances the principles operating in Universe, I could have ended up with a pair of flying slippers” (quoted in Ency. Britt.)

Fuller’s magnum opus “Synergetics” published in 1975 & Vol II published 1979 represented Fuller’s conviction and embodied his proof that a mathematics based on triangles and 60 degree angles would be more logical and less difficult (no irrational numbers) to understand than one based on the Cartesian grid. His understanding was that nature uses triangles and five fold icosahedral symmentry to build structure, a fact borne out subsequently by electron microscopy of protein shells of viruses, and the more recent determination of the molecular structure of carbon 60, which turned out to be a truncated dodecahedron and for which discovery Harry Kroto and others received the Nobel Chemistry prize a few years back. Interestingly, Kroto had taken his son to the Expo 67 Montreal dome that Fuller designed. He (Fuller) called it his ”Taj Mahal” in dedicating it to his love of his wife Anne, to whom he was married nearly 66 years and who died 48 hours after him on July 3rd 1983.

From a perspective that grew out of his life experience, born as he was, in 1895, before the advent of the modern industrial age: before electricity, the internal combustion engine, x-rays and manned, powered flight began, and living as he did until 1983, seeing the nuclear age and the beginnings of the computer age (all his complex calculations for the geometry of the dome was done without even a calculator), Fuller became a historian, observer and analyst of the process of industrialisation. During the 2nd World War he worked for the Dept. of Economic Warfare in the US and had access to statistics which allowed him to prove to his own satisfaction that a time was fast approaching where is was absolutely possible to take care of everyone on the planet; in other words for the first time in history there would be enough to go around, removing the main reason for conflict in the world – squabbling over limited resources. It was this idea – that there is no scarcity, which first attracted me to his ideas. Fuller felt that the Malthusian predictions of geometrical population growth outstripping only arithmetical improvement in food production had been overpowered by the development of technology which allowed us to produce more of everything with less resources per unit of production, and he determined that humanity had reached that place: moving from scarcity towards sufficiency and abundance in 1967.

For those interested in learning more I recommend his book “Critical Path” as a good place to start reading Fuller’s ideas. It’s also one of the few books still in print currently. He develops a momentum in this book that carries even a reluctant reader through the more challenging aspects of Fuller’s work; the long words, long sentences and made-up words (neologisms). The Fuller Institute now in Santa Barbara has a big site: www.bfi.org with loads of links and an on-line version of Synergetics. Fuller is owed a vast and largely unacknowledged debt by many of the leading architects in the world today, notably Richard Rogers and Norman Foster who worked with him towards the end of his life. Perhaps it is too soon to look back and see the impact Fuller has had on our world today. Only the future can tell.

“I know that I am not a category, a hybrid specialization

I am not a thing – a noun.

I seem to be a verb -

An evolutionary process -

An integral function of the universe,

And so are you.

Written by Roger Golten 1998

Roger@golten.co.uk

Hellerwork is a therapy system founded by Joseph Heller (1940-) that evolved directly from the work of Dr. Ida P. Rolf (1896-1979). Hellerwork is a synthesis of classic structural integration and somatic education (soma=body) which attempts a mind/body/spirit integration using the potent tools of myo-fascial bodywork (myo=muscles), movement and awareness education, and a conversation to relate thinking, feeling, attitudes, emotions and beliefs to the person’s experience of being in their body. The major results reported by clients of Hellerwork include an effortless improvement in posture, a tremendous increase in body awareness and improved breathing, standing, sitting and walking.

Pregnancy is itself a powerful and natural opportunity for the development of body awareness, bringing consciousness into the body through the big changes that take place on the emotional, physical and existential levels. Sometimes problems such as various kinds of backache and shoulder or neck tension arise during pregnancy which lead women to seek assistance. Other times there is a general desire to get into as good shape as possible prior to the birth. Hellerwork can provide focussed attention on optimising well-being for such an important and demanding vent in one’s life. Hellerwork seeks to empower clients to become the “expert” on their own body, so that they are able to take responsibility and get more of what they want out of life, to be the cause of their lives rather than a helpless victim of the circumstances. During pregnancy this is particularly appropriate, with the tendency for the medicalisation of childbirth, leading to increased interventions which interrupt this natural process.

As the baby grows and increases in weight, there is an inevitable exaggeration in any postural imbalances in the mother’s physical structure. Hellerwork client’s posture in the early stages of pregnancy (3-5 months) has sometimes improved so much that they appear not to be “showing” quite so much, decreasing potential discomfort. Hellerwork can be an intense experience in terms of experiencing one’s own chronic and formerly unconscious tensions, and learning to let go and trust in a powerful process can assist in the preparation for childbirth. Specific case histories illustrate the range of applications that arise with the kind of attention that is given during Hellerwork.

Ruth Backway introduces herself:

“I have two memories of working with pregnant clients that may be of interest to you. Before telling you these, you may want a little background, since we haven’t met. I am a Physical Therapist and have been a Hellerwork prac for 15 years. Because of this, I get medically oriented referrals. I also have a practice inside a medical clinic. One case was a woman in her 30′s who had a long history of back problems. This was her third pregnancy. The one she had two years previously was very troubled with low back pain and she was put to bed for a week at a time due to the pain. Structurally, she had an increased lumbar lordosis and carried her chest in a position so it was backward bent over her pelvis. She also had her Right pelvis tipped anteriorly and almost no movement in her Right SI joint. She wanted to do the Hellerwork so she didn’t have such a bad time of it this time around. We worked on her during the second trimester. When doing the psoas work, I worked in the middle and high on the muscle, not disturbing the lower abdomen on the deep layers. I also used a PNF technique to help right the pelvis and get the SI joint moving.

The Hellerwork took care of the other postural stresses on her back, and she had a routine and comfortable pregnancy. The other case I recall was the wife of my Chiropractor. I work out of his clinic. She was 40 and pregnant for the fourth time, but it had been 14 years since her last pregnancy. She came in one day with a very pained look on her face. She was in her final 2 weeks. She complained she couldn’t get comfortable–had strong back pain and couldn’t stand up or sit down. The pain was centered in her SI joints and across the sacrum. On testing, the Left pelvis was tipped back and the Left SI was stuck. I used Soft Tissue mobilization to her Piriformis muscles and then the PNF technique I mentioned previously to right her pelvis and the pain went away. The point here being that in the end stages of pregnancy, when things start to get lax, it is easy for the pelvis to slip a bit and this can cause a great deal of pain. Practitioners need to watch for this, and finding a practitioner who has experience in fixing this type of problem can be very useful.”

Tom Merrill, Hellerwork Practitioner in California reports:

“Pam was one of my two “models” for the Hellerwork Training I attended in 1989-90. This was a year long, nonresidential program that involved weekly evening classes and one three day weekend class each month. Thus, the bodywork series for the models spanned over a period of 10 months. Pam was approximately 5 1/2 months pregnant when she received Session One. Thus, session four landed just a couple weeks before the little one was due. Session five was delayed a week and done at my mentor’s home. Performing the inner thigh session just before the birth and then the belly session right after was a perfect fit. All
went well and as best as I can recall, uneventful throughout the course of the series. A few years later, Pam called up and scheduled a few more sessions as she was carrying again.” and finally, Lonny Fox, Hellerwork Practititioner and Trainer in Canada:

“I first met my client, I’ll call her Susan, when I was still working with The Victoria Pain Clinic. She was there on one of the clinic’s ten day programs recovering from a motor vehicle accident. At the end of her stay she was improving and was referred to me on a out patient basis. We saw each other for about eight months, as I was supporting her through her return to work, when she came in one day and asked if I would also support her through her second pregnancy.

I was both worried and overjoyed at the prospect of working through this pregnancy with her. I knew it was going to be challenging as she was still experiencing both low back and neck pain from her accident. All went well for most of the pregnancy. She was a very motivated client doing her stretches and watching her posture and movement. She also loved the bodywork and was managing to keep up with her job and look after her two year old daughter. I was also enjoying working with two people; the one who gave me the verbal feedback and the one who would kick my hand from the inside when she didn’t appreciate a stroke. Throughout Susan managed to be very bright and cheerful, happy about the upcoming birth. That is until very close to what was supposed to be her delivery date. That Wednesday when Susan came in she was very upset and started to cry almost as soon as she sat down. She told me that her first child had been a cesarean section and she had been hoping in her heart for vaginal birth this time. She had just been to her gynecologist and he had told her that because the baby wasn’t “dropping” into the pelvic bowl he was afraid that she would probably have to have another C-section.

We talked about it for a while and then had a closer look at what was happening. There was such a tight band in the abdomen between the scar tissue from the previous C-section and the pubic symphysis that the baby couldn’t get through. Couple that with the worry and fear Susan was feeling and the whole pelvic bowl, like Susan, was literally “held in suspense” waiting to see what would happen.

We knew we only had one or two sessions until they were going to induce labor so I started with some very detailed work around the old C-section scar and the pubic bone. Interestingly enough I didn’t get anywhere near the internal complaints that I was used to when I worked the abdominal area. It was as if the baby knew what we were doing. Four days later when Susan came back the baby was “dropping” but would pop right back up to her old spot in the abdomen. It was as though her pelvic floor was acting like a trampoline bouncing the baby right back up so we went on to do two things. We spent an hour and a half releasing the pelvic floor as completely as possible trying to clear every old knot and holding from the adductors and the pelvic floor area.

At the same time we were doing this I knew that Susan loved the old Disney shows and in trying to think of the birth process I remember the time lapse photography of chrysanthemums opening. I asked her if she had seen those shots and she said she had. I then checked to see if she thought that was what might happen to the cervix as it dilated for the baby to come through. She loved the idea saying that she really couldn’t imagine the process until that moment. I got a call the next day to say her baby had “dropped” and was in the correct place. Shortly after that her water broke and she gave birth. One of the most touching moments of my career came when she called to thank me and let me know that not only had she had a vaginal birth but that as far as she was concerned the cervix did open like a flower to welcome the baby through.”
As you can see, a trained Hellerwork Practitioner can provide valuable support at any stage of pregnancy, before, during and after the happy event. At the heart of Hellerwork is respect for the client, the Hellerwork Practitioner meeting the client appropriately at the mid-point between what they have to offer in terms of their skills and compassion, and what the client is ready or able to receive. Each pregnancy is an unique process, bringing with it it’s own challenges and circumstances, problems and opportunities. Like a roller-coaster ride, you can’t get off half way through, but you can learn to surrender to the process and enjoy the ride! Hellerwork can be considered a valuable adjunctive treatment which pregnant women may consider to further their self-empowerment and their ability to manage their own pregnancies.

Roger Golten
Hellerwork Practitioner
Email: rgolten@dial.pipex.com
Website: www.golten.net
For a list of Hellerwork Practitioners, visit www.hellerwork.co.uk
Further information: “The Owners Guide to the Body” by Roger Golten. Thorsons/Harper Collins. 1999.

HELLERWORK is a synthesis of classic Structural Integration and personal growth work which together can transform your relationship with your body and your experience of being alive. Any problems you are experiencing begin to clear up just in the process of life itself.

Life’s stresses are unavoidable, and they take their toll on body, mind, and spirit, resulting in tightness, distortion and fatigue. One might blame it all on modern living and give up hope of ever attaining energy, flexibility and good posture. Hellerwork can help to restore ease, balance and integrity.

With state of the art deep tissue bodywork, coaching in movement, and a conversation to relate mind, body and spirit, Hellerwork aims to make a more or less permanent improvement to posture by improving the underlying organisation and health of the body’s structure. The degree of this change is visible; photographs can be taken before and after treatment.

Hellerwork does this by treating the fascias, that part of the connective tissues which literally wrap up everything in the body, and which until quite recently were unknown or ignored, even by doctors and surgeons. Poor habits in breathing, sitting, standing and walking; accidents, surgery, tensions or trauma all conspire to age these fascias and cause them to dry out and become sticky, tight and distorted, and to lose their adaptability. Hellerwork reverses this tendency, and through the educational content of the programme, gives you the tools to maintain and expand the results gained.

In a systematic, coherent and intelligently organised series of 11 sessions, Hellerwork takes the chronic tension out of all the body’s fascial structures to improve total energetic economy. As a holistic, integrated approach, each session includes three major aspects:

*Bodywork – stress and tension reduction through alignment of physical tissues
*Emotional – managing stress by discovering the impact of emotions on the body
*Movement – empowerment of the client by education in correct function of the body

Major results reported by clients include fuller and easier breathing, a reduction in back, neck and shoulder pain, and postural improvement leading to easier sitting, standing, movement and walking. Most of all the dramatic improvement in body awareness, flexibility and posture leads to a greater ability for self-care. The simple arts of movement:; better sitting, standing and walking, can then be improved naturally, to maintain and improve these results over time.

Roger Golten is a bodywork therapist of many years standing, having first trained in California with Joseph Heller in 1983. His book The Owners Guide to the Body was published in 1999 by Thorsons Harper Collins.

Roger Golten
36 Langley Hill
Kings Langley
Herts WD4 9HE
01923 400483

The Magic Toothbrush

This manual toothbrush is a revolutionary natural alternative health product, invented in Japan. Studies there & in the U.S.A. have shown a significant reduction of bacteria and decrease in plaque in the mouth after use. No Toothpaste is required.

How Does It Work?

Plaque is difficult to remove because it has a positive polarity (+), while teeth have a negative polarity (-). This opposite polarity naturally attracts plaque to your teeth. The IonField toothbrush electronically breaks this bond by temporarily reversing the polarity of tooth surfaces (+). As you brush, plaque molecules are actively repelled by your teeth and are drawn to the negatively charged bristles (-).

This toothbrush has two metal discs inserted on the back made of magnesium and copper. These discs interact with each other in the saliva creating a low voltage electric current which magnetises plaque away from the teeth and kills the bacteria which causes bad breath.

The electric potential difference between precious metals and base ones generate both a voltage of 0.8 – 1.8 and an electric current of 20mA – 1200mA in the saliva, as well as a negatively charged ion. Bacteria in your mouth will be killed by voltage over 1.3, thus you have the sterilization effect.

The action of electrons removes dental plaque from areas where conventional toothbrushes cannot reach.

How To Use

Brush for 2 minutes, gently on all surfaces. Brush thoroughly near the gum line. Give extra attention to problem areas. If you still want to use toothpaste, use it with a regular toothbrush after using the Ion Toothbrush.

It is normal to experience a little foaming with a slight metallic chlorine taste. This could be due to the ozone molecules. Some discomfort may occur at first. This should go away after a few days.

Cautions

If either of the metal discs loosens, replace the toothbrush immediately. The Metal discs can be hazardous if swallowed

Replace the toothbrush every six months or when the bristles widen or become worn or split. If teeth are brushed with worn bristles, your gums may become injured or inflamed.

Testimonials

I am now a real fan of your Doctor Posture toothbrush which I use regularly after normal brushing with toothpaste twice a day. At a recent visit to the dentist, for the 1st time ever my gums were declared healthy. When we meet can you bring two extra brushes, one for my wife and another for a friend. Stefan www.stefanlubo.com

I’ve been using the Ionfield toothbrush for six months now. I love the simplicity of it. The fact that I don’t need any tooth paste anymore, perfect for travelling. I’m a cyclist and a photographer and they share one thing in common and that’s packing light & efficiently. This brush fits in well here. It does work and a really good point is that you can brush your teeth directly after you’ve eaten, without worrying about toothpaste reacting with anything left in your mouth that can cause damage to the teeth or gums usually. The classic example is cleaning the teeth with paste after you have had an apple or drunk some orange juice. So no longer a problem! Its small head allows me to get to the rear teeth more easily than conventional adult size brushes too. The hairs are softer than normal and thus retain their shape for longer as they are more flexible. Mark Brumell www.markbrumellphotography.co.uk

Order

£11 post free.

Sorry The Magic Toothbrushes have sold out.

As soon as more become available Doctor Posture will be the first to have them

Soft Bristles:

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