Road Rage in Vermont?
At first glance, you wouldn’t think that Road Rage would be much of a problem in Vermont. It’s kind of an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp. That is, unless you’re behind some out-of-state car smack in the middle of leaf-peeping season.
Road Rage seems to be one of those newly assigned “syndromes” which are really an accumulation of all the stresses in our lives. Whether it’s because your boss has just yelled at you, the babysitter is over an hour late, or you just don’t know how to cope and care for your aging parents, we carry our stresses with us throughout the day—at work, at meals, at home, and yes, even in the car.
In many cases, the tension we feel during road rage, or any rage, is the same tension we carry with
us throughout our day. Sometimes, it just gets bigger. Essentially, that jaw-clenching, head-throbbing feeling is a combination of over-use or mis-use of muscles that allow your emotions to climb to or past your boiling point. When this happens, the connective tissue (or fascia) becomes rigid, bound up. We experience this as “knots” in our muscles. These “fascial knots” dehydrate the muscle tissue and make our bodies feel as stressed and tense as our minds.
Rolfing® is a form of bodywork that can help train your body to act differently during times of stress. Rolfing® frees up these fascial knots, which in turn allows your joints and muscles to respond more efficiently to what you want them to do. One way Rolfers® accomplish this is through differentiation of your surface muscles from your core muscles.
Rolfing® therapy manipulates the connective tissue that enwraps, separates, and surrounds all of our muscles, and connects them to joints, bones, organs, and nerves. The manipulation of the connective tissue helps to differentiate muscles and muscle groups so that your body can move more efficiently. Once your tissues (muscles and fascia) are differentiated, you can learn new ways of using your body which can prevent you from recreating the same over-use or mis-use patterns. In Rolfing®, we call this “integration,” and since we are working with the structures of the body, “structural integration.” In addition to soft tissue manipulation, Rolfers® also use movement to evoke a re-patterning, or re-educating, of your muscles and the way you use your body.
How Can Structural Integration Reduce Road Rage?
When you become upset with a co-worker, your spouse, your kids, or some stranger in another car, a whole series of neurological and muscular events take place to add extra tension to your body. Tension ripples through your shoulders, neck, back of head—you may even start to experience a headache as the blood vessels in your neck and head become engorged and start pressing on nerves. Over months or years of upsets these stresses and tensions can become part of your overall being. You may even begin to notice how strongly you grip your steering wheel, telephone, or the pen in your hand, and how that affects your shoulders and neck. These patterns of physical tension will increase your emotional tension, which can lead to a shortened fuse. (And being in charge of 2000-plus pound mechanical beast on the road, or a 40-lb child who that needs a nap, is probably not the best time to have a shortened fuse.)
A massage, chiropractic adjustment, or some other bodily treat can help alleviate these stresses for a limited time. You may notice when you get back in your car after a massage how light, relaxed, and tall you feel. How long does this feeling last? Until that first car cuts you off? Until you remember the last fight you had with {fill in the blank}? In most cases you’ll revert to your old stresses and patterns after a few days. By changing the structure of your fascia and muscle tissues, Rolfing® helps you create long-lasting change. This is how re-patterning exercises can be useful after the soft tissue manipulations. These exercises can help you “trick” your nervous system into recognizing options so that your muscles can heal from the patterns of stress and tension.
As you practice these exercises, and your body/mind begins to be freer from habitual patterns, your body will be able to breathe and move authentically and spontaneously. Your muscles and your emotions will be lighter and more relaxed for longer periods of time. You may notice your shoulders are resting lower and sliding back, your neck feeling longer, or your grip on the steering wheel lightening up. Instead of reacting with rage to frustrating situations, you might find yourself thinking of creative and compassionate solutions. So, the next time you find yourself behind some out-of-state leaf-peeper, you might just decide to slow down and enjoy the view.
A Heart-Centered Approach to Driving
Some exercises to consider next time you’re in the car (or watching TV, or at your desk)
1) Breathing—the secret to stress reduction
a) Allow your buttocks to snuggle comfortably into the crease between the back and seat of a
chair, or your car seat. Ideally, you would want your hips slightly higher than your knees, such
that your thighs are sloping downward.
b) You should feel that your back is supported by the back of the chair or car seat.
c) Breathing into your back: As you inhale, imagine your breath to filling your back. Remember:
most of your lungs are actually in your back, as your front has the space filled with organs,
such as your heart, liver, stomach, etc. So, when you are breathing into your back, you are
really filling your lungs with your breath.
d) As your back fills with air, picture your back pushing the back of the car seat away from you.
e) Slowly exhale, letting your chest fall and shoulders drop.
2) Hold the Steering Wheel from Your Heart
a) While your back is being supported by the back of the car seat, place your hands on the
steering wheel in the usual 10am and 2pm positions.
b) Let your hands hold the steering wheel lightly. See if you notice a difference between how
your shoulders feel with your usual grip of the steering wheel and how they feel when you hold
the wheel lightly.
c) (It may help to do this part of the exercise one hand/arm at a time.) While your shoulders rest
into the back of the car seat, imagine your grip (of the steering wheel) coming from your
heart. You may be able to feel the muscle engaging from the side of your ribcage. It’s a
subtle feeling, and you may first notice that your shoulders are not engaging as they once
were.
d) This exercise can also be done sitting in a chair against the wall (with your feet flat on the floor
and your hands up on the wall—shoulder high, and hip width apart) in front of you. Or you can
use an elastic exercise band which you can wrap around your upper back, and hold one end in
each hand.
