Broadening Your Understanding

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Red Light Reflex (Part 1 Self Assessment)

 

This reflex is the deepest innate protection mechanism to freeze, to ensure survival and protect our vital organs and life. It presents as contraction of our flexor muscles, our front body, or front line muscles.

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The Red Light reflex is so primitive of a reflex that it occurs in all mammals in response to actual or perceived threat to survival. Red Light Reflex kicks in within milliseconds of a threatening or startling event occurring around us.  

 

In today’s society it presents in response to high levels of stress and load and is exacerbated by repetitive and poor movement habits such as texting and too much time at the computer. There is actually a clinical term called Text Head Forward Syndrome to explain this reflex and its predominance in the Millennials generation (birth years approx. 1981-1996).

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Red Light Reflex manifests symptomatically in many ways affecting posture, limiting diaphragmatic breathing, causing painful shortened psoas muscles, causing sluggish digestion, TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint Pain) and jaw tension, pelvic floor pain, knee pain, anxiety, overwhelm and more. Reach out to us if you have questions about this Reflex Pattern.

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Green Light Reflex (Part 2 Self Assessment)

 

This is the innate reflex of “get ready and let’s go”. This reflex prepares us for movement and action and gets us ready to achieve our goals.

 

This reflex becomes habituated from the constant and relentless need to keep going in our busy and hectic lives. This reflex also shows up from repetitive linear sports such as running.

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It presents as a chronic contraction of the extensor muscles of the body (back line muscles). Sometimes our personalities lead to green light reflex patterns, with the need to do more, achieve more, particularly when we avoid tiredness and keep going. Our underlying belief systems can play a role here too, ones like "I am not good enough." Reach out to us if you have questions about this Reflex Pattern.

 

 

The most common symptoms of Green Light Reflex are:

 

• low back pain

• herniated disks

• pain between the shoulder blades

• sciatica

• plantar fasciitis

• chronically tight glutes, hamstrings and calves

• anxiety

• restlessness and inability to get quiet

• never feeling settled

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Trauma Reflex (Part 3 Self Assessment)

 

This innate reflex displays to avoid danger, to get out of the way of harm. This reflex presents as one-sidedness or an asymmetry in the body.

 

This reflex presents as an unconscious contraction of the side waist and side body muscles and contralateral muscles of the body. We can experience this after an injury such as a sprained ankle, knee surgery or a fall off a mountain bike where we load into the opposite hip and our muscles get short and tight because of this compensation.

 

Life experiences and emotional traumas also present in the physical body in this way. Scoliosis is a common Trauma Pattern usually diagnosed in pre-teens signalled by trauma or stress leading to muscular imbalances in the paraspinal muscles. Also we may be told how we have one leg shorter than the other when we lie supine on our backs, or one shoulder lower than the other as we stand in front of a mirror.

 

Rarely is the cause a true leg length discrepancy that is causing the shortening, rather a neuromuscular cause. This is corrected with the somatic technique of pandiculation after the culprit muscles are taught to lengthen out of their holding pattern. 

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Common Trauma Pattern Symptoms include:

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• Hip sitting higher or lower than another

• One shoulder higher or lower than another

• A rotated pelvis or shoulder girdle

• One sided body pain

• Scoliosis

• Wear and tear on joints on one side of the body.

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