Is your body speaking a foreign language?
In my neuro training, the process of learning new movements is often compared to the process of learning a new language. I personally find learning movement easier than learning a language, which is probably why I’ve followed the path I have as a movement professional. There’s a lot to this analogy, and it has become a good way to explain the process of what’s going on between the brain and body in terms of communication and the development of a useful brain map for movement.
One of my stroke clients I’ve been working with over the summer explained that coming up with the words for what’s going on is difficult. I haven’t had a stroke, and I agree it’s hard at times to describe what’s happening in learning movement. It is also a unique experience for every individual based on how their brain works. There are things she cannot feel, but to our amazement, there is something she can control under certain conditions. I said there’s something there that you are using, and we need to try and define that a bit more so we can tap into it even further. I believe a big issue with neuro rehab is that clients are often told parts of their body are paralyzed. By definition, the term is appropriate, but it comes with a negative connotation most of the time. In every neuro client I’ve worked with, I’ve never seen someone completely paralyzed. There is still something there… Clients often come to me and get these “paralyzed” joints moving again. Every time we are pleasantly surprised, but it’s because we establish the building blocks of that foreign language for their brain/body map to establish controlled movement again. Since a limb moved, is it actually paralyzed or just looking for the right communication and information to rise to the occasion?
When there is an injury, the potential for soft tissue damage, including nerve damage, is highly possible. I have described this as that joint or part of the body suddenly talking with a thick accent. We can understand what it’s saying, but it’s different, and every once in a while, we might have to slow down and figure out the words that don’t follow the typical communication we are used to. Over time, the body repairs the nerves and communication normalizes again. Many times there is a bit of a twang in the dialect, but we get used to communicating with that response. When there is a significant neurological injury, such as with a stroke or with MS, it’s often as if one side or affected parts of the body are speaking an entirely different language we don’t know. I said to this client, you can still talk to the right side of your body, but it’s as if that side is speaking Mandarin now. I asked her, do you know Mandarin? She exclaimed, of course not!
Just like trying to learn another language, it is slow. You don’t just wake up the next day being fluent. In Mandarin, hello is Nǐhǎo (Nee how). So that’s where you might start. Now you can pick up every time Nǐhǎo (Nee how) shows up in conversation and can even reply back. You can’t make out the rest of the conversation, but you know how to start and create one response. Then we build on that, and maybe we can figure out how to say how are you, thank you, you’re welcome, etc. Most of the time with second languages, we don’t learn them as well as our first languages, but over time it builds. You can know enough to get by ordering at a restaurant, understand signs posted in public spaces, and decipher general sentiments in the communication. It’s learning, and when we tap into our unique learning style, sort out those building blocks, build further, and start to navigate life in a new language. It’s pretty much the same with movement.
With movement, instead of building blocks of vocabulary, we find reflexive stability in the body and then can go forward isolating movements and putting them together into more complex movement sentences. This sets up some of these foundations we need in order to decipher what’s going on. A Nǐhǎo (Nee how) equivalent for movement might be finding joint centration and then isolating movement in that joint or corresponding joints in the body. Every time we achieve this, it’s equivalent to another piece of vocabulary building into something we can translate, understand, and repeat. So just like with language, we have to get to that point of being able to translate or feel something, keep that going to isolate movement, and then be able to repeat it and challenge it in new ways.
The good part about this is just like the possibility of learning another language, the possibility to rehab parts of the body that are often referred to as paralyzed has potential. This is huge and a deficit I see all the time in conventional physical therapy. As teachers, we are often not starting at figuring out “hello” and the other building blocks of vocabulary first. If you cannot say “hello,” then it’s going to be weird to get to the “how are you” and then the more detailed parts of the language. There’s a rush to memorize more complicated movement material in hopes that just repeating it will stick (also exhausting), but again we need to learn “hello” first.
The hard part about this untapped potential is it’s not easy and takes time. Working with a practitioner who can match your learning style and progress your movement language based on real-time assessment is going to help you get the best results. That goes for movement AND learning another language. Just remember the potential is there if we want to tap into it, and over time you may become fluent.
