Biotensegrity = Circular Strength Training

From the creator and founder of the science of Biotensegrity, Dr. Steven Levin www.biotensegrity.com:

“Dear Scott, I have your Intu-Flow DVD, Integrating Structure DVD and Mini-Clubbells. I just hoisted the bells and wondered why my father never got me into it [considering he was an Indian Club champion!] I will keep you informed as to my progress.

I have a lot to talk to you about relating to the mechanics of martial arts. As evident in your work, much of it you already know by insight, (either that, or you have gotten more out of my work than most). Biotensegrity and martial arts are so closely linked. The mechanics of biotensegrity explains much of what seems unexplainable in martial arts. It becomes martial science.

You did a very good job of applying biotensegrity in a very practical way. My focus has been as a basic scientist as I did not want to limit biotensegrity to the narrow field of what I know as a clinician. I have always hoped that someone like you would take the ball and run with it, and you did. Thank you!”

Almost 20 years ago in the University, I coined the concept that wellness involves integrating breathing, movement and structure, and martial art involves dis-integrating the breathing, movement and structure of your opponent. Unfortunately, stress, trauma and fear disintegrate this wellness triumvirate, too.

Residual tension, sensory motor amnesia, fear-reactivity and myofascial density usually result from compensatory tension created as a reaction to a source injury. Pain and problems can appear very distant from the original injury. Hence our adherence to the maxim, the site is not the source.

After the acute phase of the injury, our nervous system adapts to the background noise of the issue. At the end of the acute phase there are no longer any symptoms of the source issue. But as soon as the source stops manifesting symptoms, elsewhere in the body sites of symptoms may begin to erupt. And the chase begins…

Break a Leg!

In high school during a critical game in our football season, I had my leg tackled and it snapped in half. It felt excruciatingly painful. Fortunately, not long after the application of the cast, the pain dramatically diminished. However, about a week later, first my knee, then my hip and lower back started to ache intensely. Up the chain the pain traveled as my structure compensated for the immobility imposed by my leg cast. The compensations themselves caused me pain and became very inflamed whenever I would move those sites, and in some instances completely opposite the source issue.

My doctors didn’t understand and became exasperated trying to treat each manifestation. One doctor and psychologist even claimed that it was a psychosomatic array of pain caused by my desire to not return to the football season for fear of disappointing my step-father . Not that emotional issues don’t manifest physically (they certainly do), but I wanted to get back and finish out my season! I had been offered a scholarship to play football at West Virginia Wesleyen University.

My doctors didn’t understand what was happening, nor did I. I felt broken and frustrated. And that experience of confused hopelessness lay the foundation for the future development of the Circular Strength Training® (CST) System.

CST is both innovative and revolutionary as a unique, proprietary exercise approach because it addresses the source issues of tension in the myofascial matrix: our spidery web of connective tissue and electric goo which we call “muscle.”

By chasing issues (through particular exercise selection and sequence) to the source, we release the sites from the ongoing compensatory strain while eventually liberating the source tension to allow it to heal through the body’s natural healing process. We do this through our daily personal practice of Intu-Flow®, but also through the deeper counter-conditioning through Prasara Yoga and Clubbell® Training. It’s how we, in concert with the aid of our health care team, get out of our own way of healing.

The science underpinning CST has been proven in recent years. Because it demonstrates a 100% reproducible success, it has become the globally recognized leading model for self health practice. Let’s discuss this science.

The Rise of Biotensegrity

The Structure of the Circular Strength Training® System is founded upon Steven Levin’s Biotensegrity model of the underlying structure of organic tissue. The Biotensegrity model explains the nebulous interdependence of the body’s structural components. It goes far beyond the conventional model of muscle-tendon-ligament reaction to injury by including the entire structure of the organism as a potential home for referred dysfunction.

“The word ‘tensegrity’ is an invention: a contraction of ‘tensional integrity’. Tensegrity describes a structural-relationship principle in which structural shape is guaranteed by the finitely closed, comprehensively continuous, tensional behaviors of the system and not by the discontinuous and exclusively local compression member behaviors. Tensegrity provides the ability to yield increasingly without ultimately breaking or coming asunder.” (Synergetics, Buckminster Fuller, MacMillan, New York, 1975.)

In his incredibly instructionally dense DVD on his Biotensegrity work, Dr. Stephen Levin, MD (himself, a CST enthusiast, supporter and even contributor to RMAX Magazine) describes that bodily tissues involve interwoven tension icosohedra. These complex triangular trusses, balance stability and mobility by creating a myofascial sea of continuous tension pulling inward while the compressive struts of the hard bones push outward.

Biotensegrity serves to provide explanations which remain elusive to observers viewing bodily phenomena through the lens of the Newtonian mechanical model of human structure. An understanding of the biotensegrity model allows great clarification of the ways in which the body’s gravitational support system responds to stress, strain, trauma and fear.

Simply stated, when the tissues become overwhelmed by stress (mechanical, physiological, or emotional/biochemical), they lose their resilient ability to adapt and compensate. As a result the myofascial matrix responds by altering the stored tension and elastic potential of the tissues; pulling in one place, and creating a strain somewhere down the track. Our normal, neutral and responsive bodily structure mutates into a highly-strained, linearly-stiffened, highly-charged form. This latter transformation explains how the slightest poor form, meager stress or emotional arousal can result in instant and even acute injury anywhere along the bound chains of tension.

Unfortunately, most people live in this pre-tense state, and over time adapt to it (or worse, progress upon it) like any conditioning. For the unknowing innocent public, we are bombarded by exercise gurus and companies who advise high-tension breath-holding which not only reinforces this pre-tense condition, it can make it SNAP anywhere along the tension chain!

CST Heals Structural Dysfunction with Movement and Breath

If one experiences pain, tightness, weakness, etc., one can assume one has a movement problem, which can often be detected via the process of mobilizing an area and thereby discovering uncomfortable tension and breath holding. Regardless of whether the problem at hand is a site symptom or the source issue, the structural dysfunction can be addressed through movement and breath work, employed to re-educate the body to move without pain, and exhaling through the discomfort.

All movement expresses at the joints. With only a few exceptions, if one moves, one moves the joints. So if one has an global movement problem, one must by definition have a local movement problem. Before one can address the dis-integration (global movement problems), one must address the local movement problems.

How does one address local movement problems? One must recover the local movement quality. One moves the joint while the rest of the body remains in a neutral, static position. A helpful metaphor is replacing a broken cog in a machine. As soon as the teeth of the new cog sync up with the others (think of breath, movement and structure integrating), then the machine instantly runs well again. This is the CST proprietary strategy of “Global - Local - Global” which I present in my best-selling Integrating Structure DVD Course.

Breath links both aspects of the nervous system: autonomic and voluntary. When a particular local site manifests an issue, moving through it, around it or with it may cause breath holding and bracing - an involuntary protective fear reflex to keep the injured area from further trauma. Since the site is not the source, this bracing serves no purpose in healing. It can only serve to reinforce the potential for ongoing problems in the local site and reinforce the chain of density, tension or injury, by forcefully maintaining the body’s focus on the local site.

This is why “power breathing” and “high tension” techniques may be able to increase tension locally and globally for the short-term, but only results in eventual injury. This is additionally why powerlifters (whether recreational or competitive) are if not immediately, then eventually riddled with aches, pains, injuries and structure dysfunctions.

Since voluntary exhalation is a relaxation trigger for the entire system, exhaling through a discovered local tension can cause the tissue to relax. Therefore, CST uses active exhalation through perceived effort, discomfort or fear (we call “Discipline Level Breath”) to release the local issue so that the structure can reorganize in its innate, normal, pain-free form.

Due to its protocol of Intuitive Training, CST is both gentle and painless. It often produces immediate and eventual global reorganization cheering the body into its innate pain-free carriage. Due to its universal effectiveness, CST has been actively embraced by physical therapists, chiropractors, physicians, athletic trainers, bodyworkers and massage therapists across the world.

Flow Thyself™,