Notes from day 1 of 4 days from Barral’s Visceral Manipulation 2 taught by Ron Mariotti, ND; including Kidneys, Spleen and Pancreas. Email me directly if you want the rest of the classes notes.

LISTENING
General listening is about Where
The tissue hugs the lesion and tells you exactly where the right spot is
• The body does not lie
• There is a fine variation between emitting (treating) and listening
o The person will respond when you push into them while emitting and this will disturb your listening diagnosis
o You must keep a clear boundary of where you are and where they are. Otherwise we cannot be effective
• Let the body speak to you without putting any healing or shifting input
• General Listening - Sagittal suture is warmer so this is where your middle finger should be
• The feel good spot is where you should be listening from (in regards to standing near client)
o If you feel bad – that’s your energy getting in the way.
o Is it anterior or posterior, left or right, above or below diaphragm
o Use other hand to inhibit where you think it is. If listening line goes away – then this is the spot.
o No shoes, no watches, no Q-links. Client’s feet should be close together so they are destabliized. IF really unstable they should spread their feet wide so you can get an acurate read. Open and close eyes to get a better reading.
o Load the tissue, and read
• If its rapid and urgent – could involve a few structures
• If it feels very deep – have client sit down to take the legs out of the equation.

Local listening is about What
Keep your hand parallel in local listening. Feel with palm more then fingers.
• You must inhibit listening line first with fascial loading and as you slowly lighten up feel the direction of pull. Once you get a sense move a few centimeters in that direction.
• As you get to the spot the pull will slow. When you inhibit the restriction, the line of tension should dissappear.
• You must use your mind and visualization to project into the body to see the organ or spot. IF you can’t see it, you can’t treat it. – Barral
• You must know anatomy and physiology for deeper organs.
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2 Great videos from the site 10000Pennies:

Dr. Jay Parkinson spits forth more brilliance about American Healthcare:

Healthcare delivery is a process. If we have no “System” to facilitate this process, that’s sort of like asking a bunch of disconnected, independent auto workers to find a place and come together on their own accord to build a ton of cars. Sure, they could build cars. It would take a ton of time and would be astronomically expensive, but it could be done. That’s sort of like healthcare in America. The ROI for a disconnected, perversely incented system shouldn’t even be measured. Like Obama says, “its kind of like the Special Olympics.”

This is based off of Umair Haque’s work on Harvardbusiness.org:

How much bang for the buck we really get in terms of life itself? I began with a measurement of Potential Years of Life Lost (PYLL). PYLL works like this: If a male lived to age 60, but average life expectancy was 69, 9 years of potential life would have been lost. PYLL is an interesting number to economists because it is a measure of opportunity cost: how much life is foregone in different healthcare systems.

Where does the United States stand compared to other countries? It loses the most potential years of life amongst developed countries. In the United States, 6397 years of life are lost per 100,000 males — compared to just 4574 in the United Kingdom, or 4018 in Italy.

The United States gets the smallest bang for the buck in terms of life itself amongst developed countries: it realizes the lowest level of “life returns.” The U.S. healthcare system returns the fewest life years for each dollar spent. The United States, for example, has invested an additional 8.3% of GDP in health since 1971. That investment yielded a PYLL reduction of 5157 years. America realized a return of 621 potential years of life gained for each additional percentage point of GDP invested in health.

I wanted to post some of my notes to this class I took. I absolutely loved this class taught by Ken Frey through the Barral Institute. This is only 1 day of 4 days of notes. If you would like the remainder of the notes please email me.

Sequence of diagnostics
• General Listening
• Local Listening
• Inhibition
o Thermal diagnosising works with inhibition
o 1/10 of a degree celsius can be measured through the hand
o Energetically off the body there are layers of “energy”
• These layers can be manipulated

Mobilitiy: Movement is Life
• Position doesn’t matter, mobility does
o Leg length discrepancy doesn’t matter, it’s the abnormality of restrictions that’s the key
o An organ in good health moves in all planes of physiologic motion
• 3-D movement in the coronal, sagittal and transverse
• Body rotates around specific axis
• When under stress there will be a lack of motion in at least one plane

Why VM?
• 90% of musculoskeletal dysfunctions involve viscera
o Not necessarily “caused” by viscera
o Restriction could come from ANS telling organ to restrict
• 70-80% cranial system, cns restrictions are caused by something extra durally in the body
• All organs surrounded by connective tissue
o Body constructed by concentric circles of connective tissue
o Structures must slide and glide – if not restricted
o We learn about muscles but they are given the orders from the adhesion point of view – not giving the orders
• All manual therapies are based on the fact that there is an inherent normal movement in the body and when something restricts this normal function there is a pathobiomechanical and or pathophysiological affect to the person.
o All manual therapies are based on releasing the hypomobile areas or adverse biomechanical restrictions in the body
• Pathophysiological dysfunction – when visceral movement is impaired the function of the organ is impaired
o i.e. chemistry, blood, etc
• Pathobiomechanical problems can cause pain, dysfunction: in joint muscle, nerve, blood vessel, lymph structure, potentially any anatomical structure
• “Mobility is the key to understanding pathology.” – Barral

Liver
• Connected to the diaphragm, which is connected and associated to lungs (and up into mediastinum, pleura, neck, phrenic nerve) moving 24,000 times a day. If there is a 1-ounce restriction this chain of events is being pulled over and over again 24,000 times a day and drives strain up into the cranium. Shoulder problems, headaches, etc could result. All signs point to liver.

The art in VM is bringing the person to the point of the restriction and letting them self correct. We can easily press through restrictions but there is no art in that.
• VM have the potential to affect normal physiological function of the individual organs, the systems they function within, and the structural integrity of the entire body.
o Gail Wetzler, “Organ specific fascial manipulation”
• The purpose of VM is to recreate, harmonize, and increase proprioceptive communication in the body to enhance its internal mechanism for better health.
o “I am just waking up a little something in the body”, Barral
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