A healthy mind in a healthy body. The famous Latinism from the 1st century, which expresses the aspiration to maintain the mind and body in harmonious balancewas not far from reality. We are little aware of the implication that our psychological state has on our physical well-being and also, conversely, of the effect that our physiology has on our mental health. Body and mind are not two independent entities but they unequivocally need each other. In general, We do not understand the close relationship between the two. and we give little importance to the synergy they maintain. Fortunately, more and more disciplines are emerging that are committed to this unity and Diaphragm Therapy is one of them.
The concept diaphreo comes from Greek and means to open, separate, make way. The discipline of Diaphragm is based on the premise that Our muscles are a reflection of our emotions.from within us. For our emotional expression we use all our muscles, an innate and generally subconscious instinct – to burst out laughing, to frown, etc. However, in general, this expressive muscular tension is contracted and inhibited to limit our expression, either due to fear or prejudice.
In the long term, This restriction of our physical emotional expression leads to chronic pain. which are the result of a total personal and emotional withdrawal. The result: a closed individual, both emotionally and physically. In this sense, Diafreo therapy seeks the integral harmonization of the person based on body work in which physical and mental well-being is sought.
On the one hand, it aims to recover each part of our body by releasing tension and becoming fully aware of the body. On the other hand, in the process of tension 'release' we also release the psyche (experiences and expressions) recorded in our body memory, thus recovering the knowledge of our identity. Diafreo, then, is the self-awareness of the whole that one is, and not of the parts.
The mistake of closing our expression
We live in a society that tends to hide the expression of emotionsWhy? Who knows. No one has taught us this, but we have indirectly learned it. “Crying is for children” or “giving up is for weaklings” are phrases that are engraved in our subconscious, leading us to fear physically expressing what we feel. The price to pay, however, is high.
We are accustomed to a vicious circle of corrosive adaptation. The individual and family therapist, Toni Barberspecialist in Diafreotherapy, explains that We block some areas of our bodywe learn to inhibit certain responses, we isolate conflicting information that our senses send us, we change a certain posture so as not to feel physical pain. Adapted habits, a lazy state that has led us to loss of spontaneityof our ability to respond, of connecting with different areas of our memory and with the flexibility for certain movements.
This comfort ends up wreaking havoc on both our mind and body. Mentally we suffer a loss of our personal identityto a greater or lesser degree depending on our history. On the other hand, physically we can develop a chronic pain which is derived from maintaining the muscular tensions that we generate during this struggle to try to contract our muscles. The physical consequence alters all systems: from the hormonal and circulatory systems to the energy system and, of course, the nervous system.
Balancing body and mind
Its definition specifies everything. Diafreo therapy is the body and emotional integration workTherefore, physical exercises, mainly stretching, are the key to this therapy. By discovering our body, its capabilities, its full composition, we acquire a full awareness that we directly transfer to our mind.
When we lock ourselves in the restriction of muscular expression, processes of shortening and chronic contraction of the muscle chains occur. These mechanisms, however, do not respond only to physical processes, but rather develop and consolidate according to our adaptation process and relationship with the environment, adding the traumatic experiences that we may have accumulated. This is how he described Françoise Mézières the systematic relationship between body and mind. Mézières, a French physiotherapist, was the mother of the current Diafreo therapyderived from the Mézières Method of rehabilitation that he created in the late 1940s.
According to this famous physiotherapist, the body shape, postures and body attitude that we acquire over the years allow us to block the flow of sensory and nervous information, reducing its impact on our emotional state and the emotional expression of our body and conditioning our response capacity, all in an attempt to adapt to the demands and repressions of the environment.
Thus, body work in Diafreo derives from the studies and physiological principles developed by Mézières, together with the contributions of other specialists. Malen Cirerola direct disciple of the physiotherapist, who after many years of research would outline the therapeutic method they called Diafreotherapy.
Alone or accompanied
As one feels best. Diaphragm therapy It adapts to the needs of the patient and can be performed in an individual session, group session or global stretching session. individual session It allows for deep introspection work, as after a brief interview “we proceed to a body reading in which the therapist will try to locate where the main blockages are, both muscular and energetic”, says specialist Malén Cirerol. Without forgetting that exercise is the key to Diafreo work, the therapist clarifies that in the contact of an individual session “he/she will guide us on the basic global stretching postures to use”.
From these same principles you start the group sessionswhere the therapist proposes different lines of work to a maximum of ten participants. The work is varied and open to providing the help that participants need, including exercises of all kinds whose purpose will always be “the search for balance, flexibility and integration of the bodily 'I'”. In both cases, the final choice of the appropriate type of session is up to the client, but is always resolved after an interview with the specialized therapist.
Finally, the Global Stretching in Diafreo It is aimed especially at children, since the sessions are short but “absolutely effective.” Cirerol assures that although constant cooperation between therapist and patient is essential in therapy, the condition of children has not hindered the experience of this methodology, which, in its 26 years of practice, has obtained good results.