Where a Pushing Force Speaks to a Cell — Pressure Becomes a Signal
The short answer
That the force of a hand pushing softens tissue, I have said before. But there is a further layer. In the cell membrane there are doors that notice the pressing force itself. The force does not end at physically moving the tissue — the cell reads that force and starts working.
Contents
I have told you before that stiffened tissue softens when you push it slowly and with a rhythm. It is the same property by which jelly turns soft if you stir it slowly. (Chuna That Does Not Crack Bones)
That far, it is a story about tissue. A material takes a force and its properties change.
But there is a further layer. The cell reads that force.
There are doors that notice force
In the membrane around a cell there are doors that notice pressing force and pulling force. They are called Piezo.
These doors do not open because a chemical has come. When the membrane is pressed or pulled, that in itself opens them. A physical force opens the door.
When the door opens, ions come in. And when ions come in, the work inside the cell starts. (A Signal That Turns Up Everywhere — On Ions)
It is the place where force is translated into the cell's language.
This has only recently been worked out
It was a place unknown for a long time. How the body reads chemical signals was fairly well known, but how it reads force was not well understood.
These doors were discovered, and that became the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The press release records that these doors are also involved in the regulation of blood pressure, breathing and the bladder.
Meaning that pressing force does not go only into sensation but takes part in the body's regulation.
This may be where the pain of stiffened tissue lies
Something catches here.
The pain of stiffened tissue has a different grain. Not a pain that burns as if scalded, but a pain that is heavy, that pulls, that does not move well. That is mostly how people with long-standing stiffness describe it.
Inside stiffened tissue, these doors may not be pressed properly. When what should be soft has gone hard, force does not spread evenly but piles up in the wrong place. And then the doors there open when it is not the time for it.
Meaning that pain may arise not from the tissue being damaged but from the way force is read having been disturbed. (When the painful spot is not the cause)
So the work of pushing with the hands looks different
What I do in Chuna is soften the tissue. This is a story about a material's properties, and something that has actually been measured in human muscle.
But that pushing force may not end at moving the tissue alone. The cells at the place that took the force may be reading it. Doors may be opening, ions going in, something starting inside the cell.
The same movement of the hand is working at two layers, in effect. The layer that softens tissue, and the layer that speaks to the cell.
How far this has been confirmed
That there are doors that notice force, and that they move ions and start the work inside the cell — this is confirmed.
How far the force I push with by hand opens those doors has not been confirmed. Applying force to cells in a laboratory and my pushing on a person's back are different things. I have not yet seen the material that joins the two.
So I do not use this as an answer. I will not say "Chuna cures by pressing on these doors." There are no grounds for saying that.
But the direction is interesting. As someone who has long done treatment by hand, that a place where force is translated into the cell's language actually exists is reason enough to look into it.
Fit matters more than force
I do not make pushing hard the aim. If force is a signal, what matters about a signal is not its size but its fittingness. Overdo it and the pain and the burden at that spot go up together.
I watch rhythm and time. Tissue takes time to soften, and cells take time to respond. I do not try to finish it in one go.
I do not treat going back as a failure. Tissue stiffens and loosens by its nature. Knowing that property changes the order of the treatment.
The force of a hand pushing softens tissue. And the cell may be reading that force. The pain of stiffened tissue, too, may be the result of that reading having been disturbed.
The body does not speak only in chemistry. It speaks in force as well. It has not been long since that was worked out, and I am watching this direction.
References
Written by Dr. Heo Ji-young (PhD in Korean Medicine Pathology, Kyung Hee University · former Research Professor of Herbology, Kyung Hee University)
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