Updated
This morning I became intrigued when I read of a CFS/ME success story due to The Lightning Process. It is wonderful to hear of someone going from being extremely floppy and hardly able to communicate to bubbly joy, energy and enthusiasm on a long term basis!
Did the Lightning Process do this? Well . . . Yes.
However, the website I was reading from, was not Phil Parker’s of non-disclosure fame. This website was more informative. The Lightning Process uses several aspects to help. One of those aspects is Osteopathy.
Another Osteopath also professes to be able to significantly help CFS/ME people, Mr Raymond Perrin who conducted expensive clinical trials before launching his product The Perrin Technique onto the public. He also wrote a book. The book explains the technique and more importantly what causes CFS/ME.
One of the aspects of the Lightning Process is “combining particular body movements and postures . . . ” In other words, correcting tiny misalignments.
Mr Perrin has discovered that the cerebrospinal fluid in the brain and spinal column becomes congested consequently disturbing the lymphatic flow throughout the body. Tiny misalignments are corrected and the lymphatic flow is rebalanced with the techniques employed by The Perrin Technique.
There is no brain numbing mnemonics to record, repeat and remember.
What always really frustrated and annoyed me with The Lightning Process is that Phil Parker would not admit to what it was. It seemed like he wanted to keep it a mystery, a magical thing.
But another ‘thing’ bothered me with the technique is that I have heard of people becoming well through the process but feeling like they were going mad at the same time. Someone said: “My brain was telling me I was well and my body was giving out pain signals and telling me that I was not.”
Then of-course is the cost of Therapy for Wellness.
I paid £30 for each Perrin Treatment. I paid when I had the treatment. I didn’t pay if I had to cancel. I had about 16 treatments, so the total cost was approximately: £480 paid in easy affordable steps.
The cost of the Lightning Process is about £700 paid up front.
I can go and see my Perrin practitioner any time I want, at a time to suit myself and I could do this throughout my treatment. It was flexible and affordable.
Interesting that these two therapies are both designed by Osteopaths.
Let me tell you something else about Osteopathy. The Original Discoverer – Andrew Taylor Still in 1874.
Since the age of 12, although he didn’t realise it then, he discovered that tiny misalignments of the body caused ill-health. He cured his own headache by stretching the neck and increasing blood flow.
And of-course that ancient of all ancients Hippocrates, always advocated massage to loosen or tighten a joint that may be misaligned due to tight or loose tendons or muscles.
And that brings me back to me and what I do. I find that Remedial massage along with stretches helps so many, many people.
When I was first ill with CFS/ME, my son bought me a book about Yoga. It was a few years after that that I shouted Eureka! Because I remembered my work with Aerobics and how I preferred the Stretching component.
The cure for CFS/ME appears to be ancient knowledge re-packaged. I suppose it matters not who you see or how you obtain your cure. I just want something I can understand, perceive and fully evaluate to make my decision on who or what I spend my money.
Finally, an Osteopath and a Cranial therapist to boot, said to me: “The trouble is there are many of us Osteopaths who feel annoyed with Raymond Perrin, we have always known how to help those with CFS/ME using Osteopathy and Cranial Therapy. We feel he has simply taken what Osteopaths naturally do and made a brand out of it.”
Update
After my own journey to complete wellness, which I have written about: A Happier, Healthier Lifestyle I now feel that CFS/ME can not be ‘cured’ sorting out misalignments alone although it helps, it is food that is the complete answer. Food. Good Food. And understanding what that Good Food is.
References
I’ve just read your piece above and felt that I had to comment to put some points straight as I think it’s very dangerous to have inaccurate information regarding treatments for ME/CFS out on the internet.
The Lightning Process is nothing to do with Osteopathy, absolutely nothing, and we have to be very clear about that.I have had Lightning Therapy with Phil Parker himself and it is nothing but a pattern interrupt technique taken from NLP, this is to say that it is a technique used to stop certain thought patterns whenver they come up in the belief that they are causing a stress response in the body.My view is that Phil Parker is a profiteer from the desperation of people with ME/CFS.There’s a guy called Ashok Gupta who had ME/CFS and has his own treatment protocol whohc can be purchased in DVD format, he uses an NLP pattern interrupt technique that is very similar to Phil Parker’s Lightning Process technique and he also includes adivce on meditations, visualisations etc as well as giving a realistic time frame, my adive would be to go for this if you’re interested as it covers anything you might get from the Lightning Process, plus he offers a full money back guarantee if after 6 months you don’t feel that you benefited from it (and the cost isn’t huge anyway, was about £60 when I purchased it).
As for the Perrin Technique, it’s about clearing toxic overload from the nervous system and getting the cerebospinal fliud flowing properly again.Whilst this may seem a completely different approach to those above they both come from the same starting point that ME/CFS is a condition caused by an ongoing and unremitting dysfunction of the nervous system, essentially we are in a sympathetic nervous system state permanently and our parasympathetic system is ‘switched off’.I think they’re both on the money, there is huge mental stress in having CFS and for most people the fact that we developed it was because we didn’t cope to well with stress in general, on a physical level those with CFS have accumulated toxins and the nervous system isn’t operating well.A combination of reducing mental stresses as well as physically righting the cranial system seems the best strategy for curing oneself of CFS.
As for your symptoms flaring up with food intolerances, you may be well served by eliminating everything that is potentially causing problems for a month and during that period repairing the lining of your gut, this is easily done, L-Glutamine being the main supplement to take.Basically intolerances are caused bu food particles passing through holes in a ‘leaky gut’, stop eating those foods stops the gut lining becoming inflamed, healing the gut during this period to repair it’s leaky nature means that when one returns previous intolerant foods to the ddiet after a month or 6 weeks, one should no longer be intolerant of those foods.
Hello Matt, I will quote you: “The Lightning Process is nothing to do with Osteopathy, absolutely nothing, and we have to be very clear about that.”
Here is what Ian Cleary, a Lightning Process therapist says on his website:
“THEORIES BEHIND THE LIGHTNING PROCESS
A number of established theories underpin the Lightning Process, including:
Neural plasticity – the ability of the pathways of the brain to change and develop in response to learning and repetition,
the physiological effects of adrenaline and cortisol, and
The osteopathic theory of facilitation and the impact of changes in structure causing changes in function.”
“The OSTEOPATHIC theory” . . . I think this means that Osteopathy is involved in the Lightning Process, don’t you?
Phil Parker is a trained Osteopath.
From the FAQs on Phil Parker’s website:
Q. Will there be physical contact or manipulation of the body and muscles during the training?
A: No, the osteopathic elements of the LP are referring to the principles that underpin osteopathy and in particular the link between the brain and the body and how posture can affect you.
I know about Ashok Gupta see his email to me on this website.
Thank you for the information about the Perrin Technique, I have a diary of my Perrin Technique treatments that helped me to wellness on this website.
Thank you for the information about L-glutamine, I cannot take this due to its formulation but as it is rich in cabbage and other vegetables I eat those.