Hi, my name is Anna.
I’m an advanced clinical massage therapist
and I specialise in working with transgender patients.
We’re here in my clinic. This is Silk Brighton,
which is an LGBTQ inclusive wellbeing space.
we’re gonna be talking about signs that you might be over binding
and that it’s time to take a break.
Spectrum outfitters
advise that you shouldn’t be binding for anything longer than 8 hours.
But sometimes, particularly in the trans community,
when we have gender dysphoria,
it can be really difficult to listen to our bodies.
So sometimes
it can be difficult to spot the warning signs that it’s time to
not just take a break from binding,
but to have a rest in general and do some self care.
We’re gonna go through four really simple areas of your bodies
that might be communicating with you that it’s time to take a break
and how to spot those signs.
The first part of your body that we’re gonna talk about
is the sternum and the ribs.
If you’re experiencing pain here or here during binding,
this is usually a time to take a break,
even if it’s under the AR’s.
Your sternum and ribs are part of your respiratory systems
and they help your body move to allow itself to take a deep breath.
When we start to experience pain here,
it’s called costochondritis.
We can also experience pain down here
in the floating lower ribs as well.
When your body is trying To take a deep breath
and it can’t get enough oxygen in.
And that oxygen is really vital for all of our organs
to help our body do everything it needs to do
physically and mentally for us.
When your body can’t get enough oxygen
and it’s struggling to expand the lungs,
that’s when it starts to bang into the back of the skeleton,
creating a bruising feeling here and here.
If you’re getting that feeling,
is your body telling you that it needs to take a deeper breath
than what it can currently allow?
It’s time to take the binder off and take a break,
and take some nice deep breaths
and get some oxygen moving through your blood again.
The second area of your body,
which might be telling you that it’s time to take a break,
is your shoulders. Specifically,
if you’re getting a burning feeling along the top of your shoulders,
coming into the back of your skull.
This is the mid and upper fibres of your trapezius.
I want you to think of your body as a duvet cover,
and the trapezius inside it is the duvet.
When we’re getting this burning feeling up here whilst we’re binding,
what’s happening is the duvet is all up one end of the duvet cover.
What your body is telling you is
it needs to bring this back down into its natural position.
Sometimes, if we’ve been over binding or binding for too long,
the body can struggle. To do that,
if you’re getting that burning feeling,
it’s time to take the binder off and allow the body,
and specifically the shoulders,
to come back into their natural position.
The third part of your body which might be communicating,
it’s time to take a break from binding
is one that usually takes people by surprise,
and that’s your eyes.
Your eyes are connected in with a muscle called your suboccipitals,
which are at the base of your skull.
And they’re what we call a propulsive muscle.
This means they’re responsible for helping you scan an environment
to see if it is safe for you to be yourself or not.
As you can imagine, in the trans community,
this is a muscle which gets a big workout in our bodies.
When you start to experience a twitching around your eyes,
what your body is telling you is that it is too tired
for the perceptive muscle of the suboccipital to keep scanning.
If we think back to what I was saying about the trapezius
and the shoulders and all these muscles,
when everything is up here,
if it doesn’t get chance to come back down and regulate
back into a calm space,
what happens is the muscles bang into the suboccipitals,
and this puts a lot of pressure into this area.
Once we’re there, and once we’re over binding,
your body’s gonna start sending a twitching around your eye
to get your attention. This is quite literally your body. Saying,
not only does it need a break and for everything to calm down,
it’s your body saying, I’m tired.
It literally needs to go to sleep.
So it’s time to go home and take a rest
so that your body can come back tomorrow and keep you safe.
The fourth part of your body,
which might be telling you it’s time to take a break,
is your arms. If you’re experiencing pins and needles or worse,
completely dead or numb arms,
you really, really need to listen to this.
Sometimes when we’re over binding or we’ve been binding too long,
it compresses a muscle called the pec minor,
which is this teardrop shape thing here,
up into something called your thoracic outlet,
which is this little chickeny bit here.
This is a really important part of your body because a bunch of nerves,
arteries, and veins pass through the top of the spine,
through here, and down through your arms.
When this becomes compressed,
your body experiences pins and needles
down the arms and into the hands.
The pins and needles is your body trying to get your attention to say,
I haven’t got enough movement or blood coming through this area.
If you’re experiencing this,
do not ignore this symptom,
as sometimes this can lead to more serious conditions.
Not in all cases, but sometimes.
Don’t ignore pins and needles in dead arm.
Take the binder off and get yourself moving
and get the blood moving through this Area again