Reblogged from geerthofman:

Heya! The first time I saw this picture on facebook: I was blown away. What an expression of liberating oneself from…., from what exactly? From some kind of casting mould it seems. The statue depicts a person who expresses a deeply felt connection with his higher purpose, He celebrates being an integral and indispensible part of the universe, ready to fully and unconditionally participate in the perpetual process of co-creation. Allowing himself to wonder, to enjoy life, to laugh, to love and to be …

Break free from the Collective Mold! Namaste!!

Our relationship with money can reveal powerful energetic insights into ourselves. Quite simply, our money patterns are typically consistent with other aspects of our lives. Adjectives that describe our energy, such as tight, controlling, adventurous, systematic or flamboyant, also pinpoint our money energy. Understanding the energy of money can enhance the healing process, show us how to strengthen our personal finances.

How Money Energy Manifests in the Aura
Money relates to the third chakra, the solar plexus. The color (yellow) and the name (solar plexus) relate this chakra to the sun, the original source of all our energy. This is also the chakra of will and courage. The “money spot” in the aura, that is, the spot that relates directly to the ability to acquire money, should be above the physical solar plexus, in the third layer of the aura.

To assess your money spot, look for one of three energetic states. The first state would be that of a healthy money spot. It will be correctly placed in the aura, and will be open and receptive to energy input. Working this spot is intended to yield the acquisition of money.

An underactive money spot is shrunken or displaced in the aura. Realignment and repeated work of the spot will be needed to yield the acquisition of money.

An overactive money spot can eclipse other aspects of the solar plexus, as well as the second chakra (emotional) and heart (love and generosity). If this is the state of the money spot, realignment and energizing of other chakras will be needed to bring aspects of life and self-expression into balance.

Many of us are developing our understanding of the human energy field and the concept that we have an energetic body. We all understand the physical plane and that we have a physical body. Our energetic (or etheric) body exists on the etheric plane. Etheric webbing is the “connective tissue” of the energetic body, forming a scaffolding of energetic structures in our aura. A network of etheric webbing also links the energetic/etheric and physical planes to each other, forming a bridge between these two worlds.

Some of this scaffolding and webbing is determined by genetics and the astrological influences present at birth, explaining why some people can do no wrong when it comes to money, and others can do no right — these two categories of people have powerful etheric structures supporting or undermining their relationship with money.

Our current relationship with money also reflects our current relationship with our parents. For example, if we are still having an angry reaction toward parents who were very cautious with money, we might be caught in a pattern of recklessness. Or, if a father told his son “you will never amount to anything,” that son might grow up pushing himself relentlessly to earn millions of dollars at the expense of his health and family life just to prove the father wrong.

Value used to be measured in gold bullion, but today’s human work energy is measured and embodied in paper and coins. Money is not neutral, but is, by nature, a highly-charged symbol in our civilization. On the physical plane, money has buying power, on the etheric plane, money is the “keeper of human output energy.”

Take a moment to think about how pervasive the reach of money is, it’s a reflection of the etheric money web’s size. Just as blood travels along the network of veins and arteries in our bodies, energy travels along the etheric web. Consequently, the more numerous and developed the etheric structures that emanate from ourselves and intersect with the etheric money web, the more money can flow our way.

Working with Money Energy
We can use systematic methods for building and developing the etheric structures pertaining to money. Obviously, we don’t need to know about energy principles to do this, or only people in the know would have money. Rather, we need to pay attention to all the standard ways in which our society generates money and remember that all physical actions and structures are replicated in the etheric world.

To find ideas on how to build energetic money structures, consider these options:
- Read books about money.
- Hire a financial planner.
- Make some wise investments.

Then, in addition, stimulate the process by using energy techniques to enhance the flow of money in your life. Working on both the physical and etheric plane has powerful results.

Applying Money Energy to Your Practice
First, keep the physical structures pertaining to money within your practice in good order. Accounting, taxes, invoicing and filing should be up to date, accessible and contained. Explain your payment procedures and have a written policy on payment and cancellation procedures. Don’t let your “money story” (personal agenda) color your interactions with clients.

Convey a comfortable energy around money. Do so by speaking easily about money and avoiding aggression or tension when asking for money. Enjoy accepting payment in the same way the client has enjoyed the input of energy from you. Set clear boundaries, but also demonstrate flexibility. For example, if, in your business, you require clients to pay before you provide a service, but one client (who usually does so without fail) forgets his checkbook, make accommodations to be paid at a later date.

Payment for Services
For those of us in the healing profession (although the same principles apply in any line of work), asking for and accepting money for our services is challenging. We have to address our feelings of self-worth every time we tell a new client our rate, and worse, we have to revisit these intense issues whenever we want to give ourselves a raise. Energetically, it is clear that if money were our major motivator, we would not choose this (or any other service) profession. As nurturers, we wonder if it is fair to charge for our services. Even though our work has many other rewards, energetically we need to expect and receive fair pay. In fact, the way we handle this is an integral part of the healing process, because money issues prevail in our society and are part of the energy we seek to rebalance.

At the simplest level, we give the energy of our healing services, and in return, we receive energy in the form of money. If the amount of money received is equivalent to the level of skill and value of the service, the transaction is balanced and complete.

What happens when we provide our services for free? The energy moves in only one direction — from the healer to the client. The most significant consequence of this is the client becomes in energetic debt to the healer. Healer and client have established an etheric cord along which energy continues to flow until the debt is closed. The sense of “owing” and “being owed” can lead to:

- Feelings of anger and resentment for both parties.
- Parent transference with the healer, because children don’t pay their parents for taking care of them.
- A drive on the part of the client to resolve the debt by continually trying to serve the healer in various ways.
- Confusion for the healer who was “generous” and now finds herself the target of a bad feeling.

Obviously these energetic consequences are counterproductive to healing.

What happens if services are exchanged instead? Energetically, we are inclined to barter, because in our collective unconscious, bartering precedes money. A fair exchange is deeply satisfying. Instead of going through the third party — money — we exchange energy directly with each other, establishing a direct energetic bond. We all seek human connection, so this can give us a high. However, we no longer have the protection and boundary of the money convention and have entered a more intimate relationship. Because our society is no longer using a barter standard, there are unforeseen pitfalls. Both unfair and fair exchanges set up a need for the relationship to survive the trade.

In practice, equal exchange is seldom experienced. For example, the practitioner might provide a one-hour healing session, but the client has to work for two days, say, painting the house. As a healer, it might be more wise to ascertain whether there is an underlying issue with the action of paying money. Some people are continually bartering services all over town. Allowing them to avoid the standard transaction of paying money for a service is not conducive to their healing process.

Another problem with trading services is the assumption that the client possesses the skill set for supplying the service exchanged. For example, a client who offers to do office work in exchange for healing, but does not know how to use your computer, is going to be more of a burden. Another pitfall is accepting services we don’t really want or need, resulting in an energetic tangle where both parties walk away drained.

The solution? Follow the rules of the IRS — assign services a monetary value and invoice each other for services rendered. Only accept services that are truly required and that you would have had to pay for anyway. An exchange that follows these guidelines can have its own healing component.

Pay it Forward
Sometimes it does suit us to provide our services at a free or reduced rate. For example, if you have a client who professionally contributes to the community, such as a nun, you can become a participant of a much greater etheric web by providing free service to this client. You will not directly receive more income, but because you have accessed more webbing along which energy can flow to you, you will probably manifest an increased number of clients. In a similar vein, when it is appropriate to give or donate money, then it can also be appropriate to give or donate your services.

Other times we want to offer our skills to friends or family members who are in need, in the same way as friends might offer to help us move to a new home. It doesn’t seem much use to us to have these touch abilities if we can’t give them to the people we love. Therein lies the boundary — there should be a clear distinction between how we behave toward our clients and how we behave toward our friends and family.

We need money to live — it is an essential part of our physical incarnation. Use these techniques to systematically construct a sound etheric and physical money structure for your practice. In the same way as honoring the laws of nature results in harmony and growth, honoring the rules of money yields financial health.

By Vivien Schapera who has worked in private practice as an Alexander Technique teacher since 1983, an energy healer since 1994 and a mentor of practitioners who are building their practices since 1995. She is the author of Everyday Magic and How to Establish and Maintain a Strong Client Base. How to Lose Weight and Gain Money, co-authored with retired banker Drew Logan, will be released in 2004. You can reach Schapera through www.strongclientbase.com.

Originally published in Massage & Bodywork magazine, February/March 2004.
Copyright 2004. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved.

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What a long journey from the ancient healing traditions of massage to an hour of blissful care at the spa down the street. Massage has been intertwined for so long with the way we live, work, and play that a history for massage in its own right has emerged only in the last century. In the last two decades, its identity and reputation have been polished like a hot stone.

There’s a rich garden of bodywork to benefit you at the different ages and stages of your life. Getting the advice of your massage therapist, doing some research on www.massagetherapy.com, and seeking methods to which you are intuitively drawn are your best guides to finding what works for your body and spirit. No need to wait for a medical problem or a new high on the stress-o-meter to get on the table and into the hands of your massage and bodywork therapist.

When you enter a massage session, you are connecting with a tradition that’s been interwoven with athletic endeavors, midwifery, and ceremonial practices in religious and healing rituals throughout time. These practices have pointed the way to current research showing occasional, as well as regular, massage have myriad benefits to health.

Your practitioner is likely trained in Swedish massage–most therapists gain Swedish training as their first technique. Upon this building block, they often add other techniques that fit their gifts and interests. The additional training can mean adding specialized strokes with physical pressure, work with energy points, or massage to support healing of specific health conditions and injuries. Those that more closely address the mind-body connection are called somatic therapies.

Following is a top 10 list to start your journey. Begin with whatever suits your most immediate need, knowing it can be a lifetime adventure to connect and reconnect with different techniques for your best health, spiritual wellness, and sense of adventure.

1.  Swedish Massage
This terminology is a bit of a misnomer as massage technique refined and named about 120 years ago was neither invented by a Swede nor developed in Sweden, despite massage history books that say so. It was Dutch practitioner Johan Georg Mezger (1838-1909) who gets the credit for adopting the French names that define the basic massage strokes–effleurage, petrissage, frictions, and tapotement–and systemizing them into what would most accurately be called classic massage. In any case, this technique is the starting point for most massage training today. It involves five kinds of touching and is delivered to soft tissues by the therapist’s hands, which are moisturized with massage oil or lotion. The lubricant can serve two purposes: reducing friction between your therapist’s hands and your skin, and often providing an aromatherapy experience that supports your relaxation. Smell evokes strong associations that are deeply wired into our brains, so it’s possible your experience will be profound. Your therapist may give you a choice of scents, so breathe deeply and enjoy. The kneading, rolling, vibrational, tapping, and percussive movements all work inward toward your heart and will stimulate your circulation. Among many benefits, Swedish massage will hasten healing of injuries, reduce swelling, and help dissolve scar tissue adhesions.

2. Deep Tissue
Often integrated with other massage methods, deep-tissue work is exactly what it sounds like. Your therapist can elicit plenty of relaxation for you with traditional massage to the outer layers of skin and muscle, but the benefits of deep-tissue massage can take that one step further or deeper. Once the outer skin and muscles have been relaxed with preliminary techniques, it’s easier for your therapist to connect to the underlying musculature and deeper connective tissue, called fascia. The fascia is a deep, dense, strong part of your physiology that helps join your body parts together. Deep-tissue work is an excellent remedy for chronic muscular pain, injury rehabilitation, and reduction of inflammation-related pain caused by arthritis and tendonitis.

3. Sports Massage
Whether for professional athletes, active kids, or weekend warriors, sports massage has benefits for participants in the active life. For most people, sports massage is handy after muscle exertion to relieve stiffness and soreness. But anyone can borrow from the gym bag of the professional athlete, so to speak, especially if he or she is training for a major event like a triathlon. Professional athletes use fully clothed, vigorous massage before sports events to bring blood to critical parts of the body and loosen muscles. As this is done, athletes visualize their best performance, supporting the muscle memory that helps maximize their training and effort. Another professional tactic is to have massage right after an event to shorten recovery time. Anyone can use massage to reduce pain and tightness from athletic pursuits or to address sports injuries. Sports massage can ease muscles that shorten and tighten to compensate for and protect injured areas. Massage of surrounding areas can relieve ripples of pain that expand from the injury site.

4. Chair Massage
There will be times–during a strenuous shopping trip, visiting your health food store, or when traveling by air–that you might not be able to manage a full-body massage. Here’s your chance to use chair massage, as it’s just the thing for relief from long airplane rides or to relax shoulders weighted down by shopping bags or suitcases. This is not the massage chair with the electrical cord Uncle Fred requested for his birthday, but a brief massage by a trained professional with you seated on a padded, ergonomically designed chair.

Chair massage is often delivered in a semiprivate kiosk, fully clothed, without massage oil, and purchased in segments from five minutes to 20 minutes at about $1 a minute. The focus is applying compression (pressure) to the head, shoulders, neck, back, and arms.

Americans didn’t invent chair massage–there’s Japanese artwork showing seated massage from at least several hundred years ago. But American ingenuity spread the practice, with high-tech companies on the West Coast introducing it to the workplace during the 1980s. It spread rapidly from there and its use has been noted in national surveys on the best places to work.

And here’s something to double your fun–use chair massage to introduce your fellow shoppers or travel companions to their first massage. It’s a lighthearted way to start someone down the path to wellness.

5. Stone Massage
This modality is truly a hot topic. It’s listed far and wide on spa and practitioner websites. You may have seen pictures of massage clients with smooth, black stones resting on their bare spines. These stones are warmed and then placed on the body, as well as used as an extension of the therapist’s hands throughout the massage. The placement of the stones can be aligned with chakras, meridians, and zones according to the energy system your practitioner follows.

Stone work can easily be blended with other kinds of massage and can be a powerful healing and grounding force. It’s touted as an effective remedy to stress, anxiety, and overactivity. Your therapist may refer to improvements in your flow of earth element or to the function of your root chakra. Clients have noted pain relief as one of the benefits.

It may seem that supplies for this technique are free and plentiful, but in actual practice, there’s a lot to choosing the right stones. Your therapist will look at the stone’s exfoliating quality, weight, color, and porosity. That’s one reason mechanically polished stones are not recommended, mechanical polishing seals up the stone’s surface. It’s preferable that your therapist gets them from nature where they’ve been polished to perfection by streams and the ocean.

6. Geriatric Massage
There are many applications for massage therapy for the elderly. Many seniors grew up during the Depression and think of many grooming and self-care activities as impossibly self-indulgent. They might be more receptive to the notion that massage is good for their health. Many have greater discomfort with removing clothing than younger people do, so it might do well to explain to them the careful draping in a massage session that protects their privacy.

You can do a favor to the aging members of your family by knowing two of the biggest reasons first-timers generally try massage: a medical professional recommends it, or they receive a gift certificate. If you want your loved ones to benefit from massage when they are older, there’s no time like the present to acquaint them with the joys of professional massage therapy.

Down the road, as some greater infirmities like arthritis and dementia present themselves, the way will have been paved for massage to be a soothing resource. When the time comes, massage has its place in hospice care for both patients and stressed-out families. Give the gift of massage now and watch the dividends pay off for your whole family when it counts the most.

7. Pregnancy Massage
Mothers-to-be can greatly benefit from pregnancy massage. It’s worthwhile considering this as a baby shower gift for you or a friend to ease those backaches and swollen ankles. It can help a mother’s changing posture and possibly the positioning of the baby in the womb. The beneficial relaxation chemicals a mother’s body releases when getting a massage also flow to the baby. When the exciting time comes for baby to join the world, massage can be a wonderful support that eases and shortens labor, reducing mom’s pain and anxiety. Once the baby is born, massage can help bring mother’s strained body structure and physiology back into alignment. Massage can also soothe shoulders sore from holding and breast-feeding the little one. Mother’s emotions can be volatile while hormones are still running amok, studies indicate massage may be helpful in regulating stress and mood chemistry.

8. Baby Massage
Right after that pregnancy, there’s a special way for baby to get started on a lifelong enjoyment of massage. Baby massage provides stimulation to little nervous systems, promoting brain development, and supporting that all-important parent-child bonding. (Studies have shown premature infants gain weight more quickly when they are massaged. Keep in mind that massage of premature infants calls for different techniques than for full-term babies.) More parents than ever are learning and practicing baby massage. One training session is usually enough, as the techniques are fairly simple. Parents may feel less helpless with a fussing baby when they have another tactic up their sleeves. And it’s another way to enjoy the wonder of a new life.

9. Reflexology
Reflexology is a popular and ancient form of bodywork that flows from a Chinese tradition and works with the incredible system of nerves and energy meridians rooted in our feet, hands, and ears. Ancient practitioners of foot massage came across tender spots on feet and noticed specific health conditions improved after massage. That allowed them to map foot sensitivities with corresponding body parts. So if your reflexologist comes to a tender spot on one of these extremities, pay heed to the organ or system to which it may be connected.

Reflexology is a smart way to work with health concerns not ordinarily reachable through regular massage, such as problems in organs or internal systems. This also goes for areas too damaged or painful to benefit from direct touch. Reflexology addresses a modern problem as well. Our feet are cooped up in shoes all day and walk mainly on hard, flat surfaces. This means the opportunities for feet to send signals to the brain about temperature, texture, and surface variations are lost. Some reflexology practices have addressed this with mini-obstacle courses that might include walking over a variety of surfaces, such as cobblestone paths. Don’t worry–there are no hot coals involved.

10. Energy Work
A good way to understand energy work is to think of a tree. The trunk represents the idea that energy systems interact with and support the physical body’s health. There are major tree branches representing schools of thought that define energy flow by chakras, meridians, zones, or other classifications. These include ancient Chinese medicine, the Eastern ayurvedic tradition, and Native American healing.

If you’ve tried acupuncture, acupressure, or tai chi, you have already been exposed to the Chinese system. You may be surprised you’ve been dabbling in the ayurvedic tradition if you’ve tried yoga. Receiving energy work may mean never being physically touched, keeping all of your clothes on, and remaining seated or standing. Despite this hands-off approach, recipients of energy work often report dramatic reorientations in how they feel and move in the world. Some of the more prominent methods are shiatsu, reiki, Zero Balancing, jin shin jyutsu, and Insight Bodywork.

There are new discoveries every day in the complex relationship between body, mind, and spirit. It’s an exciting journey and your needs, as well as those of your loved ones, will change. Whatever your path, keeping an open mind and listening to your body are the guides to your unique situation. Your health and wellness are up to you, so relax and let go of your stress. You deserve it.

For a complete glossary of bodywork modalities, please visit Massagetherapy.com’s Bodywork Glossary.

By Nora Brunner the public relations specialist for ABMP.

Originally published in Body Sense magazine, Autumn/Winter 2008. Copyright 2008. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved.

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Energy healing is often discussed as a new, somewhat unexplainable therapy. Truth is, energy work is an effective bodywork that is as ancient as healing itself.

The body is, after all, bioenergetic and seeks to maintain balance. Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, called the body’s natural capacity to heal itself vis medicatrix naturae — the healing power of nature. We are not separate from nature, in fact, we are intrinsically a part of the energetic web of all life and all things. Modern science is slowly catching up with this basic understanding, historically common to cultures the world over.

Almost all cultures share a fundamental belief that life is more than just physical processes in a body, life is a unity of the physical, mental and spiritual, and is infused with a special energy or force that gives it vitality. Energy healing, or energy work, seeks to restore, promote, and maintain health and wellness to all those elements by influencing and supporting the body’s bioenergies. These energies are variously referred to as qi (pronounced “chee”), prana, vital force, life force, lan vital, mana and more. When disease hits, it’s understood as a disruption or distortion of these energies.

Hands-on Therapeutic Modalities

The specific views of bioenergies, and the practices for working with them, vary from culture to culture and from system to system.

Asian medicine is forthright in its focus on energy. Working from a philosophy that energetic currents interconnect all aspects of the body/mind/spirit continuum, systems like shiatsu, acupressure, Jin Shin Jyutsu, Thai massage, Breema and Insight Bodywork seek, in their individual ways, to facilitate unobstructed energetic flow and balance.

Acupressure operates much like acupuncture, but uses direct pressure instead of needles to calm, disperse or tonify energy through energy portals called pressure points.

Shiatsu uses pressure through palms, thumbs, fingers, elbows, knees, and sometimes even feet, to stimulate the free flow of energy through the body. Yet, unlike acupressure, it is focused more on the pathways themselves and less on individual points.

Jin Shin Jyutsu focuses on combinations of points that are gently held for extended periods to unblock stuck energy and to harmonize energetic flow. Thai massage, Breema and Insight Bodywork, similarly use manual pressure to facilitate energy movement and balance, but also involve more physical movement from the recipient’s body, including deep stretches, joint mobilizations and specific holds.

Western energy practices also recognize the bioenergetic matrix for health and vitality but differ more widely than the Asian forms in their philosophies and approaches to working. Reflexology is based on a view of the body as having 10 vertical zones and utilizes firm thumb pressure to feet, hands and ears to reflexively stimulate body energies and optimal organ functioning.

Polarity therapy works from a view of positive and negative polarities existing in every cell of the body, and through the use of gentle holds and the energetic principles of attraction, repulsion and neutrality, it seeks to balance these energy relationships.

Even though reiki has origins in Asian systems, its contemporary practice has developed largely in the West. The reiki practitioner is a conduit for channeling life energy into the recipient by means of a series of holds (hand positions) on the head, chest, abdomen and back.

Therapeutic Touch directs the practitioner’s bioenergy through their hands on or above the recipient’s body to promote self-healing and energy movement, while Zero Balancing utilizes the practitioner’s hands as fulcrums for pressure, while gently pressing, stretching and bending the recipient’s body in order to align body energy with body structure.

These are but a sampling of the kinds of work being offered in this ever-growing field.

Non-Touch Modalities

Energy medicine also includes therapies that may be employed on their own or combined with hands-on approaches.

Acupuncture, perhaps, belongs at the top of this list, given its several thousand years of practice. Acupuncture is a medical practice of treating disease through the insertion of needles into the skin at points along energy channels to restore balance to the energetic pathways and organ systems of the body.

Homeopathy is another elder in the family of healing practices. Based upon the principle of “like cures like,” homeopathy is a system of natural remedies utilizing minute doses of a substance so distilled that only the vibrational imprint of the original substance remains. It is interesting to note that prior to 1900, most hospitals throughout the United States were homeopathic hospitals. Homeopathy remains a significant and vital part of health care in Europe.

Many other healing systems employ the vibratory (energetic) aspects of nature to influence and enhance our own vibratory well-being. Flower Essences, such as the well-established Bach Flower Remedies, are particularly useful for emotional disharmonies. Flower Essences impart the vibratory signatures of plants to resonate with similar vibrations in the subtle energetic bodies of the individual. Flower Essences typically are absorbed under the tongue in a diluted solution, or sometimes through a bath.

Similarly, aromatherapy works with vibratory energies of plants, but unlike flower essences, the essential oils of aromatherapy are highly concentrated and potent. Whether dispersed in the air or absorbed through the skin via a carrier oil, aromatic oils please the senses while they impart their vibratory synchrony to the body.

All things in nature vibrate and these vibrational frequencies resonate with, or otherwise impact upon, the energetic harmony of the human being. To this end, crystals, color, light, sound, and even thought or prayer can be powerful healing tools.

Practices of energy cultivation, such as yoga, qigong, t’ai chi, aikido and meditation, should also be considered forms of energy work. These are important ways of promoting strong vital energy in the body and mind, improving both health and the quality of life.

Energy work is a valuable ally to good health — whether as preventive maintenance, a holistic approach to addressing imbalance and disease, or as a complement to allopathic medical care. No one method is better than any other method. To find what works best for you, explore. See what approach holds the greatest affinity for you. Discover what your body/mind/spirit responds to and discover the health that awaits within.

By Barry Kapke a columnist for Body Sense magazine and instructor at the San Francisco School of Massage

Originally published in Body Sense magazine, Fall 2002.

Copyright 2003. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved.

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At the heart of breath therapy is the importance of body awareness, or proprioception. “If you have back pain,” Mehling says, “the normal situation for a patient is they don’t really focus well in the body area where they have lots of pain. They can have difficulty in perceiving subtle sensations that are not pain. The therapist teaches that they can perceive in that pain area the subtle movements that are related to breathing. If you learn those perceptions, that seems to be one of the mechanisms where enhanced body awareness helps in reducing pain.”

Breath Therapy
As a mind-body approach, breath therapy integrates body awareness, breathing, meditation, and movement. Mehling says much of what happens during the therapy is not easily visible, “similar to the ‘body scan’ in meditation or mindfulness-based stress reduction or qi gong. It is a Western method, however,” he says, “developed since the 1920s in Germany, where all the other approaches such as Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique, eutony, sensory awareness, functional relaxation, autogenic training, bioenergetics, Else Gindler work, etc., have their European roots.”

Similar to meditation, breath therapy emphasizes awareness in the present, but also adds hands-on techniques and verbal cues to focus on distinct body areas. For example, with the client lying prone on the table, the therapist places her hands on the sacrum and asks the client to perceive subtle changing movements occurring in that area. “The verbal cues hook the patient’s attention to a certain region,” Mehling says. With the therapist keeping firm but gentle contact, the client is asked to feel how the movement pushes the hand or to feel the breath movement approaching the hand. The approach can also include stretching at the back, legs, or neck, with the intention of enhancing awareness and allowing for less restricted movement where pain is held.²

“Breath movements happen in the entire body,” Mehling says. “The therapy concept is you enhance diaphragmatic breathing in order to promote relaxation. One of the striking things is you really feel, all of a sudden, movement of the breath in a part of the body you never were aware of, for example in the pelvis, the sacrum, or the thighs.”

Diverse Treatments, Comparable Results
According to Mehling’s team, “Recent studies report that patients with chronic low-back pain suffer from a deficit of trunk proprioception.” They note that the causal relationship between the two is unclear. “Is lack of proprioception a byproduct of chronic pain following an injury, or is lack of body awareness and proprioception a risk factor for low-back pain, particularly chronic low-back pain?” the team writes. Building on preliminary data that has shown benefits of breath therapy for improved body-awareness as well as improvement in postural control and low-back pain, the research team developed a randomized controlled trial to compare this mind-body approach to a neuromuscular-biomechanical approach. Behind this is the hypothesis that “an improvement in low-back pain could be paralleled by a measurable improvement in proprioception.”³ For the control intervention, they chose physical therapy, considered the gold-standard treatment for this condition.⁴

Initially, thirty-six patients were randomized equally to the two study groups, but the numbers dropped by the posttest measurement date, with fourteen remaining for breath therapy and twelve for physical therapy. The participants were primarily women, with an average age of forty-nine years and an average of one-year history of moderate low-back pain. Both groups began treatment with a one-hour introductory evaluation session, followed by twelve intervention sessions, forty-five minutes each, over a six to eight week period. All sessions took place in the same setting. Therapists for breath therapy and physical therapy treatment came from faculty at the Middendorf Breath Institute in Berkeley, California, and the Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitative Science at University of California, respectively. In addition to following the specified treatment protocol for their particular group, the therapists provided instruction to their subjects for a home-based daily exercise program. Subjects were also asked to keep a diary of their experience, including their thoughts and feelings related to the therapy or therapist, and whether or not their thinking had changed in relationship to their body, back, pain, or life in general.⁵

Measurements taken at baseline and following the treatment course included a pain intensity scale (10 cm VAS), a low-back pain-specific functional disability scale (Roland Morris Scale), and a form measuring functional overall health status (Short Form-36 or SF-36). At the six-month follow-up, a recovery scale was added to these same measurements. Researchers also sought to document changes in whole-body proprioception and body awareness by assessing postural stability with the use of a sensory organization test and various positioning on a static force plate. Both of these tests involve having participants attempt to maintain balance on a platform while conditions related to sensory input vary.⁶

Outcome measures showed a clinically and statistically significant improvement for both groups, from baseline to end of treatment period, in pain intensity (VAS) and functional overall health status (SF-36). Slight differences emerged in some components of the SF-36, with significant improvement in physical and emotional role for breath therapy and in vitality for the physical therapy group. Breath therapy subjects also showed significant improvement in low-back pain-related functional disability.⁷

Although anticipated improvements were found in balance measures, the team notes these changes were not clinically or statistically significant. In previous studies with breath therapy, these measures have been administered before and immediately following treatment, showing clinical benefit. But in this study measurements were taken one week following the last session and may indicate, according to the team, that the measured effect is short-term rather than significant in long-term benefit. The lack of correlation of these measures to the clinical outcome casts doubt, they say, on whether these are valid measures for chronic low-back pain research. Self-reports of the home exercise program also showed no correlation to the clinical improvements noted, but the authors point out a limitation in documentation of compliance.⁸

In terms of numbers, outcome at the six to eight week intervention period showed clinically meaningful improvement for seventy-one percent of the breath therapy subjects and fifty percent of physical therapy subjects (VAS and Roland Morris measurements). At the six-month follow-up, that trend had reversed with more of the breath therapy participants evidencing a relapse or exacerbation of their condition. Improvement scores for the breath therapy group dropped to 40 percent (VAS) and 67 percent (Roland Morris) with the physical therapy group at 45 percent (VAS) and 73 percent (Roland Morris). However, the six-month measurement was a single point in time and was at variance with monthly pain scores over that time period which showed no difference in relapse numbers between the two groups for the cumulative period.⁹

“Relapse rate, as well as responsiveness of treatment for chronic low-back pain, is dependent on psychosocial as much as musculoskeletal, bio-mechanical, and neuro-motor predictors,” the authors write. Noting a study limitation in that these factors were not independently assessed, they suggest future studies examine the role of psychosocial, cultural, and functional patient characteristics in regard to responsiveness to the two therapeutic approaches.¹⁰

While clinical benefits for the two groups were shown to be comparable, a major difference emerged for breath therapy subjects in regard to their relationship to their body and their chronic pain. As contrasted with few or no entries regarding emotional effects, insights about pain, and coping with stress for those in the physical therapy group, there were “rather rich entries” in the diaries of breath therapy subjects. Examples given by the team include: “Breath therapy has taught me how to relax and be in touch with my own being,” “I look at my body a little more friendly and understanding,” ” … through breath therapy I am trying to incorporate the painful part into the rest of my body.” This qualitative data, the team writes, suggests the breath therapy subjects experienced “a different kind of learning” that improved their relationship to their body, gave them insight into the connection between their stress and pain, and for most, improved their coping skills.¹¹

Toward a Combination Approach
Although the breath therapy and physical therapy interventions differed in their application, both were hands on and administered by highly trained, empathic, and motivated practitioners. In light of the findings that both are of equal benefit, the team suggests two interpretations. It may be that improvement can be found with “any individual, hands-on, highly motivated or empathic attention” regardless of the approach and its orientation. Additionally, with these two methods each providing “equally valuable elements,” combining the approaches may prove superior to either approach alone and is suggested for further study.¹²

“The physical therapists who treated the control group were very qualified, particularly for chronic pain,” Mehling says. “They were the very best physical therapists you could get in San Francisco.” It was learned that one of the practitioners also incorporated some breath techniques in the treatment, he says, thus introducing an element of body awareness. And as stated in Mehling’s published article, physical therapy treatment for chronic pain is adapted to the individual, and it is not uncommon for the therapist to include diaphragmatic breathing and mental imagery education in their approach.¹³ While it is noted that this may have reduced the chance of finding a difference in benefits between the two groups, it would also seem to bolster the idea that combining a mind-body learning element with physical therapy would only enhance the results.

“There’s a big discussion in medicine,” Mehling says. “Should you put your attention into the pain or distract yourself? There’s a confusion.” What is emerging in newer studies, he says, is that it seems to depend on the type of attention. If it’s hypervigilance or fear, the answer is no. But if awareness is applied in a meditative way, there can be benefit. “The type of attention seems to be the key. There seems to be a crucial difference between thinking, worrying, mental ruminating about your back pain versus feeling and sensing, deeply exploring your pain in a non-judgmental, embodied, immediate fashion.”

By Shirley Vanderbilt

Originally published in Massage & Bodywork magazine, December/January 2007. Copyright 2007. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved.

Notes

1. Wolf E. Mehling, “Breath Therapy for Chronic Low Back Pain,” Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies 10 (2006), 98.
2. Wolf E. Mehling et al., “Randomized, Controlled Trial of Breath Therapy for Patients with Chronic Low-Back Pain,” Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 11, no. 4 (July/Aug 2005): 46.
3. Ibid, 45.
4. Ibid, 50.
5. Ibid, 45-47.
6. Ibid, 46.
7. Ibid, 47-48.
8. Ibid, 49, 51.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid, 51.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid, 50.
13. Ibid.

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Heaven, according to science, is not demonstrable. But we know, both as givers and receivers of bodywork, that heaven often seems to make an appearance within the context of a massage session. Grace “descends” and our clients are often gifted with deep insights, visions, emotional breakthroughs, extraordinary energetic experiences and new levels of integration of body, mind and spirit. It is not necessarily, nor should it be, our intention as massage therapists to make people have extraordinary experiences. However, probably every bodyworker has had numerous moments when she and the client are filled with awe at the extraordinary power of bodywork. It is our privilege to be present and playing a midwife role to the birth of new experience.

Not so long ago, I was nearing the end of a session with a psychotherapist who had been working long and hard on a major undertaking. I had used Zero Balancing with clearly held pressure points, tractions and rotations to facilitate a sense of open space within. I had integrated pauses and a relaxed pace to convey a sense of having all the time in the world.

As I finished, she was quiet for a long time, breathing easily, but obviously still exploring deep within her experience.

Finally she said, “That was incredible.”

Then she was quiet for an even longer period of time. And it appeared she went much deeper into herself.

She then said, “That was more than incredible.”

Facilitating more-than-incredible experiences is one of, if not the, greatest thrills in being a massage therapist. However, it is unfortunate this experience is rarely discussed and that the descriptive language of just such an occasion is so underdeveloped. This article is meant to take us a step out of the existential closet and say loud and clear — massage and bodywork often takes us up to and beyond the limits of the human imagination.

The Importance of the More-Than-Incredible
Why is the extraordinary impact of bodywork discussed so infrequently? Some possible reasons include the difficulty in putting the more-than-incredible into words — this is an experience that is mostly non-verbal. To some, it may sound silly or even overly sensual to describe how ecstatic the experience of massage can be. Also, some clients may be embarrassed or feel pretentious vocalizing the spiritual results of the work. On the other hand, practitioners may fear jeopardizing their mainstream, paramedical position. Insurance companies aren’t paying for the incredible. Ordinarily, there is not curricula in our schools that systematically explore the extra-ordinary. And it’s not socially supported as a conventional health goal.

Whatever the reason, we must overcome the difficulty and resistance to discussing and further developing the more-than-incredible results of our work. Its relevance to massage and to modern culture needs to be elaborated. I believe it is deeply related to the possibility of humankind making progress in frontiers beyond just technological. We need to make progress in the realms of mind, emotion, spirit and body as well.

Real Health, Real Care
What is this more-than-incredible realm? Of what use is it? How shall we explore it as massage therapists and as humans? What relevance might it hold for our world today?

Clinical orientations to the contrary, massage is not mostly a medical modality. For instance, in a client with supraspinatus tendinitis, I may spend 5-10 minutes focused on the tendon. However, the majority of the session is spent enhancing the person’s posture and positive energetic experience.

I don’t want my clients to say, and I don’t think many therapists are satisfied with, “What a competent massage!” I want my clients to say “Wow! I feel great.” The allopathic context is such that I don’t go to the doctor and ask him at the end of the session whether I can come back next week. But with a good bodyworker that’s exactly what I’d say. Because the experience has been so deeply pleasurable (as well as symptom relieving), I want more.

In spite of the language that says allopathic medicine is healthcare, it is more appropriately called disease-treatment. The disease-treatment system, because of its focus on acute conditions, its narrowly clinical education, and the insurance industry, doesn’t have the time or the inclination to explore health. Thank goodness, of course, for high quality disease-treatment. Many of us would not be here today were it not for the tremendous, life-saving advances in allopathic medicine. But the goal of our life is not mere survival and neither should it be of our medicine.

Massage is specifically a health modality. It results not just in relieving musculo-skeletal symptoms but also in people feeling qualitatively better and different. We practice one of the only forms of healthcare that specifically addresses the whole body and not just a part. After the massage, the person’s whole body commonly feels lighter and taller, more radiant, more alive. Clients feel more connected to themselves, the people and the environment around them. Massage is unique, incredible health amplification.

Massage/bodywork is also specifically a care modality — the human hand is the primary instrument for the direct transmission of care. On one level, all we need is love. Massage is, because of the unique qualities of human touch, the most explicitly loving of all health modalities. You cannot take love out of the touch equation without a palpable loss of spirit.

It is the precious birthright of massage and bodywork to grandly and uniquely explore and expand the whole realm of health and care.

Structural and Energetic Healthcare
Massage is clinically effective and can properly be used within an allopathic context. We help re-weave fascia with precision and we impact circulation and help muscles, tendons and ligaments heal. With sufficient knowledge, we support new and more effective postures and movement patterns. Through our effects on the autonomic nervous system we can relieve stress, including its negative effects on digestion, elimination, respiration, heart rate, circulation, lymphatic flow and the formation of trigger points. All this and more constitute the mechanical consequences of massage. Were that all we could do, we would indeed be practicing a wonderful and largely medical modality.

Now let’s look at energy. Frankly, we make people happier. We help them let go of short-term stress and confusion. With sufficient knowledge and sensitivity, we help clients let go of long held tensions sustained through chronic emotional postures and beliefs. We encourage more flow and balance within — take your pick of language — the meridians, chakras, nadis, energy centers. We enhance the person’s experience of the pleasure in being alive. Through the explicit connection of touch, we help people know that they are not alone in this world. Often during a massage the client has a direct experience of psychophysical health that gives him a new vision of how different this life could be, how each and every one of us could participate in a heaven on earth. If you want to follow your bliss, you often could do no better than to follow your massage therapist into her treatment room.

Touch is Miraculous
Human touch is the most sophisticated physical tool in the known universe. We can not synthesize a material that functions like the skin of the hands, let alone something that operates with the sensitivity, intelligence and motor complexity of the human neuromuscular system through the hands.

Touch is also the only way to bring two energy systems into direct contact with one another. Michelangelo’s image of God’s and Adam’s hands approaching has the enduring power to remind us of the literal sharing of that spark of life.

Every time we lay our hand on the human body with pressure and with consciousness, we are uniting the worlds of structure and the worlds of energy in the only possible way for this to be done. Human touch is the only context in the known universe in which there is a simultaneous and conscious contact of both structure and energy.

Touch is Ecstatic
Touch is by definition the most ecstatic (from the Latin ex-stasis meaning “out of stasis”) form of medicine and healing. It uses movement to help us out of stasis, out of being stuck.

It helps take us beyond our usual sense of self. A person cannot change without new experience. The therapist, by helping us let go of tensions we ourselves have not been able to relieve, opens us up to new experience.

I once saw a T-shirt that read, “Forget your work, forget your boss, forget your name.” Many is the time I’ve laid on a massage table and within just a few minutes I have entirely forgotten all my problems. On the table we take a vacation from the usual self and the usual world. The great English psychotherapist Marion Milner said, “All real living must involve a relationship, recurrent moments of surrender to the not-self.” How clearly and dependably massage results in this relationship.

There is a deep unmet need for ecstasy in our culture. Unfortunately, we provide mostly debased forms, and many are addictive: Drugs, alcohol, TV, food. Massage is one of the only socially acceptable contexts in which people can experience deeply ecstatic states. It is our task and challenge not to let this remain underexplored. And it is our responsibility to let the ecstatic journey that bodywork often provokes not be merely a narcissistic “trip.” The ecstatic power of touch must be something for everyone to be delighted and educated in, something for us all to pick up, not just a few to carry.

Touch is Art and Science
In so far as we interact with the world of structure, we are engaged in an applied science and require the knowledge and respect for the world of anatomy and physiology. In so far as we engage inspiringly with the world of energy as well, we need knowledge and respect for the world of psyche, spirit and the mysterious.

“Haptic” is the term given to the kinesthetic sensing of reality — it involves our direct experience of the world through pressure, temperature, proprioception and balance. We are used to thinking of art as being something we see or hear. But ultimately art is a bodily-felt experience manifesting in chills up our spines, in the heart-lifting effects of melody, the inspiration and exhilaration of a beautiful sentence. As creative bodyworkers we have the great privilege of working directly with the human mind, body and spirit — not paints, not tones, not turns of speech.

We are artists and our medium is the greatest living organism in the known universe. A case can accordingly be made for massage being the highest of all art forms.

Touch is the Art of Manual Evolution
The acupuncturist J. R. Worsley described healthcare as addressing three realms: Disease, disposition and destiny.

As healthcare practitioners we work amelioratively with anatomic and physiological disease. We impact as well the challenges of disposition. For instance, we can help re-set the autonomic set point of the “Type-A” personality. We can take the puffed-up personality and help them establish a more grounded sense of self. We can help a person — with compassion, touch and the right timing — heal the chronically broken heart.

Finally, we can be the midwives to destiny. Who is it that you at your most healthy will become? Each therapist hopes their client will not only feel better but will have the restraining forces to their self-fulfillment removed.

Destiny is collective as well as individual. As each person becomes more fulfilled they also become naturally less self-centered. In this way, the spread of health begins to result not just in individual health but in the growing health of the community. Curing disease depends on immunity. But fulfilling destinies calls for and amplifies community.

It is the destiny of humankind to use the gift of embodied consciousness to evolve. We are still fighting our way through a difficult pre-history. May we use the gift of conscious touch to help people evolve their societies into prioritizing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness over the desire for profit and material gain. Touch reminds us again and again that joy lies in relationship, not in acquisition. The evolution of relationship is part and parcel of the highest role of bodywork.

What Can We Do?
We need to overcome the separation of energy work from structural work. It is neither in the structural realm nor in the energetic that the real power, the evolutionary leverage, of bodywork lies. It is precisely in their union. Let’s share our stories about more-than-incredible experiences of both givers and receivers with one another. The struggle of new experience to find its way into language and into collective consciousness is an important one.

Being self-critical will also be an asset. We will not be good scientists until we are willing to defend energy work from the overly wishful thinking of some of its devotees. Correspondingly we can restrain the clinically minded from allowing our scope of practice to be defined by insurance companies.

We can develop energy curricula based in Western psychology, science and the wisdom traditions of the East. For instance, the chakras have tangible correlates with basic existential functions. No one should be graduating from massage school without classes in the role of the heart area in healing.

Finally, we can resist the tendency to identify health as a property of the individual. Let us combat the somewhat narcissistic, vitamin-pushing orientation of the so-called health magazines. Health is behavior, and it largely depends on how we treat one another, as well as how we treat ourselves. We need to take the necessary steps to make this a healthy world.

The Biology of Heaven on Earth
We are a dream that matter has had throughout eternity. With the miracle of human touch we effect the union of art and science, the integration of energy and structure in touch, and the conscious experience of ecstasy. It is our responsibility as massage therapists to know the heavenly and earthly dreams that touch holds for us. It is our job to make these dreams come true. As William Blake said, “Art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars.” I hope that this article acts as a call to action for all of us to even more imaginatively and systematically contribute to the art and science of being a human.

Author’s Note: In this article, to avoid the awkwardness of always saying “massage/bodywork,” I use the terms massage and bodywork interchangeably for all the various therapies that utilize touch and/or movement.

By David Lauterstein the co-founder of The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School in Austin, Texas. Having been involved in bodywork for nearly 30 years, he is the author of Putting the Soul Back in the Body, editor of the manual, “The Alchemy of Touch,” and author of the pathbreaking article series, “The Seven Dimensions of Touch” (see www.tlcschool.com under “Articles”). Lauterstein teaches in Austin, throughout the United States and in England. He can be reached at dltlc@io.com or 512/374-9222.

Originally published in Massage & Bodywork magazine, December/January 2004.
Copyright 2003. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved.

Bibliography
Field, Joanna. An Experiment in Leisure. New York: St. Martins Press, 1937.
Johnson, Robert. Ecstasy: Understanding the Psychology of Joy. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987.
Lauterstein, David. Putting the Soul Back in the Body. Austin: Lauterstein-Conway Massage School Publications, 1984.
Lauterstein, David. “The Seven Dimensions of Touch,” see www.tlcschool.com — click on “Articles”

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We’re busier than ever with longer workdays, less leisure time, shorter lunch hours, longer commutes, and more demands than ever before. We may even be in a job that doesn’t fulfill us, yet we spend most of our time there. When the day ends, we have almost no energy left to do what we enjoy. We live in a society that gives us ongoing mixed messages: one message has us aggressively achieving success, another collapsing in front of a TV or computer screen for “relaxation,” and another working out to achieve a perfect body. We need to find a balance between hyperactivity and healthy activity.

Plenty has been written about the therapeutic benefits of exercise. So, why aren’t more people reaping those benefits and moving toward health and well-being? We need to reexamine our notion of what exercise and movement are and consider what we’re moving toward or away from. Then we can begin to ask ourselves other questions: Not just are we fit, but are we physically, emotionally, and spiritually healthy? Are we happy? Do we enjoy how we’re moving through life? How can we integrate more healing movement into our days?

Exercise as “Medicine”
We sometimes see more barriers than options to exercise. But what if we reoriented our point of view to notice where the opportunities lie? We can begin by simply redefining exercise (with its sometimes negative connotation of obligation) to movement. Already opportunities arise: How do we want to move in our bodies and in our lives? How can we have fun doing that? How can we move more (or maybe less, if we need to slow down)? How does it feel to be still? How can we make time to move into pleasure, to move with pleasure? Already, the notion of movement takes on a more healing expression. Rather than simply being another item on our to do list, it becomes a way for us to examine our lives, to see where we can move toward health, and use physical activity as a way to support this.

“When most people think of medicine, they visualize something material like a pill to be popped, a liquid to be swallowed, or an injection to be endured,” writes Carol Krucoff, author of Healing Moves: How to Cure, Relieve, and Prevent Common Ailments with Exercise (Harmony Books, 2000). “Some might also consider surgery, tests, or procedures … [But] simple physical activity can have profound healing effects.”

Krucoff, who cowrote the book with her husband, Mitchell, a Duke University cardiologist, advocates movement as preventive medicine, saying it’s an ideal way to combat the increasing number of inactivity-related health conditions such as heart disease and obesity. This could actually be expanded to include stress-related conditions. In fact, it’s often this combination of inactivity and increased stress that wreaks havoc on our immune system, endocrine system, and circulatory system. Every system in our body, in fact, responds to stress and inactivity. But, if this is true, then the inverse is also true: every system in our bodies will also respond to movement and pleasure. To make movement pleasurable and to use it as a way to reconnect with our bodies is, in many ways, the perfect antidote to the cycle of inactivity/hyperactivity and stress. As we move more in this way, we gain energy and health, we feel rejuvenated and relaxed, and we become more physically and emotionally aware.

Emotional and Spiritual Fitness
We often focus on physical fitness, but any movement toward health must also include emotional and spiritual fitness. Psychologist Nancy Mramor, PhD, author of Spiritual Fitness (Llewellyn Publications, 2004), ties emotional fitness with our physical health and with our heart’s expression. “There is evidence that the largest number of heart attacks occurs on Monday morning between 8 and 9 a.m.,” she says. “This occurrence is related to the experience called joyless striving. It applies to feelings of having to force yourself to go to a job that you have no interest in, or even truly dislike. Clearly these feelings suggest a lack of emotional fitness in the match between the employee and the job.”

The heart of the person pumps much more than blood, it also pumps our passion. It lets us know what we love doing and who we love doing it with, it circulates our compassion and reminds us of our commitment to life. When we’re emotionally connected to the work we do in a healthy way, and to one another in a supportive way, we not only survive, but we can also thrive because we have more energy available to become who we’re meant to be. Physical, emotional, and spiritual fitness are all intimately related. In understanding this interrelationship, we can begin to move toward health.

Personal and Interpersonal Health
Interpersonal relationships, in fact, are one of the three major causes of life stress, along with environmental events/conditions and personal attitudes and beliefs. In his book, Love & Survival (Harper Collins, 1998), renowned physician Dean Ornish, who first proved that heart disease was reversible through lifestyle changes, says that in order to survive, we need not only care for our lives, but the lives of others. Individuals with supportive relationships get sick less, heal faster, and live longer.

Our health and well-being are not about being hyper-active or inactive. They’re about finding a balance, making our actions conscious, and learning to move in ways that are both healthy and appropriate in own lives, then moving this healing energy out toward others. So, rather than exhausting or limiting our energy, we learn to expand it. Then we can begin exercising in a whole new way–exercising our right to choose and to better understand our body, our life, and what we want to be doing with it.

Begin by checking in with yourself as you’re moving through your day: How does your body feel right now? How are you breathing? Where is this movement taking you? Do you feel good? Are you satisfied? Are you happy? If not, then change something. Change how you’re moving, where you’re moving toward, or look at what you’re moving away from.

“Become the change you seek in the world,” Mahatma Ghandi said. This isn’t about a temporary quick fix to end a bad habit, lose some weight, or fill our time. This is about long-term change–making more conscious use of our time and of our life. It’s about moving though life in healthy and healing ways, and expanding our idea of who we can be. Then our view of the world widens, our heart grows, our spirit soars, and our body moves toward true change. This is the healing power of movement.

By Sonia Osorio a certified massage therapist, yoga teacher, and healthcare writer who offers workshops in mindfulness practices and bodywork. Her work is a continual reminder of the body’s capacity to creatively move through life with pleasure and joy. She can be reached at sonia@zensations.ca

Originally published in Body Sense magazine, Autumn/Winter 2006. Copyright 2006. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved.

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Burnout is a common phenomenon in the massage profession. After several years of attending to clients’ pain and ailments, dealing with business or self-employment, and facing cumulative tension in the therapist’s own body from the work itself, a large percentage of massage therapists leave the profession. And for lifetime therapists, bouts of burnout commonly come and go.

As a self-employed, licensed massage therapist for more than six years, I have experienced all of the frustrations that accompany the profession. Client expectations, coworker conflicts, business ups and downs, self-doubt about skills when client conditions don’t improve, management of overhead expenses, public perception, and physical fatigue are all common situations in the life of a massage therapist. When a new perspective is brought to our thought processes, we have an opportunity to view all of those situations in a different light. Suddenly, we can see frustrations as just passing thoughts, and we can more easily make decisions that are in the best interest of our health.

By gaining a new perspective on the way we see life, we may open the door for changes in our clients, coworkers, and families. When we walk through life with this new understanding, we look and feel different–lighter, perhaps. And others around us will see it. We won’t take things personally anymore. We won’t act out or make decisions when we are in a low mood. We can be constantly connected to our own inner health. This doesn’t require hours of studying a new skill, it simply takes a change in perspective and a new understanding.

Evolution of Prevention Research
Since the 1960s, prevention research has attempted to prevent costly societal problems before they begin. Researchers first focused on identifying external factors that led to problems and then worked to change those externals so people would change behavior (“outside-in” approach).

Then, researchers began looking at what makes some individuals resilient and others not. They discovered external factors didn’t lead to problem behaviors, but internal factors did.

In his book, Prevention from the Inside-Out, consultant, speaker, and author Jack Pransky, PhD, asserts the missing link is that an individual’s thoughts lead to behavior–positive or negative.1 And the only way to get people to change their behaviors is to encourage them to view their thoughts in a new way. In massage therapy, these two approaches can be illustrated as different ways to deal with clients.

For example, therapists may view their clients as people who need massage therapy or other care (an external tool) in order to become healthy human beings. This would be an “outside-in” approach. A totally new option is to view clients as fully complete human beings when they walk in the door–they don’t need anything external to be whole and complete. This would be an “inside-out” perspective. All clients have resiliency in them. This doesn’t mean clients won’t benefit from massage therapy, it simply means when massage therapists change their perspective they may be better able to draw out natural health and resilience in those who are coming to them looking for health.

Health Within
In health research, resilience is the ability of people to make it through challenging situations–the ability to adapt to changing external conditions. It is an internal strength or coping mechanism. The concept of innate health goes beyond the generally accepted definitions of resiliency. Innate health implies that every human being has health within them, at all times. It implies that no one is without it. Health happens at birth. The body can reset itself back to a balance of health, even after disease. There is never a moment we lack access to our own health. We don’t need any tools, information, or other external things in order to develop it within us. When we are disconnected from our inner state of health, our thinking has gotten in the way. This missing link of prevention research–that thoughts and thinking take us away from our innate health–was first identified by philosopher Sydney Banks.

In the early 1970s, Banks had a profound insight about how our thinking affects our state of being. This insight overwhelmingly changed his life, he became much more joyous and let go of the weight of negative thinking.

Banks saw three principles very clearly. They illustrate how mind, thought, and consciousness together make up the reality of our experiences. These three principles are explained by innate health scholar Judy Sedgeman in “The Principles Underlying Life Experience: The Beauty of Simplicity”:

- Mind refers to the universal life force, the energy that is behind all creation (formless energy and energy in form).
- Thought is “the capacity to create form from formless energy.”
- Consciousness is “the awareness of the process of creation and of what we have created.”²

Through the fabric of creation–within it and underneath it–flows a constant stream of energy. This energy is the life force that animates all beings and brings life to our planet. It is the essence that animates human flesh and supports its complicated life processes. Banks is not speaking here of our minds–our ability to process information. He uses the word mind to refer to something deeper. Power and intelligence exist within it, of a greater level than we are usually aware.

Thought is the power within that energy to create. We have the power and the ability to create any thought we want at any moment. More than the power to create thoughts, we have the free will to create our own perceptions of reality.

Consciousness provides us the ability to see ourselves as separate from our subjective realities. Our consciousness allows us to take a step back from our thought processes and to be aware of what we are in relation to thought. We have the capacity to “watch” the process of thinking and the content of thought as separate from our true selves. Thoughts just pass through our consciousness, and their content is not permanently part of us.

Understanding these three principles allows us to gain greater understanding of our experiences in life and how we create our own, individual reality from our thinking. This understanding can lead to less fear, improved relationships, a greater sense of control of one’s health and life direction, and a higher platform from which to view life’s experiences.

Basics of Innate Health
We don’t need any external tools to get healthy. Health and balance are innately within us. As healthcare professionals, we can gain understanding of how to reconnect with that innate health and what it was that disconnected us in the first place. When seeing clients, we can understand they are all innately healthy.

Accessing our innate health is simple. When our minds are quiet and we are in a positive feeling state, our internal wisdom emerges. We then have access to information, options, and guidance–all from within. In this state of being, we have the ability to see our lives from a totally new perspective. Without thoughts clouding our vision, we have access to a larger picture of our life situation. Anything we need for our health and well-being can be found with a quiet mind and positive feeling.

From birth to death, thoughts flow continuously through our awareness. We perceive all life situations through our thoughts.
For example, suppose a massage client shows up for her appointment thirty minutes early and the massage therapist is eating lunch. The therapist might become angry that he has to give up his lunch and assumes this client is like all of his other older clients who show up early and expect to begin their sessions when they arrive.

Suppose the client who is early just had to be dropped off at that time by her daughter and was planning on reading her novel in the waiting room for thirty minutes to relax before her session. So, the therapist puts his lunch away and walks out to the waiting area to begin the session with his client. The therapist initially had the thought, “My client expects to receive her session early,” and that defined how he saw “reality.” The client, however, simply thought the therapist was ready to provide the session early. Each person views this situation through their own thoughts, even though they are each seeing the same thing.

With the gift of consciousness, we can observe our thoughts as they pass. We have the free will to choose which thoughts we will hold on to and ruminate over for a while, and which we will pay no attention to as they go by. We can be an observer to the content of our thoughts without taking them too seriously. An example of the importance of this is a convict who learned about these principles while in prison. Since he grew up around a lot of criminals and knew a lot about crimes, he committed them. Until he learned these principles, it had never occurred to him that, when a thought came into his mind about a crime he could commit, he didn’t have to do it.

Most of us innocently misuse the gift of thought. We take our thoughts too seriously, or we scare ourselves with our own self-created thought content. If a negative thought comes along, and a person grabs hold of it, that first thought will lead to other negative thoughts.

Let’s say a massage therapist had a negative experience with the landlord of his business office at some time in the past. Every month when he writes out a rent check, he thinks of his landlord again and gets caught up in his thoughts. First, he thinks about how wrong his landlord had been. That leads to associated thoughts of all the times others have wronged him in the past. That leads to thoughts about how he never sticks up for himself. That leads to thoughts about how spineless he is. That leads to thoughts about how his older brother always called him a chicken and a wimp. And that leads to thoughts about how worthless he is and how right his brother was. So, in the course of a minute, this guy went from simply writing out a check to a completely foul mood, with a low self-esteem–all caused by his attachment to a thought. An alternative was available. He could have written the check to his landlord, had a thought about how wrong the landlord had been in a previous situation, and then … he could have let thoughts about his landlord pass by without taking them too seriously.

It’s easy to see how changes in our thinking lead to changes in our moods. When we find our bodies feeling tense and we are in a depressed mood, we can acknowledge it was our thinking that got us there. We then become aware that we have the ability to change our thinking in order to let go of that tension and negativity, leading to an improved mood.

Thoughts exist only as long as we think them. This is an especially helpful thing to remember when dealing with past traumas and bad memories. In the present moment, all past traumatic memories are now thoughts. Thoughts about the past need only be brought to the present when necessary. If we find that a thought comes to our awareness about a past negative event, then we have a choice about how long we entertain those thoughts, as well as the subsequent feeling states that emerge with them. Of course, memories cannot be erased and some experiences can be quite horrific, but we can choose how we deal with the past in the present moment.

Careful observation allows us to see how our thoughts affect our moods and our physical tension. When we are having fun and enjoying ourselves, we are likely having good thoughts. We also may notice that our bodies and muscles feel relaxed.

If a massage therapist begins to worry about his schedule because it doesn’t look very full for the week, and then he remembers all the lean times when he started his business, he will get worked up. He may notice his mood lowering, as well as tension creeping up in his shoulders. In this way, he allowed his attachment to thoughts to lead to feelings of worry and tension. And even though we are the producers of our own thoughts, we sometimes scare ourselves.

We can imagine another scenario where a massage therapist works for a local spa. When the boss hired her, she thought during the interview that the boss wasn’t very impressed with her training. This thought was hers and she didn’t verify her perception of reality with her boss. So, the first time her boss reprimands her for something, she immediately thinks that her boss wants to fire her. She easily gets caught up in her thoughts about how much her boss dislikes her and how soon he will fire her. The truth is, she is the one who has scared herself. She was the originator of the thoughts that made her afraid.

Current language expresses how we feel as a result of various external stress factors and describes the factors themselves. Job stress, relationship stress, life stress, and financial stress are all common phrases. Most people assume that a job, relationship, life, and finances are stressful–in and of themselves–indicating that many view stress as inherent to life.

Previous stress research focused on the notion that external events are the actual causes of internal stress. This model appeared to make every person a victim of external circumstances. This model of stress changed when greater understanding developed in the fields of psychology and prevention about how two people can have different internal responses to the same external experience. Current research in resiliency suggests it is possible that stress comes from the inside. This model presents a more powerful picture of human beings. Rather than being victims to life events, we all have the ability to choose our reactions and responses.

One life situation will look completely different depending on which of the two states we are in at the time: a stressed, insecure, state of being or a calm, secure state of being (see chart below).³

Interactions With Others
Understanding these simple principles of innate health allows us to improve our interactions with others. As we develop these principles in ourselves and reconnect with our own innate health and wisdom, we naturally interact with others in a more harmonious manner.

Understanding how thinking works also helps us understand others who are in a low mood or caught up in their thinking. Let’s say, for example, a massage client shows up for a chair massage appointment at his office. When he arrives, right on time, he notices the therapist is running five minutes late and is still with the last client. He becomes angry and starts to yell at her about customer service and how to run a good business. If the massage therapist understands these principles, she will not get caught up in her own thoughts. She can just be aware that the client may be having a bad day, and it probably has nothing to do with her. She can apologize politely and stop to listen to the man and his concerns. She can stay connected to her innate health, be calm, and be secure in herself. If the client feels heard and deeply listened to, he may calm down. Either way, the therapist can stave off a spiral of negative thinking about herself and keep her own self-esteem high.

We may also be better able to understand ourselves when we need to interact with others while we are in a low mood. Consider a massage therapist who is having a rough day and finds himself in a bad mood when he learns his daughter got into trouble at school. These principles can help him be a better father when he goes home to deal with it. If he recognizes he is in a bad mood when he gets home, he can see he is not in the best mindset to productively discuss the day’s events with his daughter. He may want to go home and blow up at her immediately. If he realizes he needs to calm down and get himself back to a clearer state of thinking, he can do something he enjoys. Then, when he finds himself calm, he can think better. He will be better able to really listen to his child and have clear ideas about his options when dealing with her. The principles allow us to see that, when we are caught up in our thinking, it might be best to postpone interactions or decisions.

It’s essential in developing this awareness that, when interacting with people who are in a low mood, we acknowledge and see their innate health. Individuals only act poorly because they are in an insecure state of mind. If they are connected to their health and wisdom, they are able to choose a different action. We all get disconnected from our health from time to time, so it’s essential to be forgiving. There is no need to judge people since they are only behaving the best way they see fit and based on their perception of reality at the present moment. It can be a great gift to them to deeply listen and give them your full attention. If we maintain our own positive, calm feeling state, they may relax more. If they can feel secure with you, then the potential exists for the interaction to change for the better.

Improving Work and Personal Life
We know burnout is common in our profession. Burnout can be caused by physical discomforts, as well as by the psychic and emotional toll on therapists.⁴ It is common for therapists to have compassion for their clients’ pain and suffering.

It is also common for clients to speak about all of their troubles during sessions. Remembering that every human being has innate health within them during those sessions can be revolutionary. No longer do we therapists need to pity our clients. They have access to their health all the time. We are not responsible for fixing their pain, tight muscles, or life circumstances. They have the power to do that. We can only provide massage, from a place of connectedness to our own health. That is our best gift to clients.

The most powerful combatant to burnout is the awareness that we have innate health–no matter what. When we walk through our day connected to our internal wisdom, we will make choices that support our health, business, and happiness.

Business and personal relationships will appear different from this new understanding. It’s easier to maintain relationships when we know not to take personally the things others do or say while in a low mood. This doesn’t mean we will become doormats or allow others to take advantage of us. When we are in a state of balance and calm, we can still make decisions that are the best for our health.

Implications for Massage Therapy Clients
With one change in perspective, massage therapists can see their clients as already whole and complete. We can acknowledge that if they are alive, they have more things right with them than wrong, and therefore a capacity for health underlies any disease.

The average client is a working professional with many responsibilities, they are stressed out and overwhelmed, with some symptoms of disease or physical limitation already evident. They may spend more time thinking about what’s wrong with them than what’s possible. As a result of our own changes, our clients may begin to contemplate the notion that they are fine, whole, and complete, and that they do have a capacity to be healthy–no matter what. For many clients, this may be a novel concept. It may never have occurred to them as a possibility.

When in contact with our innate health, we will no longer feel responsible for a specific health outcome of our clients. Of course, we want them to feel better, but we know they have the ability to get to a place of health on their own. We can change our thinking about what our role is in our client’s life. The three principles can help you become aware of the thoughts you have that define what you feel your role is. You can change those thoughts at any time.
By learning about thought and observing our own thinking and how it affects our state of being and connectedness to health, we can think a whole new reality for ourselves. Since our thoughts create what we perceive our external environment to be, we have more power over our world and the way we see it than we ever knew. Our jobs and families can be greater sources of joy, while frustrations and challenges can be seen in a whole new light.

Opening up to these concepts can allow our professional and personal lives to improve. Massage therapists can look at their profession in a new way and ease the burdensome feeling of burnout. While taking better care of ourselves and being connected to our innate health, we will be better prepared to assist others in realizing their own source of internal health.

By Melissa L. Baker, BS, LMT, who lives and works in Bridgeport, West Virginia, and is pursuing her master’s degree in public health at West Virginia University. Contact her for information on CEU classes for massage therapists at MelissaLBakerLMT@aol.com.

Originally published in Massage & Bodywork magazine, February/March 2007. Copyright 2007. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved.

Notes
1. J. Pransky, Prevention from the Inside-Out (Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2003).
2. J. A. Sedgeman, “The Principles Underlying Life Experiences: The Beauty of Simplicity.” Presented at the Psychology of Mind annual conference in Kailua, Hawaii, 1998.
3. J. A. Sedgeman, “Stress-Resiliency, Riding the ‘Rollercoaster’ of Life,” scheduled as a poster presentation at the Hawaii International Conference on Education in January 2007.
4. The Healers.org, “For Massage Therapists Only: Dealing with Burnout,” www.thehealers.org/articles/0206burnout.html (accessed August 9, 2006).

- For more information about Sydney Banks, visit www.sydneybanks.org.
- To learn more about innate health, visit the West Virginia Initiative for Innate Health at West Virginia University. www.hsc.wvu.edu.

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If you’ve never felt energy before, this is a good place to start. Rub your hands vigorously and firmly together until some heat is generated. Then, as if you were washing your hands, spread the warmth of this hot qi (energy) over the backs of the hands and the fingers. Close your eyes and allow the hands to soften, the fingers gently together and curved, and allow the palms to face each other some three or four inches apart. Notice any sensation that may exist in your hands. Very slowly, move the palms together and apart, paying attention to the sensations you experience. Continue this oscillation for a few minutes. Change the orientation of your hands and notice the different feelings when your hands mirror each other and when they are slightly rotated as if to clasp together. Notice what happens if you straighten the fingers, making the palm flat and rigid, still continuing the to and fro movement. If the mind becomes too analytical or clouds with skeptical doubt, bring the attention back to what you feel.

Our bodies are constantly sensing and responding to energy fields. In the same way that we develop tactile sensitivity for palpation or that we can develop greater acuity with any of our senses, through practice and awareness we can cultivate a refined sensitivity to energy fields and energy fluctuations. Sensing energy is nothing magical, or even extraordinary. Everything is energy — some dense, some subtle. If we use this ability to be aware of subtler forms of energy, our skill grows. If we don’t use it, it remains an undeveloped potential.

The energy of chakras and their location and relationship to spinal curvature and energy flow along the vertical axis of the body are relatively easy to feel. Chakras are powerful, concentrated movements of energy which have an almost tangible quality. There are also 122 secondary chakras, according to clairvoyant Rosalyn Bruyere¹, the exact number varies depending upon the authority cited, but these minor chakras exist wherever bone touches bone (joints) or at a nerve plexus. The hands contain many of these minor chakras and as such are a fitting tool for sensing energy and for healing.

These “wheels of energy” draw energy to the body from the surrounding environment, inclusive of the energies of other beings, as well as spinning energy outward. Bruyere refers to these two energetic movements as intake chakras and output chakras. Intake chakras are associated with the female, yin, negative polarity, and the tendency to attract and to draw inward. Conversely, output chakras are considered male, yang, positive, and push energy out or through the system. The first, third, fifth, and seventh chakras are output chakras, while the second, fourth, and sixth are intake chakras. Chakras of common polarity automatically interconnect. This relationship can be utilized to support and facilitate change and the processing of information and experience by focusing on the output chakras, or to soothe and calm by connecting the input chakras.

According to Bruyere, the processing of life experience can be viewed as a dialectic of energetic transformation. The strongly yang, male vitality of the root chakra is catalyzed by the yin, emotional character of the second chakra. Sensation and experience, infused with feeling, lead to the mental realm (thoughts, opinions, judgments) of the third chakra, which is androgynous (yang), both male and female. The yin, transformative potential of the heart finds expression with the masculine throat center, culminating in the wisdom and insight of the third eye — the sixth chakra, which is androgynous (yin). This evolution in experience potentially leads to realization, enlightenment and nonduality. Bruyere suggests “in the seventh chakra we are exogenous, we are out of the system. We are neither male nor female, nor are we androgynous, we are transformed, we are realized, we are complete.”² This provides another set of relationships that can be focused upon in devising a strategy for chakra balancing.

There are numerous ways of connecting chakral energies, supporting them to interact and benefit from each other’s qualities. One way is to hold two energy centers, allowing the hands to act as a bridge. In making such a connection, there is no “doing” involved. One is not sending or channeling energy. The bodywork therapist makes this basic contact, providing the avenue for these two energies to meet and to interact. The therapist simply waits, staying present, open and available. One of the most valuable things a bodyworker has to offer a client is non-directed, open attentiveness. Usually it takes about three minutes for this meeting of energies to begin to deeply connect.

A common and intuitive way of ending a bodywork session is to connect the intake chakras. The therapist places one hand on the lower abdomen or second chakra and the other on the sternum, the heart chakra. After several minutes, or when it feels appropriate to move on, the heart hand moves to the forehead, the sixth chakra. Another variation would be to then move the hara (abdomen) hand to the heart and the heart hand to the brow. Such an ending to a session, or this sequence as a mini-treatment on its own, connects emotion, transformation and insight.

Clearing and balancing chakras is another way of working with chakral energies. It is important to understand the spinal chakras as an interconnected system, with a flow from one center to the next. Imbalance anywhere in the chain will affect the entire chain. As a chakra spins, its energies are drawn upward to the next chakra. The root chakra is often likened to the pilot light. If the root chakra’s energies are dissipated or closed down, there is little energy to fuel the other chakras. Balancing even one chakra, particularly the weak link, will strengthen and energize the entire system.

The clarity and overall functioning of a chakra can be assessed in several ways. With experience and practice, one develops the “clear seeing” to intuit what is happening with a chakra. Some develop the ability to see, and interpret the color of a chakra. Others may use muscle testing techniques. My own preference is the use of a pendulum. By suspending a crystal, an effective transmitter of energy, over a reclining client’s chakra, the spinning energies of the chakra will be amplified in the visible movements of the pendulum. According to Bruyere, “the direction of rotation, shape and diameter of a chakra indicates the state of its energy and the health of the corresponding or adjacent physical organs.”³ The movement of the pendulum will correspondingly be clockwise, counterclockwise, circular, elliptical, flat (back and forth), strong or weak.

Energy medicine educator Donna Eden⁴ claims chakras are multi-layered, with each of its seven layers capable of spinning in its own direction. The method she suggests for balancing chakras is both simple and direct. Hold the left hand (or both hands) some inches above the chakra you are focusing on. There will be a sensation of engagement or contact. Begin making counterclockwise circles over the chakra. This movement goes against the typically-clockwise rotation of a chakra, sweeping up all seven layers in its unidirectional wake. “The hand can act like a magnet, pulling stale or toxic energies up and out with its motion.”⁵ Continue this counterclockwise “clearing” of the chakra for three minutes. Then reverse directions, using the right hand (or both hands) to integrate and reharmonize the chakra by moving all seven layers together in a unified clockwise spin. This method can be practiced with a client as described, or performed as a self-care routine, and it can address all seven chakras or focus on just the one or two that are in need.

Chakra balancing helps to remove toxic energies, bring hormones and emotions into balance, and support the smooth and integrated functioning of the chakra system and the unfoldment of one’s life potentials. Clearing and balancing chakras has a cumulative effect when practiced regularly, more profoundly clarifying and harmonizing the core layers. Health, Bruyere claims, is more than the mere absence of disease. “Vitality, appropriate feelings, appropriate thought process, a willingness to embrace change in our lives, creative self-expression and responsibility, intuitive understanding and a healthy spiritual relationship with the ‘Ultimate Creative Force’ are all essential if we are to be full of light and full of life and well-being.”⁶

By Barry Kapke program director of Asian Bodyworks at San Francisco School of Massage and the founder of Insight BodyworkTM. He can be reached via e-mail at insight@bodhiwork.org.

Originally published in Massage & Bodywork magazine, December/January 2001.
Copyright 2003. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved.

References
1. Rosalyn L. Bruyere. Wheels of Light: Chakras, Auras, and the Healing Energy of the Body. (New York: Fireside, 1989, 1994). 41.
2. Bruyere, 83-84.
3. Bruyere, 73.
4. Donna Eden, with David Feinstein. Energy Medicine. (New York: Jeremy P Tarcher/Putnam, 1998).
5. Eden, 169.
6. Bruyere, 100

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