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Having studied bodywork at the outset of the body/mind therapy revolution in America twenty years ago,
I was amazed on a recent visit to the U.S. to see the number of full fledged massage and bodywork
magazines that are now available to support the professional therapist. Whereas 20 years ago, people
were still shy about the idea of having their bodies touched and manipulated and often associated the
word massage with the illicit "massage parlor", today therapeutic touch is widely accepted. With the
universal need for stress release in a now highly stressful culture, it is no longer considered just a
luxury for rare occasions.
In the early 80s I worked aboard a passenger cruise liner in the Caribbean, serving as spa director and
full time massage therapist. Each Sunday when a new group of passengers came on board, the officers and
head staff were introduced. This was my opportunity to give a brief talk about the spa facilities and the
wide variety of health benefits, which could be had by signing up for a massage or bodywork session. I
stressed that only a certain number of appointments were available and that early sign-up was essential.
This always got a brave few to sign up. After that I knew I didn't need to advertise. I would be fully
booked by word of mouth within a day.
Those two years aboard ship were an exciting and very rich time in my life. Being on the sea, one of my
great loves, combined with the opportunity to really help people, and at times in a very profound way,
was a truly rewarding experience. The sheer variety of people and physical ailments I treated (about
40 every week) combined to teach me a great deal about the human psyche and the powerful tool that
healing touch is.
Previously I had been fortunate to train at one of the top bodywork schools in America, the Institute of
Psycho-Structural Balancing (IPSB), in San Diego, California. I had enrolled while doing post-graduate
work in psychology, after becoming interested in the wide variety of techniques, which were then
coming to light.
Some of the Pioneers of Therapeutic Bodywork (Back To Top
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One of my professors at graduate school had been a student of the famous biochemist Ida Rolf, who
through her creative genius came upon the idea of Rolfing, or "structural integration", during her search
for solutions to family health problems. Finding available methods inadequate, she investigated the effect
of structure on function. Her technique, a particular form of bodywork, is primarily designed to relieve
painful conditions such as humpbacks, severe pelvic dislocations or generally withheld, postures. What
Ida Rolf perceived, is that much of our emotional and mental turmoil is due to structural imbalance in
the physical body. She saw clearly that certain body postures reflect certain types of emotional
withholding - indeed that we literally store our thoughts and their concomitant emotional reactions
throughout the cells of the body. In other words, memories are not only stored in the brain but
throughout the entire body/mind. As Rolf also discovered, different types of emotions and memories
are stored in specific areas of the body.
On the basis of this (at her time) revolutionary insight, Rolf created a type of bodywork that can
rebalance the body/ mind of an individual in ten 1-hour sessions of systematic manipulation, which
loosen and reorganize the myofacial, or connective tissues surrounding the muscles. As different
areas of the body are treated, depending on the individual's areas of "stuckness", many emotions and
memories may rise to the surface, to be felt and then let go of. After 10 sessions of Rolfing you stand
taller, look better, and move with greater ease. Most of all, you have more vitality and a greater
sense of well-being.
The evolution or bodywork in the west is based to a large degree on the systematic research and
therapeutic innovations of Dr. Wilhelm Reich, the brilliant renegade student of Sigmund Freud. Reich's
student, Alexander Lowen M.D., later popularized Reich's work and called his new therapeutic approach
Bioenergetics. Bioenergetics incorporates both bodywork and certain physical exercises to break down "
body armor", which is muscle tension held in the body wherever repressed emotions and memories are stored.
Memories and Emotions Are Stored in the Body (Back To Top
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The main theme, which most modem bodywork addresses, is the observation that lack of physical energy and
even depression, is a result of chronic muscular tension, a condition caused by a suppression of feelings.
When certain emotional release points on the body are stimulated, or when pressure is applied skillfully
to chronically tense areas, long suppressed memories and emotions are released, which lead to a freeing
up of the psyche. Bodywork has thus become another tool for helping people learn how to be real -
to acknowledge what they are truly feeling and to become healthy, authentic and grounded individuals. For
example, a fact that I share constantly with my Reiki students, is that depression is not a feeling, but
a repression of feeling. Energy work like Reiki helps a depressed person, by raising his or her life force
energy and thus gradually and softly de-densifying emotional as well as physical "stuckness".
Skilled practitioners of deep tissue bodywork who understand body psychology,' can help a depressed person
by noticing where the emotions are held physically. While manipulating the armored musculature, they can
then train them to address the withheld feelings that are stored in a particular area.
Benefits in Athletics (Back To Top
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In addition to training people how to feel through uncomfortable
feelings so that they simply dissipate, many other benefits to health and well-being are also available.
One technique that I have often taught, the James Cyriax method, can even break down
post-operative scar tissue, utilizing a brisk cross-frictional rub. In the West, bodywork is currently
often combined with applied sports psychology. Sports massage before and after athletic events, along
with specialized techniques to correct sports injuries such as sprains, are highly sought after.
Productive Relaxation at the Workplace (Back To Top
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Many corporations now have weekly in-house massage therapists who give the employees 20-30 minute sessions in
special massage chairs, which the client can lean into. Special attention is given to the wrists to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome, which affects a large number of computer programmers. Also the stress and strain of long hours of hovering over a computer is relieved by thorough treatments on the neck and shoulder areas. Many of these office workers then also seek out Swedish and Esalen massage on their own.
Benefits for the Disabled (Back To Top
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Massage is now also being taught to the mothers of disabled children to help decrease the effects of certain disabilities. One example is Peggy Farlowe, a massage therapist with an extensive background in speech therapy who combines the two to help special-needs children interact and communicate. Her program "Touch to T.E.A.C.H" ("Touch for Early Language, Attending, Cognitive Development and Healthier Children") is now state sponsored throughout Alabama.
General Benefits (Back To Top
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Some of the other benefits of massage are: increased circulation;
lymphatic drainage; reduction and very often complete elimination of migraine headaches due to
increased blood circulation in the brain. Back pain is greatly reduced with massage therapy, and these
days chiropractors most often work with massage therapists, who first release spastic muscles in the back before adjustments are done. This approach ensures that the adjusted vertebrae remain in place.
Scientific Validation (Back To Top
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Along with this flowering renaissance in
body/mind therapy, a lot of scientific studies have also been done, which
show time and again the incredible efficacy of this drugless therapeutic
approach. For example, a study mentioned in Mental Health Update reported
that physical and emotional support by a labor doula (birth assistant) -
especially the father, provides substantial benefits to women in labor.
Results included: Caesarian rates dropped 58%; the need for epidural
anesthesia dropped 85%; forceps delivery dropped 70%; the use of oxytocin
(a pituitary hormone that stimulates uterine contractions) dropped 61%;
labor duration was shorter by 25%; and neonatal hospitalization (within 48
hrs. after birth) dropped 58%. Other studies have come up with similar
results.
Many new studies are now being done that demonstrate the positive
effect of massage on the cellular metabolism role of the cytoskeleton. The
cytoskeleton, which until recently was considered to have a more passive
role, providing mostly the shape of the cell and helping to organize the
intercellular movement of the cytoplasm and organelles, is now understood
to regulate protein production and to have control over gene expression.
One study, Curtis A.S.G. and Sechar G.M. (1978) showed that mechanical
stimulation through therapeutic touch enhances DNA synthesis and division
of fibroplasts. Thus signals evoked by therapeutic touch are able to
augment the cell's proliferation (especially fibroplasts), which is
crucial for the stimulation of the healing process of injury. Jain M.K.
et.al. (1990) showed that a direct mechanical influence (through massage)
on human fibroplasts causes cellular growth to increase 1.7 times, which
in turn increases protein synthesis by 48%. With the fibroplast activation
comes a subsequent increase in collagen production, a major healing
process, which affects practically every tissue in the human body.
Collagen is critical to every living organism because it forms the actual
framework of all tissues and organs. Many similar studies have shown how
skilled body therapy, using a variety of different pressures, can act as a
catalyst for eliminating different health problems.
A Drugless Therapy (Back To Top
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In addition to specific ailments that
massage can treat, its overall health benefits from the pure relaxation
it provides, cannot be overestimated. In the United States for example, the multinational drug companies now engage in a repulsive and very exploitative marketing strategy. Due to the incredible stress caused by gross and inhumane economic practices (contrary to what you'd think watching or reading the news), depression has become rampant in two thirds of the population. A widely used anti-depressant prescription drug, which killed 1,800 people in the trials (yet the FDA still approved it!), is now blatantly advertised on TV, along with a popular booster for male prowess and other prescription drugs. This unethical and previously illegal practice has forced doctors to become "legitimized"
drug pushers, with an approximately 1/2 million new prescriptions issued every week just for one of these medications alone. For those who see through the ruse, massage therapy provides a sane alternative in a sometimes very insane world.
Breaking Through Old Patterns (Back To Top
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To the
person who prefers to treat him- or herself, Chua Ka, an ancient form of Mongolian self-massage, which was applied by the warriors to remove fear from their bodies before they rode into battle, is one possibility. I teach this system to my own students as a prelude to deep tissue work on others. I will never forget the
amazing results I noticed in my own psyche, when I first learned this practice, as well as the visible effects it had on several of my fellow students in massage school. One session, as we sat on the floor wrapped in our sheets, progressing up our own skeleton, we were focused on the inner thighbone. One of the students at a certain point cried out and soon regressed to the age of five, to an incident when she had
suffered severe sexual abuse - a memory she had long suppressed. The instructor skillfully led her through the intense emotional pain of the experience, until she could come out on the other side, finally liberated from a long unconscious memory. I heard from her later that this incident had a profound effect on her life. Previously having experienced inexplicable fear of touch in her sexual relationship with her husband, a fact that had almost caused divorce, she was then able to enjoy sex, and her ability to communicate her feelings improved exponentially. My own experience
was of an incredible lightness of being; the sense of tremendous weight being lifted both physically and mentally. I can honestly say that of all the schooling I have been through (B.A., M.A., and Ph.D) massage school was the most satisfying. Not only do you get to practice on a lot of different people, but they also practice on you, twice a day. So much nurturing is rare in any lifetime. As a result you automatically begin to process and let go of a lot of mental and emotional baggage.
To Heal Our Entire Lives (Back To Top
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The following quote from this year's October/November
is; of Massage & Bodywork by an American massage therapist, who
survived cancer and AIDS, best describes the spiritual depth, which
bodywork can evoke: "I continued to investigate the source of my fear and
my rage, my grief and my self-hatred. And slowly but surely, these demons
are less powerful as I shine the light of awareness upon them. The
surprise is that as I am empowered to explore my past, I also discover
whole and complete self that has survived despite the horror this body has
lived through. That is the beauty of energy medicine. It has given me what
I was searching for in all my addictions. It has given me a way to make a
deep connection with myself and with others. I feel that connection in my
body and I can sustain it. Energy medicine, bodywork, and honest
confrontation with my past allows me to transform the wounds of deep
suffering into tools for service to others." Whether you are moved like
this therapist to study Bodywork and reap the benefits of such a profound
letting go, or simply choose to receive massage from a professional
periodically for stress release, great benefit and a deep sense of
well-being are the happy end result.
"Much of the value of massage depends on the sensitivity, skill and
hands of ther person doing the massage. Since massage is a function
of touching, one has to be in touch with the feelings of ther person being
massaged." Alexander Lowen
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