On April 15^th my wife and I said goodbye to our Golden Retriever of 13 years who has been thankfully suffering for not too long with cancer. Her name was Phoebe.  She was the only dog I’ve had as an adult.  I’m sure many of you can imagine the pain we are in at her loss.  Not more than an hour later we received the news re the tragedies at the Boston Marathon.  These in turn brought up feelings related to my mother’s passing many years ago at the age of 47.

All this and Mothers’ Day brought up many feelings and thoughts about loss.  The absence of the loving touch of our parents, our beloved animals, the senseless destruction of the triumph that is the marathon – these and other losses leave us challenged to deal with the hurting places in our lives.

I think maybe all massage and bodywork is about loss. Loss of comfort, of physical ease, of peace of mind, of spiritual connection. The restorative quality of touch “heals over the scarred place, makes a road” (Naomi Nye). Perhaps it is the comfort of touch that gives it its most tremendous power.

The touch of mind, the moving back and forth with feelings, the literal experience of pain at many-sided loss has left me, has left all of us, with a raw wound that will take time to heal. Here are some important lines from a poem about loss recently read at friend’s memorial –

Grief is a walk over a bridge
Back and forth
Forth, to where the other has gone
And back to where one was with her.

One must wander through the land of the Past
Back and forth
Until the walk over that bridge
Leads to a new path.

– anonymous

We need the comfort that touch can bring.  As the hand of the mother gently rubs back and forth across hurt places, we find a new path.  The touch of comfort takes us along this path that caring women and men have been pointing out to us since time immemorial – the path of love.

“Your face is an open book.”

The bone and the core of the person holds our deepest levels of experience. When we say, I just know that in my bones, that really means something.

One incredible place in our bodies where the bones rest just under the surface is the face. It is, tellingly, also the most expressive part of the person.

The facial muscles are the most conspicuous place in the body where the muscle don’t attach to bones. They insert into each other’s fascia. That’s why the face has the most varied capacity for movement and most expression.

So when we work well on the face, we expand our expressive capacities and restore full emotional “range of motion”. We free the face and the self from the consequences of being stuck in chronic expressions.

Reading the face. Our expressions are like scripts. And just as in cursive script, the muscles of our face have a remarkable continuity…because like cursive writing they insert into each other.

So this book of the face, when we read it, tells us wonderful stories. Stories of surprise, of sadness, joy, deep thought, fury, courage, love – are told by each face of each of our clients.

And below these stories lies the deepest story – that told by the bones, which underlies the history of our expressions. The “bone smiles behind our faces when we frown” – said Richard Tillinghast poet and musician.

The bone is in prehistory the first instrument – e.g. ribcage, the first xylophone.

And it is what remains after “we” are gone.

What was your face before you were born? – is a fascinating Zen Koan.

When we deeply address the face, wiping off the residue of chronic expressions which no longer serve us, we restore the person to “their face before they were born”.

There is perhaps nothing more beautiful than that open, innocent visage, ready to see new things, eager like a child to encounter the world as it so often does for the first time.

I remember my daughter and the first time she saw a duck. We were at the beach in the early morning by Lake Michigan. Suddenly a duck swam to shore, strode onto the beach and came calmly toward us. The expression on her face upon seeing her first duck I remember to this day.

When we get back to our original face and approach this world with openness and innocence, we get to experience this world as if today were the first day.

It is the first day of the rest of our lives. And after a great session, we really know it.

They open their eyes and see the world again for the first time.

You can see it in their face.

Perhaps the most serious energetic imbalance is the excessive, upward displacement of attention to the upper half of the body. In our culture the face and head get an exorbitant amount of focus.

We tend to identify ourselve…s with and by our facial appearance. Plus we have a culture that is almost insane in its distorted over-emphasis on mental education and mental work.

This creates a problem for everyone! The education and employment of the mind takes a front seat with emotions and body almost totally neglected. This has resulted in a culture of psychophysical illiteracy.

The lower half of the body gives us so much and asks for little in return. Taking us gracefully from one place to another; balancing our whole structure on the ground; providing feelings of strength as well as sensuality, reaffirming that we have an animal self as well as a human one – we share these beautiful, powerful legs with panthers, storks, frogs, and bears.

So often though, these parts of us are related to mechanically, if at all. Many of us ignore our legs unless they become a source of pain.

Yet, the legs and feet – precisely because of the roles they play in our lives and this upward energetic displacement – deserve a far higher level of attention and care.

So when you work with the legs, bring a heightened appreciation with your heart for all you do and are as legs. With compassion in your hands, and profound respect for their roles in our lives, the legs, through deep massage, can have a completely different experience.

Sometimes I work feelingfully with the face or hands but get mechanical when working on the legs. Has that happened to you?

From now on, let us work with a much heightened awareness of the critical necessity to achieve a new balance in life, by restoring the feeling of receiving care for and through the legs and the feet.

Then our every step becomes a coming home.

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals…and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency…in every motion and joint of your body.”

–Walt Whitman

(illustration by Christy Krames, MA, from The Deep Massage Book p. 75) Order the book from http://www.redwingbooks.com/sku/DeeMasBoo

Here’s an update of David Lauterstein’s classes in 2013 and other products/services available

April 19-21  Newington, Conn.- Deep Massage I

May 16-19  Austin, TX – Zero Balancing II

June 13-16  Portland, OR – Deep Massage I

June 28-30  Santa Fe, NM – Deep Massage I

July 20-22  St. Charles, Missouri – Featured author at Alliance for Massage Therapy Education

Aug. 10-11  Orlando, Fla.- Deep Massage I

Sept. 13-15  Lyons, NY – Deep Massage I

Oct. 11-13  Waldoboro, Maine – Deep Massage I and II

Oct. 19-20  Baltimore, MD – Deep Massage I

For registration/info, contact David Lauterstein at DavidL@TLCschool.com.

Other Lauterstein Products/Services Available at our Massage School

The Deep Massage Book – How to Combine Structure and Energy in Bodywork – $39.95 (also available on-line - http://www.redwingbooks.com/sku/DeeMasBoo)

Putting the Soul Back in the Body – A Manual of Imaginative Anatomy for Massage Therapists – $21.95

Roots and Branches – CD of guitar music improvised LIVE to massage in the recording studio – $15.98 (from TLC School - also available Online)

Two on-line CE courses:
Putting the Soul Back in the Body - 6 CE hours | $70
Intro to Deep Massage: The Lauterstein Method - 3 CE hours | $40
DVD’s – Deep Massage I – 2 vol. set – $30
Deep Massage II – $15

Various new and past writings of David Lauterstein are available on Facebook at the Deep Massage Book page –  https://www.facebook.com/thedeepmassagebook?ref=ts&fref=ts