Plato identified three absolute values – goodness, truth and beauty.
It’s easy to see how massage therapy utilizes truth. We endeavor to be, when possible, evidence-based. We rely on the complex and fascinating truths of anatomy and physiology.

And goodness is eminently part of our work. Massage is perhaps the most direct application of kindness in the entire realm of healthcare – since we get to spend a whole hour in compassionate contact with the client. Due to this extended contact, we have to pay even more attention to ethical behavior and the observation of healthy boundaries in the professional context.

Both of these are fundamental to the scientific and moral grounding of massage.

Yet perhaps the deeper and less discussed impact of massage is that quality of touch and connection which gives rise to the experience of beauty. Art centers on this experience. Massage is as much an art as a science.

People come to us so often having lost their sense of being beautiful, not primarily externally, but internally. Out of harmony, frustrated with tension and pain, often the last thing they will feel is their inner beauty.

Yet this is perhaps the largest part of our job – to help restore the clients’ sense that inside themselves, they are beautiful. Their inner workings of physiology are wondrous miracles. The complex balancing of the hundreds of anatomical structures is a lesson in harmony – as much as a Bach fugue. When these inner workings are enhanced and brought to the client’s conscious or unconscious awareness, they are struck as if by a work of inner art which is their life.

Each person is a masterpiece. They just don’t know it!

It’s our mission to illuminate this beautiful, wondrous person through the art of massage therapy, using goodness and the light of truth.

Are you considering enrolling in massage school.  Here’s a unique perspective!

Whether you know it or not, when you enroll in massage school, you are on a classic Hero’s Journey.  If you ever get the chance to read Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, you won’t be disappointed.  However, if you don’t have the time, watch “The Matrix”,  “Finding Nemo” or “Lord of the Rings.” These movies have more in common than you would think.  They all tell a tale that is as old as the oldest myths on the planet.

The main parts of this journey are:

• The Call (red pill or the blue pill)
• The hero is often drafted against  his/her will into a great adventure or quest
• The Old Man of the Forest (Morpheus, The Oracle, Gandalf)
• They receive magical techniques, spells, potions, amulets from a supernatural being – however, the “Old Man” usually advises against the perilous journey
• The Quest (the bulk of the movie)
• The Boon (saving the people in distress)
• If the hero is bringing a re-birth for the entire world, then the hero dies or is re-born in a new form

The Hero/Healer’s Journey

You, by choosing to be a massage therapist, are just such a hero.

The call is to commit fully to the Healer’s Journey, even when it’s challenging.  You must be dedicated to the health and healing of your clients – there is nothing more important than health and happiness of this world!

You will receive magical techniques involving your mind, body and spirit

– basic and advanced massage techniques.

You will engage in the quest for knowledge – learning anatomy, physiology, pathology, and psychology so you can really understand people and how they work.

You will emerge with the boon – bringing more peace of mind, body and spirit into this world that needs peace so much!  And,

Lastly, new friendships will form along the way, new knowledge will transform your understanding of human body and mind, and you will receive in class many transformational sessions of bodywork of powerful physical and energetic depth.

Life will change us, no matter what we do.  But, if we commit to the hero’s
journey, we will change our lives ,  we will be re-born, we will make our dreams come true,  and help others do the same, in just such ways as the great myths speak of.
What about the Tree?

Well, in the hero’s journey, if there is the call and the person doesn’t respond in most myths that person is turned into a tree.  So don’t turn into a tree!

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