The Enlightened Body Blog

Massage Philosophy: Loving Time

I was teaching a massage business class about office design, time management, policies, procedures, etc. We had just touched upon the elegant Buddhist concept that 60 percent of healing is environment. Some spaces you just walk into and immediately feel better; some you walk into and just feel the energy sucked out - like where you go to renew your driver's license. So the students and I discussed creating a healing space - how to create your therapy-space as one that you love, one that adds energy and joy to you and everyone who enters it.

Then we collectively came up with something new to all of us. We began to look at time. I said, "We can organize our time so that we could love it too."

I asked the class, "How many of you LOVE the way you use time?"

Unsurprisingly, nobody's hands went up. So many of us are quite bitter about time. People these days almost reflexively feel a victim relationship to time. We complain there's not enough of it; that it's hard to organize it well. And then there's death - you know - shit happens then you die. Wow - talk about a crappy approach to time management! This brought us to a beautiful discussion about ways you could love your time. How can you organize your day so you love time as much as you can create a space you love to work in?

What I've found so far is that there is an "interior" decoration of time as well an "exterior." 

The interior is deeply appreciating that one is alive. Each present moment is unique and magical because it is the only moment in which we can act, the only moment in which we are alive! I must say that, since our discussion in class, most moments have felt more deeply exciting. The "exterior" decoration is one's daily or weekly, etc. plan. How can you distribute the events throughout the day and the rhythm of them such that the day is more like a symphony with fast movements and slow; flute solos and giant orchestral jams? We are each the conductor of our particular symphony.

Loving time - it's a beautiful thing.

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One of the most often asked questions asked by future LMTs is, why should I choose Lauterstein-Conway Massage School for my massage education? Often times, we are told it's our philosophies about wellness that set us apart in the minds of students - where else would you have a conversation like this one?

The Deep Massage Book - It's a Process!

Ten years ago Lippincott Publishers was interested in me doing a book on the method of Deep Massage I teach.

However the further we got the more they wanted me to write case studies, tone down the poetic language, and make it more textbook-y.

That's not my spirit so I dropped that project. Then last September, after my son left home, I was struggling with empty nest syndrome. I starting journaling and then just started really enjoying writing daily. I thought, "Well, let's revisit the Deep Massage Book and this time do the one I want!"

I've been enthusiastically working now almost every morning for 9 months, waking around 5:30 to write. I've found a fantastic illustrator who lives here in Austin. Now there are about 250 pages. I've submitted it to friends in the field and am looking forward to sending it to publishers within a month.

I'd like to share the process and excitement with you as this new book comes into being. I love the creative process. Picasso said ‘Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist once he grows up.’

I'll be sharing in this blog some of the processes and challenges of this creative process. Thank you to all my students and readers - may we continually and mutually inspire our inner artist in life and work!

The book is now tentatively titled: THE RENAISSANCE OF TOUCH - the Book of Deep Massage.

She's Motivated!

In a staff meeting at our Lauterstein-Conway Massage School, I recently noted a colleague promoting a course we had never offered. I said, "She's smart."  Our Marketing Director, Jennifer Shaw, never being one to mince words, said, "Intelligence's got nothing to do with it! She's motivated!"

I was delighted. She was right in so many ways.

Sometimes I take motivation for granted and overvalue intelligence. I push myself to come up with new ideas while ignoring or not honoring how motivated I am. Every since I started getting bodywork, I am totally motivated to do it, explore it, receive it, teach it, and spread its world-changing influence.

It's so often the motivation that we pick up on in people, especially the concerted enthusiasm for a healthy direction. It's the energy first (though I don't knock the usefulness of intelligence) not the idea.

Thanks, Jennifer.

Art and Massage: Ode to Kung Fu and Massage

By David Lauterstein, 4/22/10

People make fun of massage
And also of martial arts.
Both do attract people in love
with fantasy land.
I have the fantasy I am a healer.
I have the fantasy I am a warrior.

Yet the desire to be a healer and warrior
are two of the highest goals we can have.

This morning I was thinking how
just like our bodies heal cuts,
our life heals its wounds.
The rough time of yesterday
is smoothed over by last night’s dream;
the sadness of life being hard
is relieved by tears and the next lovely thing
that makes us smile.
Life is self-healing –
I know that and I help it
as a therapist.

And the warrior spirit -
I don’t give up.
In practicing martial arts
there is no end.
Every class deepens something I know
and reveals more that I don’t know.
We work on resilience of spirit,
mind and body.
The survival of the fittest is not a slogan,
it’s real.

The warrior and the healer in me
With a machete in one hand and
A loving spirit in the other
Proceed down this path of life.

I don’t give a shit,
I’m going to get what I want.
Get out of my way,
ME – get out of my way
You too!

Here comes the healer -
I want to see everyone
Smile.
I want to watch love
Soften and restore a caring spirit
To every man, woman and child.

With our strength and kindness
Humans carry a great hope from
person to person.

This body is an armament and a covenant.
This mind finds openings for new creation.
The heart loving and courageous -
This spirit unites us all.

Lauterstein-Conway Massage School: Earth Day

The biggest puzzle seems to be – here we are alive improbably on a planet teeming with nature, surrounded in our whole solar system and way beyond it with no other life forms.  What did we do to deserve this?  Each of us knows on some level that naturally we ought to bow down each day and thank God or whatever you believe in for this unbelievable opportunity.

Yet people persist in ingratitude.  We see, or are affected by the news, that many people still actively hate others – sometimes just because they were born on a certain piece of geography.  We see that there is greed, sometimes dishonesty, as some people try to accumulate more and more wealth at the expense of deepening the poverty and suffering of people around them.  The seven “deadly sins” are still alive and kicking:  wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.   I know I am guilty of most of them to some extent almost everyday.  Perhaps they are all natural animal attributes that unsurprisingly arise in us without our consciously willing it.

These sins manifesting on the planetary level make human life harder than it needs to be.  Look at the fallacy of ownership – nothing really is yours, you borrow this piece of land, this fruit’s nutrition, for a relatively short period of time.  We can forget one of the obvious goals of being human and conscious - to pass this world on in better shape than we found it to each succeeding generation.  We need to fight against a tragic short-sightedness that seems to have generated a global reversal – the planet’s complexion and inner resources having been diminished rather than augmented in the last 30 or so years.
 
This consciousness that we are alive on an incredible, unlikely, prolific planet, keeps breaking through.  Perhaps our greatest gift as humans is to know what a gift human life is.   Each time we massage we can restore the natural gratitude for that gift.  People lie down on our tables often frustrated because of stress, filled with reverberations from their “sins” and those of the people around them.  They often think they or those around them are bad people because of these sins.  They often think life sucks because it’s a challenging balancing act. High quality touch on the other hand reminds them.  You are alive and this is good.  You have trouble reconciling the selfish and generous sides of yourself.  Welcome to the club!  Restore your sense of wonder and compassion for being a living, conscious being on this earth.
         
H. H. Dalai Lama said, “Although attempting to bring about world peace through the internal transformation of individuals is difficult, it is the only way.”  Let us dedicate ourselves to this transformation this Earth Day and each day.  It is a simple matter of gratitude for the gift of space and time on this singular home to life, Mother Earth.

Anatomy Review: Massage and Shoulder Pain, Part Two

Anatomy Review: Massage and Shoulder Pain aka The Trapezius and the Wings of Life, Part Two (Please see Anatomy Review: Massage and Shoulder Pain, Part One for anatomical informational about the trapezius.)

Massage bridges the worlds of action and language. We deliver healthcare through skilled, caring touch with shoulders, arms and hands. Freeing the shoulder girdle is essential for health.

Trapezius Fulcrum

Massage Therapists should begin comfortably seated at head of the table. The Client should be supine (if neck is lordotic – chin higher than forehead – please put a small pillow under the head).

Before putting your hands on, center yourself. Breathe. Position your body so that, even when seated, you can use your body’s weight and gravity for your pressure – rather than effort. Position your treatment chair or stool to allow room between your body and that of the client. Let your joints be gently rounded, wrists aligned, elbows slightly bent, shoulders and breath relaxed, with an open space between the outside of the rib cage and the insides of your arms. Get grounded with ease in the hips and knees and the soles of your feet on the floor.

Briefly review in your mind the life stresses this client may have revealed in the pre-session interview/history-taking and in past sessions if this is a repeat client. Realize you are not just touching the trapezius, a muscle positioned in the space of the client’s body. You are equally touching time – that is, the tensions accumulated from their many years of life. In this sense, every touch that impacts the client’s ongoing life takes place at the intersection of space and time.

Engage the Nervous System

Using the fulcrum model you are engaging the nervous system, especially the autonomic, as well as the physical structure.

• Let your fingers rest on the clavicles and upper ribs. With your thumbs begin an exploration of the belly of the trapezius. Start near the base of the neck and work your way out with mindful, caring touch, using light to moderate pressure. Note any associations and observations that palpating this client here evokes for you. Sometimes I feel like I’m a prospector, palpating for the long-lost treasures underlying our tension. Work your way out in successive points near to where the clavicles and scapulae meet.
  
• Now return to the belly of the trapezius immediately lateral to T1. Be conscious to touch clearly with both your physical structure and your energy (i.e. being mentally, emotionally, and spiritually engaged in what you’re doing.). Press in slowly with both thumbs, then pause. You are now engaging the touch receptors.
  
• If you find no tension, clearly disengage and explore points more lateral. But do make sure you devote some caring time and attention to each place. If you do find tension on either or both sides, engage it with a bit more pressure. At this point, commonly the client may say something like, “Now you’ve got it!” or you can see from their breathing and facial expression that they are engaged. Pause. You are now engaging both the touch and pressure-receptors.
  
• Now, having entered their realm of tension, rest into it. First, rest yourself. Deepen your breathing. Sink in with your thumbs, lean gracefully in toward the client, letting gravity be the therapist, rather than forcing your way in by adding tension to your shoulder girdle, back, arms or hands. Find the optimum depth for this fulcrum, this person, this place. Pause, without letting go of any vectors. Give the person some time in which let go from the inside out. During this time it is important that you the therapist go to a “witness” state, not moving, patiently allowing the client to let go of successively deeper sedimentary layers of tension developed here over the span of his/her life. You are now engaging receptors for touch, pressure, and the proprioceptors. Through them you are affecting the limbic system, cerebellum and possibly the cerebrum as well.
  
• When you sense it’s been long enough – five seconds is usually more than enough in a given place – clearly disengage and move on. Then press in an inch more laterally on both sides. Repeat the steps above. Keep alive your sensitivity and patience. Tensions here accumulate over a lifetime. Clients need the gift of time and touch to let go of the layers and years of accumulated tensions.
  
• Continue working the belly of the trapezius in successively more lateral areas until you’ve given attention to at least four or five areas bilaterally. Even if you find more tension on one side than another, maintain conscious contact with both sides. The bilaterality of contact is important since we are looking to restore the experience of having wings, rather than yokes. Two wings are needed for flight!

Wonderfully, this fulcrum with the trapezius is physically quite easy to perform. However, approached with reverence, respect, and patience, it will have global consequences for your clients. Through this nexus of time and space we are given the opportunity to let go of lifetimes of stress and to regain the sense of lightness in our lives.

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Learn how to work the trapezius in a massage chair. Chair massage ceu's are offered annually at Lauterstein-Conway Massage School.

Anatomy Review: Massage and Shoulder Pain, Part One

Anatomy Review: Massage and Shoulder Pain aka The Trapezius and the Wings of Life, Part One.

The upper limb and its girdle play an intermediary role in life. On the one hand, we use shoulders, arms and hands to get things done at home and work. On the other, we use the upper limbs for linguistic and gestural functions. Peaceful or forceful movements of shoulders, arms and hands reveal with connotative clarity what we really mean. And, in writing and sign language, we see an entirely linguistic use.

Massage bridges the worlds of action and language. We deliver healthcare through skilled, caring touch with shoulders, arms and hands. Our touch also communicates to clients valuable anatomical information, feedback and non-verbal suggestions for how they can become more relaxed, free, and balanced.

Freeing the shoulder girdle is essential for health. We all have seen clients whose shoulder blades have become adherent to the ribcage. Structurally and energetically, there is enormous importance in the scapulas’ ability to glide freely over the ribs. Without that space, everyday stress, instead of “rolling” off our backs, can become “impacted”, affecting the free movement of the ribs and spine, ultimately even affecting the heart and lungs.

Character of the Trapezius

The trapezius muscle is, for many people, the body’s energetic shock absorber, just as the legs and feet are the body’s main physical shock absorbers. As stress comes and goes, tension in the trapezius ordinarily increases, then quickly dissipates.

However, with excessively sustained stress or sudden overwhelming trauma, the body begins to absorb stress, holding on instead of dissipating it. Then trapezius and other stress indicator muscles begin to have a chronically higher tonus.

Virtually every adult carries the residue of past life tensions in the trapezius with a resultant diminished capacity for dissipating everyday stress. When our shock absorbers start losing resilience, stresses begin to stay longer, going potentially deeper into the bodymind.

A primary purpose of working with trapezius then is to let go of any residue of the past that no longer serves us. Also to learn new habits of handling stress by letting go, rather than by absorbing it.

Anatomy of the Trapezius

The trapezius originates along the body’s centerline, as low as T 12 and from each spinuous process all the way up to the back of the occiput. It extends out finally to insert along the scapular spine and the lateral third of the clavicle.

The thickest part of the trapezius is its “belly” just above the scapulae. This is an anatomical vantage point from which therapists can assess how clients cope with their stress.

The healthy trapezius is like a sail floating freely in the winds of life. It allows the full excursion of breath beneath it. It allows for the healthy movement of the head, neck, thorax and shoulder blades. Let us restore free-floatingness to our wings!

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If you don't have a massage table available to you, seated or chair massage is also a wonderful way to work the trapezius. Lauterstein-Conway Massage School offers a two-day chair massage ce workshop annually. 

To get "how-to" information about how to release the shoulder girdle, subscribe to David's The Enlightened Body Blog! Part Two of Massage and Shoulder Pain will be released tomorrow morning. 

Mired in the Truth: Beauty and Massage

Plato identified the three realms of virtue: goodness, truth and beauty.

Massage has been, to some extent, lately mired in truth. So-called science-based or orthopedic approaches have been extremely popular. The “facts” are trotted out as the rationale for how we should approach client’s neuromuscular symptoms.

But what people most respond to is quality of touch. Quality of touch has more to do with beauty and goodness, than with truth or science. This is why Swedish massage continues to be the most in-demand therapy. It feels wonderful. It puts people in touch with their inner beauty. It stimulates their compassion for the goodness in themselves and in the world around them.

So why not start with beauty? Human form and function is so beautiful. Massage is an art and a science. But if we only concentrate on the science, we can lose the art.

How does what is said in this video also apply in our personal lives? We'd love your feedback in the comment section below!

Massage Therapy: Growing New Arms

The other day I working on a woman who has chronic complaints in her extremities. As I worked, I had a deeper insight into the origins of her pain, tension and discomfort.

A Case Study: The Servers

Some people are raised to do for others. Their own independent self-expression and the meeting of their own needs, even as very young children, are de-emphasized. They learn rather to obey and serve one or both parents or other close family members.

In that case, it is common for the person to identify their limbs, which with they do their doing, with the people they are raised to serve. When it comes to their own sense of their selves, these kind of folks tend to identify as “me” only their axial system – torso, neck and head.

I recall poignantly a young woman I worked with many years ago. As I was working on her arms, she started crying. I was surprised.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

She told me that as a young girl she had broken her arm. Shortly thereafter, she was, with her family, visiting another family. After dinner, the man of that household recruited the kids to wash the dishes. To her surprise, he asked her, with a recent broken arm, to help wash the dishes.

She looked at her father for help to illuminate this man. But her father just shrugged, unassertive, and didn’t protect his child. She helped wash the dishes, in pain the whole time.

Then, while still crying, she said, “Ever since then my arms have belonged to my father. Today these arms are mine again.”

With this current client, I am emphasizing the limbs and especially the “girdles” of the shoulder and pelvis. The girdles are the outlets for self-expression through the extremities. I have high hopes for this current client that she will soon say, “These limbs are mine again.”

The Role of the Massage Therapist

Helping clients re-own parts of themselves self is an essential part of integrative healthcare. As the poet Derek Walcott said in his poem "Love After Love,"

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Anatomy Review: Tibialis Anterior

Origin: Lateral Tibia
Insertion: Medial cuneiform and first metatarsal
Action: Dorsiflexes, supinates foot, lifts up medial margin of foot, supporting medial
longitudinal arch (Excessive: shin splints)
Antagonist: Peroneus Longus

Like many modern conveniences the concrete sidewalks and roadways of our civilization take back almost as much as they give. They allow for the fairly safe and speedy passage of vehicles, goods and services. They save the pedestrian the chore of slopping through the mud. However, the earth no longer absorbs the impact of our step. We have developed footwear to remedy this situation and in so doing have elevated our so recent paws to the level of high fashion. Still the body and especially the feet, being the closest to the ground, do absorb more than their healthy share of impact. The result is a fantastic rise in foot problems and medical specialists happy to deal with them.

The problem of high heels illuminates the interesting relation of fashion and nature. High heels, like most of our fashions, are designed to increase the sexual attractiveness of the wearer. They accomplish this by elegantly combining human artifice with the imagery of nature. When you wear high heels, which resemble and have a similar feeling to hooves, you cannot safely flex and extend your ankles. Therefore, the prime movers here have to be at the knee and, especially, the hip. As a result, walking in high heels forces one to exaggerate motions of the hip joint and the pelvis lying above it, causing (usually) male attention to be drawn to the suggestively swaying buttocks. However, since the shoes absorb virtually none of the impact of walking, smash the ball of the foot into the pavement, keep the heel in an unnaturally lifted position, causing an abnormal shortening of the whole back of the leg, and, with such rigidities induced, decrease natural circulatory flow – eventually these legs and feet become so hardened and inflexible that they lose the very attractiveness they were intended to accentuate.

The lesson of high heels – if we depend on human technology to provide for us what nature has already abundantly guaranteed – in this case sexual attractiveness – we end up creating sickness.

Motion of the ankle is the key to the health of the lower leg. The tibialis anterior, far from being the dead wooden shin of the cement-walker, can be instead sleek, juicy, powerful…positively edible! Make your client aware that the lower leg is essentially the ankle mover lifting the foot up, brining it down, and side to side. Most people think the lower leg is just there and don’t know what it does. With slow deep friction attempt to convey the sensuality, the full length, strength and the three dimensionality of the tibialis anterior and its partners in dorsiflexion (extensor hallucis longus and extensor digitorum longus).

Above, around the front and the sides of the ankle, the superficial fascia of the leg thickens to break the tendons on their way into the foot. Again our four-leggedness is underlined, as these are basically the same structures as found above the wrist – retinacula. Abnormal thickening of the retinacula of the lower leg and foot may not only create pain due to a strangulation of muscles and vessels, it may also pin down tendons whose freedom is essential for the appropriate alignment of the foot. The tibialis anterior, by pulling up on the medial cuneiform and first metatarsal, helps create the medial longitudinal arch. If it is pinned down by the retinacula, it will in effect lose the contractibility of its lower segment, because the tendon will be functionally separated from the muscle belly, which lies above the retinacula.

One famous story of Ida Rolf is of her working for full hour on just the retinacula of one foot. This shows how important she considered it in the health of the lower limb. Carefully study an illustration of the lower leg, and using it as a guide, try working on the retinacula of a client whose ankles seem to you thick or rigid. Work on and around the retinacula basically as you would on other thickening connective tissues. Use finger pads mostly there, although the flat of the fist may work well on the superior extensor retinaculum. Have the client compare the experience range of motion before and after. Sometimes the change is remarkable!