The Enlightened Body Blog

Massage and the Nervous System: Part Three

Part three of Massage and the Nervous System. (See parts two and one.)

As massage therapists we know how to get our hands on muscles and connective tissues. But now we see somehow we have to get our hands on the nervous system because otherwise it’s a bit like flipping light switches with no electricity – some action but no deeper change.

So how do we get our hands on the nervous system?

Autonomic Nervous System

The diencephalon houses among other amazing objects, the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the primary orienter in our lives toward pleasure and away from pain. A pea-sized structure, it nonetheless is in charge of the endocrine system and the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is a full spectrum system which goes to glands, smooth and cardiac muscles, and other organs. It is largely responsible for our most profound reactions to the world. Its experiential spectrum inclines us to the deepest relaxations, to everyday balance, and at its most extreme, to emergency reactions.

A high level of massage therapy can affect the autonomic system in dramatic ways: 

•  Change the set point – most people are too highly strung and under stress. Massage, especially repeated applications, will change the “set point” of the autonomic nervous system. We slowly begin to feel that more relaxed is more our normal and preferred state rather than being more tense.
• Inhabit the full spectrum – some people have difficulty relaxing; others fully experiencing their excitement. By relieving tension from the muscles and the nervous system, massage facilitates the autonomic “range of motion” so that the person can more fluidly move from one energy state to another.
• Cultivate the fertile mid-ground – “Between living and dreaming there is a third thing.” the poet Machado wrote. Edison used to go to sleep with a rock in his hand. When he fell asleep it would drop and wake him up. He persisted until he could be almost asleep and yet not drop the rock. Why? That was the state, he found, out of which all his inventions flowed. When our unconscious and conscious minds are in communication with each other in this fertile midground of awareness, we are at our most creative.

Massage, inducing more balanced states of mind, emotion and body, allows for the creative utilization of the fertile mid-ground in problem-solving and growth.

Some Controversy

Lately, there has been some controversy over whether the energy-based approach has the same legitimacy as the orthopedic approach to massage.

“Energy” is a commonsense word we all use to describe, among other things, the nervous system and the role of emotion, mind, and electrical intelligence in our lives. We could reduce our understanding of energy to chemistry, but who would rather for example want to give up the term “love”, preferring to tell those you care about that you have a predominance of phenylethylamines in their presence? The language of energy comes closer to capturing and understanding experience, than does that of chemistry.

When we consider the critical role of energy and the nervous system, we see that the myofascial system constitutes just one part of what we need to affect as therapists. To fully support health we need to address both energy and structure.

Let us honor both of these wondrous human worlds. Let us see their unity; affirm that good science takes the whole into account, not just the part; and that good art - and massage is undoubtedly an art as well as a science – empowers peace and promotes harmony in our whole being. That touch which knows how to contact our deepest energy and structure bears the promise of a better life for one and all.

Massage and The Nervous System: Part Two

Part two of Massage and the Nervous System. (See part one.)

As massage therapists we know how to get our hands on muscles and connective tissues. But now we see somehow we have to get our hands on the nervous system because otherwise it’s a bit like flipping light switches with no electricity – some action but no deeper change.

So how do we get our hands on the nervous system?

Diencephalon

This area in the center of the brain is the seat of emotion, memory, and our “drives”. It is, in spite of the vanity of the cerebral cortex’s verbal narrations, largely what moves us in our lives. The diencephalon lives deeper than words - housing hunger, thirst, anger, sexual desire, sleep-wake cycle, anxiety, all our memories, our deepest convictions, desires, our pleasure, our pain, and our dreams.

The diencephalon is the residence of the “unconscious” of which the great psychotherapist Milton Erickson provocatively said, “The conscious mind is brilliant but the unconscious mind is a hell of a lot smarter.”

The first sense to develop in the embryo is the sense of touch. Touch forms our earliest sensory experiences of the world - these in turn shape the unconscious world of the diencephalon. So, the art and science of touch therapy, at its best, is an ideal medium for communicating with the diencephalon.

Moishe Feldenkrais said a person can’t change without new experience. Expert massage and bodywork is new experience. Our world, initially formed by the ways we are touched, undergoes new, awakening experiences through bodywork which go immediately deeper than the conscious mind and influence our deepest beliefs, motivations, and dreams.

Cerebrum

The cerebrum gives rise to language, self-reflection, conscious thoughts, plans, decisions, and the synthesizing of imagination and logic. With the cerebrum we find the words for what we are feeling. We find support for bringing the tool of language to bear in our problem-solving. Often changes initiated by bodywork at the level of the diencephalon bubble up into cerebral, conscious rememberings, re-examined beliefs, changes of plans, and new insights about one’s body, emotion, mind and spirit.

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Massage and the Nervous System: Part One

This is the first part of a three-part series on Massage and the Nervous System.

When we first learn massage therapy, we naturally visualize that we are working on muscles. Memorizing muscles and seeing their kinesiological relations to each other is a task!

Then we can add to that the wonderful insights drawn from Rolfing and other structurally-oriented manual therapies. Muscles and fascia, when chronically shortened, misalign or compromise the body’s posture and balanced movement. The “tensegrity” model of human structure observes that in natural structural systems, the “hard members,” namely the bones in the body, are aligned and moved by the “soft members”, the muscles and fascia.

I have taught this for years. Yet, some years ago, another light bulb lit up for me. What “tells” the soft tissues to relax or to contract? The nervous system - the body is not only aligned by muscles, but also by the nervous system.

As massage therapists we know how to get our hands on muscles and connective tissues.  But now we see somehow we have to get our hands on the nervous system because otherwise it’s a bit like flipping light switches with no electricity – some action but no deeper change.

So how do we get our hands on the nervous system?

Muscles are Sense Organs

Interwoven in our muscles and tendons are nerves called proprioceptors (golgi tendon organs, muscle spindles, etc.). Proprioceptors tell our brain how tense or stretched each muscle is. Through that information the brain constructs the image of our whole body. Then, with a clear picture of the body, we can initiate coherent, coordinated movements. Without proprioception the body “goes to sleep”. Most people - through lack of varied activity, sedentary work, and lack of somatic education - suffer from what Thomas Hanna called “sensori-motor amnesia”. Massage brings enhanced circulation and awareness to our bodies and literally wakes us up.

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7 Deep Marketing Tips for Massage Therapists

The more you learn about massage and bodywork, the more you learn about life as a whole. I have been a therapist now for 32 years and a teacher for 27. I’ve learned that the same principles that apply in every bodywork session apply equally to every aspect of our lives. As a matter of fact, it seems we can only have both success and satisfaction when we attend to these things. Some of these principles are: to be centered: to meet people openly; to really get to know our clients through their tissues, nervous system, history; to take actions that will profoundly help them; to monitor and make sure we are helping; and to periodically disengage, re-examine how things are going and celebrate our successes.

Principles of Deep Marketing

The beginning, middle and end of Deep Marketing is centering yourself. Without being centered you can’t do anything well! It is the precondition for all success in the practice and in the business of bodywork. For instance, we all know if your heart is not in what you are doing, there is little satisfaction. The same holds true for the rest of the body!

Marketing with your body means attending to the following with respect to being centered. Often when I sit down at work, I will center myself before I initiate any other work. And I connect with these seven levels of body/mind.

1. Are you grounded? Do you feel literally and figuratively supported by the earth underneath you? Realize that however high your aspirations, you are each just another animal inhabiting the earth. Feel supported by your legs and feet. What do you really stand for? Who and what principles do you stand by?
   
2. Are you excited? If you can’t contact your excitement for growing your business, you will not mobilize the energy required. This is associated with so-called second chakra. Awkward to say but the successful therapist cultivates an irresistible attraction to his or her massage practice. Get excited!
   
3. Do you use your gut in helping you make decisions? Freud said all important decisions are based on insufficient information – the mind alone is an insufficient tool. It is your gut, the feeling in the pit of your stomach, that you also must listen to. And we have to have “guts.” To be successful and to maintain it over time, takes courage, takes guts, inner resolve. Do you support yourself through your lumbar vertebrae and through sufficient breath to give you the energy and determination you need to succeed?
   
4. Is your heart into what you are doing? Is your heart passionately connected to where you are working? to the clients that you have? Let your heart do the talking and listen to what you truly love and want to do. There is nothing more lovely than seeing someone and being someone whose heart is totally into their work and business. The person who loves their work is an irresistible force.
   
5. Do you feel confident in what you say about your work? When people ask you what you do, do you have words that you feel great and honest about? Word-of-mouth is most important in business-building and most importantly, your mouth, your words! I like to think that the best marketing is like a song sung because you really mean it. Take the time to let your mind and your heart participate in the co-creation of statements you make about your work that optimize people becoming and staying your clients.
6. For all the time we spending thinking, the mind is often underappreciated. Use your incredible mind, both its logical and imaginative sides, to slow down and make well-considered decisions about how you want to grow your business. And, as the previous five points have indicated, don’t let your mind try to run the show in isolation. Make all decisions asking yourself – is this grounded, am I excited about it, does my gut tell me it’s right, does my heart say yes, do the words ring true? 7) Be open to inspirations from beyond your usual self. The best ideas seem to come out of nowhere or from “on high”. Cultivate your openness to your “higher self”. Sometimes, facing a difficult decision, I will just sit with the problem, until by just being receptive, a solution just appears in my mind that is perfect. Some of the greatest successes and satisfactions arise from an amazing place of inspiration. Many great art and science discoveries tell us this.

Massage and bodywork have their power by never forgetting to honor the role the body plays in lives well lived. So your success as a massage professional must arise from this same grounded place. Take refuge in the wisdom in your body and watch your great work grow and grow!

Dear NCBTMB: 8 Reasons Why NOT to Proceed with Advanced Certification Exam

On 10/22/09 I wrote the following letter to school owners massage and organizations.  It concerns the possibility (announced as a done deal) that the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork  may develop and administer an Advanced Certification exam. 

Dear Fellow Bodyworkers, Massage Educators and Affiliated Industry Members,

After reading this email, if you are in agreement, please email this letter to everyone you know who cares about the massage field, the NCBTMB and other key people, organizations and massage magazines.

The more I think about the NCBTMB’s proposed Advanced Certification Exam, the more I believe it is very much ill-conceived. With the MBLEx (Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards’ exam) now having cut into NCBTMB's market, the proposed advanced certification exam seems to be more necessitated as an income stream for NCBTMB, than as a mandated credential.  One organization's bottom line should not rule the decisions made affecting our whole field – especially if those decisions will have a negative effect on the field as a whole.

1. From the response I’ve gotten from everyone except NCBTMB, I believe I’m in the majority in believing that the proposed Advanced Certification exam and credential proposed by NCBTMB is not a good idea at this time. The majority of therapists are not nationally certified and the majority of advanced therapists certainly are not nationally certified.  And I believe the NCBTMB surveys in 1997 and onward did not include the majority of practitioners. Many teachers and school owners have serious reservations about the flawed psychometrics on which NCBTMB is claiming to base their decisions.

2.  I never received the initial survey in 1997 or any others  - was it completed only by Nationally Certified therapists? If the primary school owners in the U.S. were not consulted, who else was left out of the surveying process?

3.  NCBTMB should not be the arbiter of who is advanced and who is not.  Their track record of problematic service and self-interest is a source of discredit and suspicion with most of the therapists I talk with.  That they should be trusted to handle this well is presumptuous.

4.  Requiring to be certified as advanced that one be already Nationally Certified, arbitrarily, dramatically and unnaturally limits who can qualify for advanced certification to people who are currently Nationally Certified.

5.  If we end up with a group of advanced practitioners who are not eligible - due to the arbitrary requirement of National Certification - vs. a group who are eligible - NCB would be putting a dysfunctional division in our field.  A split between advanced practitioners not recognized by NCB and those who are will be divisive and deleterious to our field.>

6. NCBTMB has not demonstrated thorough research nor industry backing for how to define the advanced knowledge an advanced practitioner should have. The emphasis of the proposed exam apparently would be orthopedic massage. While I appreciate orthopedic massage specialists, the majority of advanced practitioners practice holistically, that is they have excellent skills to resolve physical problems, while also utilizing advanced skills to prevent disease and to augment the health of their clients. Advanced Massage therapists largely are complementary health-care practitioners, not just allopathic disease-treatment specialists.  Any advanced exam should reflect that fact.

7. There is basically no way in such exams to demonstrate practical skills.  Qualifying someone as advanced without any way to demonstrate advanced skill level is problematic to say the least.

8. Who is considered advanced may be more appropriately decided by the individual organizations that oversee and/or train the specialties in our field - such as the Rolf Institute, AOBTA, Feldenkrais Guild, and other education institutions or organizations that can responsibly verify advanced skill levels.  Only they can look closely enough at the individual practitioners to genuinely assess whether their knowledge and skills are advanced.

In sum, NCBTMB is proposing to make a bad decision which would affect the whole field, apparently on the basis of their own needs as an organization and the opinions of a minority whom they have preferred to survey.  Additionally, to do this at the expense of the field which supports them is extremely unfortunate. We must all do what we can to prevent this.

I again encourage you to respond by emailing everyone you know who practices or is involved in the massage field, the NCBTMB and other key people, organizations and massage magazines.

I love our field, as I know you all do. And I am protective of its highest aspirations which I do believe we all want to see respected in the decisions made affecting our field.

Co-Director
Lauterstein-Conway Massage School
4701-B Burnet Road
Austin, TX 78756

Anatomy Review: The Erector Spinae System

Origin: Sacrum and iliac crest of pelvis, Insertion: All ribs, transverse and spinous processes of all vertebrae up to C2; mastoid process of the temporal bone, Action: Bilateral: extension of the spine, (Excessive – lumbar and cervical lordosis; thoracic kyphosis), Unilateral: lateral flexion (Excessive – scoliosis), Antagonist: Rectus abdominis (or gravity)

The erector spinae is more a whole muscle system than a single muscle. This system arises from the sacrum and pelvis and creeps up attaching like so many vines to the spine, ribs and back of the skull. There are three tracts. The iliocostalis is the lateral tract, the awareness of which can help the client sense how broad the back actually is. Often the sense of broadness will be lost with the preoccupation born of pain toward the center of the back. The longissimus (the “longest”), the intermediate tract, attaches to the ribs and transverse processes of the vertebrae. In its uppermost portion it actually attaches to the mastoid process under the sternocliedomastoid. Awareness of the tract can therefore help on sense how very long the back is, in truth extending there are the way from the tailbone to the back of the head! The medial tract, the spinalis, attaches to the spinous processes up to the axis.

Because, in our work and postural habits, most of us lean forward with our trunks, the erector spinae are often kept in a state of chronic eccentric contraction. That is, while being lengthened as we hunch over, they must yet contract so we don’t fall forward altogether. As mentioned earlier, chronic eccentric contraction is often a source of musculo-skeletal pain as the muscle is being given a double message – let go/hold on.

Imagine the strain involved in forever trying to reel in a fish that will never give up. This is too often the predicament of the erector spinae and the other muscles of the back. Imagine a yet more unfortunate fisherman, who, after years of holding this tireless fish at bay, is finally yanked off the boat, uprooted by superior force. This is often what is occurring in lower back pain. After years of holding us up, the muscles of the back, overwhelmed finally by gravity’s tireless force, start literally to uproot via tiny tears in the muscles and connective tissues attaching to the sacrum and pelvis. At this point, if this is what is happening, toe touches, the yoga posture “the plough and such stretches will only aggravate the problem, further tearing the fibers of the lower back.

The task of the massage therapist here would be to “re-root” the spine, stroking “in” toward the spine and down toward the sacrum. This is only one possible cause of lower back pain, however. Techniques of massage, anatomical analyses and exercises must be carefully tailored for each individual problem.

Review anatomy or learn a new modality.

Beyond the Immune System: Making History with Massage Part 2

Let's take a moment for reverie.  For a minute just imagine that you are receiving an incredible massage.  Not just a good massage - an incredible massage, anywhere in or out of this universe, from anyone or anything.  Enjoy imagining receiving your most ideal, incredible massage.  (Please breathe and pause).

My guess, from having talked now with thousands of massage students, clients and therapists, is that some elements of what you experienced may have included feelings of total safety and a letting go of anxiety; a sense of unimpeded being; a sense of being un-isolated and easily connected to all of yourself and the environment you are at home in.

Massage is not a very revealing word for what we do.  From the experiences people report, it is certainly more accurate to describe it, for instance, as re-connection therapy.  Virtually everyone you ask, when they are freed to imagine what is or has been most extraordinary about receiving massage, report this sense of deep self-acceptance and a deep sense of being at home in this world.

Yet something about the concept of immunity kept bugging me.  I decided to look it up in the dictionary.  It means, get this, "exempt from public service."  AHA!  I felt at once the glee of discovery and the tragedy imbedded in the very root of the word.  By placing immunity, "exemption from public service", at the center of our healing ideology, our society has hitherto made disconnection, successful isolation, as the sine qua non for health.  Everyone's an island!  This isn't a definition of health.  It's a prescription for loneliness and dis-ease!

So now of course it all came together - what's the opposite of immunity? - COMMUNITY, meaning to "serve together."  Let's look and see what may be the beginnings of a community-based model for health.

What happens in a great massage?  We get a direct and extremely thorough experience of being beyond an immunity-based orientation.  The macro-immune system shuts down and we let someone else's being contact us.  We step beyond immune-based living, beyond isolation, literally into community or, if you like, communion, an experience of oneness with another being.  We are one, if only for moment which feels like an eternity because in oneness our everyday sense of time and space is gone.  This touch of communion takes us out of our narrow selves and restores us to a larger, saner whole. 

Insanity can be seen as the world-view based on the belief that we are fundamentally separate isolated beings with no connection to each other.  But even on a rigorous scientific level we encounter primarily connection and community:  atomic - there is no atom belonging to or defining me as opposed to the environment; ecology - the science of the environment in which interdependence and co-evolution are the rule; sociology - studying the intricately interwoven tapestry of culture requisite to civilization.  Please look around at the world we share!  Not even to mention our connection in time - evolution and history.  As a matter of fact, from a scientific standpoint it is virtually impossible to prove the existence of separate beings!  The fabric and interweave are what's obvious.  On this common sense level then science and religion agree in saying there is no separate self-existing self, except as a more or less conveniently held fiction for the definite but limited benefit of certain "self-conscious" organisms.

In a precise sense we are rescued from isolation by massage.  We are, in other words, saved.  It is no accident that God's saving grace, his life-giving touch of Adam, is so commonly used in therapists' logos and literature.  Salvation means whole, not yet split.

Eating of the tree of knowledge really has been rough.  With our enhanced cortical capacity to draw distinctions we divided up the world into you/me, good/evil, us/them, friend/foe ever since and it has nearly killed us!  At the same time in the spiritual realm and recently in science, we see a striving for wholeness.  Gustav Schwenk in his incredible work, Sensitive Chaos shows how water inherently strives to form a circle - that's why it meanders as a river, to try to re-unite with itself in circular form.  Sometimes I think human life is just striving for re-union on the basis of its fundamental water nature.

In massage we are redeemed by this wonderful touch from the sense of being isolated.  We remember our larger self.  We are not fundamentally separate.  Our deep need for community is fed.  The community grows and we are more alive.  While still getting permission from the person's being, and protecting the person from harm, we affirm a new, more united experience of being.  This is the second coming.  Coming home to oneness.

This is what we have to teach.  This is what we have to learn.

My School's Logo: The Secret of its Origin.

Tonight in his speech, President Barack Obama said, "For in our hands lies the ability to shape our world."

And it took me right back to the origin of our school's logo.

Years ago I visited a potter's studio in Hillsborough, New Hampshire.  His work was brilliant and inspiring and I left with his brochure.

On the front it had a photo of his arm and hand resting, palm open, on an oblong cylinder of raw clay.

That hand touching the primal material of his work moved me deeply.

Cut to a train ride in 1977, I was working through the book, What Color is Your Parachute?, trying to  unearth my life's work.

I'd just completed the exercises; I set the book down and thought, "I'm going to become a massage therapist."

And the next thought to come surprised me, because I didn't normally think about those things.

I thought, "I guess I'll need a logo."

And the vision of that potter's brochure came up.  Then I just took my magic marker and drew the line drawing of a hand resting gently on a back.

In 1988 when John Conway and I decided to start our school, he suggested we use my logo for the school.  I was delighted.

We made it a little more abstract - some people just see a pretty graphic, some see the hand and back, some see a mountain range, or an air current.

But I know it's a shape of inspiration that came to me as I contemplated a new life.

It came to me because I knew somewhere that for me and for each and every one of you - be you potter, massage therapist, keyboard jockey, mother, truck driver, scientist, musician -  we have a responsibility and incredible opportunity.

"For in our hands lies the ability to shape our world."

Homage to the Feet: Part One

by David Lauterstein

There are 206 bones in the body, 52 of them are in the feet! It’s amazing that these two small yet marvelously engineered structures can support our entire weight without being crushed or giving way. It’s little short of miraculous that they also constantly balance out the infinite varieties of motion going on in the body above them.

First, picture the bones of the lower leg and ankle. The shinbone - the stoutest in the body - is the tibia. Along the outside of the tibia runs the fibula. It also enlarges around its bottom to form what we think of as the outer “ankle bone”. The tibia is the main weight-beating one of the foot. It rests in turn on a bone which comes between it and the heel - called the talus. The talus looks like a flattened hammerhead facing forward. Ankle movement largely takes place between the tibia and the talus. The heel bone, the calcaneus, is the largest and strongest bone of the foot. Side-to-side movement of the foot happens largely at the joint between the talus and calcaneus. In front of the heel are two bones which help transmit the body weight through the inner and outer arches of the foot. These are the navicular and the cuboid. In front of the former are the 3 cuneiform bones. Beyond these and the cuboid lie the 5 long metatarsals. And, beyond these, the phalanges, better know as the toe bones or “tootsies!”

So what are the arches exactly? Please note the arches are not things, arching is something the muscles, ligaments and bones of the foot cooperate in doing. Looking at the inner longitudinal arch - this arch is formed by muscles which run on the underside of the foot from the heel to the toes. As these muscles contract, they bow the arch of the foot; much as tightening a bow string increases the curve of the bow. Often problems arise here when we wear shoes which restrict our feet so that their movement actually is more like hooves. The delicate muscles of the foot, being asked neither to lengthen nor shorten much, become stuck at one length. Thus, the foot can lose some of its capacity to arch and body loses some of its spring.

When working well, the muscles on the underside of the foot are the bow strings which bend the arch and our body an the arrow which the foot propells up and forward. But when is the last time you felt that? Try to imagine this - it can give you quite a lift!

The most true-to-life visualization of the foot and its arching is of a three-poled geodesic dome tent. In the tent, as in the foot, the lift and balance is essentially provided by tensions in the soft fabric, the muscles, fascia and ligaments. But the foot is a tent, which can also move of its own accord. Moreover, the foot is a tent moving of its own accord, which just happens to also be the base of a geodesic Eiffel Tower. This tower is the rest of the body, which itself is moving and gyrating around on its own. Now is this not a miracle indeed?

Homage to the Feet: Part Two will deliver insight on how to effectively touch these “little miracles.” Also, check out TLCschool's upcoming massage continuing education workshops for foot-related knowledge.

Dimensions of Touch: Part Two

by David Lauterstein

In a "virtual" age, a time greatly affected by the pace of computers and their powerful yet imaginary realities, each individual's unmet hunger and the social need for the actual becomes more and more urgent. Touch is a medium of actual reality. Touch is a medium of living reality, just as light is a medium for physical reality. Touch implies not just physical contact - would you say are touched by the pen as you hold it? Touch does require at least three dimensions since the space we live in has, in its everyday aspect, three dimensions - length, height and depth. But the reason why we would not ordinarily say we are "touched" by a pen is that touch implies an active reaching out. The realm of intention and attention implies more dimensions than three. For intentional touch requires not just contact of one structure to another, but also of one energy to another. To touch we need to look beyond just three dimensions - into energetic quality, into relationship, into love - very real things that certainly can not be explained by everyday geometry. Let us - right off the bat - help lessen the tendency to excessive mystify energy. Consider shaking hands. When you meet someone and shake his or her hand, you notice the structure of the hand, but also more than that. You get the feeling of their energy from how they grip. How they are relating to you is their energy as manifested through the way they are choosing to use their structure. In our "virtual" world, structure and energy are separated. In conventional medicine, for example, a diseased lung is viewed as a thing to be fixed. The energy dimension of the person - the feelings, their thoughts, some of which may have played a role in creating the disease, these are often ignored. And people feel disconnected today in many ways - from each other, from their own bodies, from their true selves, from nature. There is only one way to connect structure and energy - touch - because touch of course involves structure, physical contact, and it also requires energy, intentional contact. It is not possible to address the disconnection endemic within the modern world without touch. With a growing sense of wonder I keep rediscovering how touching is the only way to connect structure and energy. Martin Buber said, "It is not the educational intention which is fruitful, but it is the meeting which is educationally fruitful." Taking the statement one step higher, we might say that it is, by definition, meeting and perhaps only meeting which is fruitful. Until we meet, nothing new is born. And touch is perhaps the purest form of meeting. It is my contention that, beyond the usual three, there are four specific dimensions to meeting through touch. The growing science and art of truly meeting is the growing edge of humanity. The geometry of this meeting is the geometry of healing and of touch. As we explore each of these dimensions in turn we encounter lessons about being alive that augment the lives of each of us who want, who insist more and more loudly, on individual and collective lives of deeper meaning.

Graceful Verticality - The Fourth Dimension of Touch

Most structural models show humans supporting themselves in a largely vertical manner. All our major anatomical structures are vertical in their orientation - the skeleton, nervous system, lymph and blood flow, the muscles. And the rich traditions of energy theory as well have a startling level of agreement. The meridians of Chinese medicine, chakras, kundalini, the nadis of the Indian view, Western bioenergetic models of body-oriented psychotherapy - each speaks of energy as flowing vertically through the human body, between heaven and earth. So in exploring how being in touch comes to have power in the world, how we stand is essential. For, in balance, the more relaxedly vertical, the more free and upright we are, the more our structure and the energy flowing through it are enhanced. The American Indians ask a wonderful question referring to personal integrity, "How do you stand with respect the four directions?" Try this experiment - stand next to friend who is sitting in chair with his or her eyes closed. Standing rigidly vertical, at "attention", touch the person on the shoulder for ten seconds. Then disengage and discuss together how that felt. Now stand slumped over and repeat the experiment. Finally, stand gracefully erect, more a graceful reed than a rod, and repeat the experiment. In most cases touch from a rigid body feels mechanical, inhuman. In the case of the slumped over body, it may feel hulking, de-energized or somewhat "creepy". In the case of the touch from a gracefully vertical body, the energy feels more available, less defended, freer. The experienced voltage of this touch is greater. This experiment reminds us that, though we may establish contact with our hands, we do not just touch with our hands, we touch with our whole self. We can see and cultivate our meeting each other by noticing this tender discovery. Touch acquires its maximum energy when we stand up and face each other as free, inquiring beings. A touch that arises from a body that has been allowed to grow, to ascend, to be free in the world, this touch is much higher in its transformative potential. Free, undefended touch is positively contagious. It lets those we touch know in a bodily felt way - there is more room for freedom, more room for love, more room for grace than we often imagine. With this high form of touch, we can stand up for each other and succeed together. Without it we stand apart filled with longings for a fuller life. The fulfillment of life requires this graceful stance and this touch that unites us with heaven, with earth and with each other. Touch with graceful verticality also conveys a sense of lightness of being since, appropriately aligned, we stand and move with less effort. Touch born of a lighter experience of self is en-lightening for others. People suffer from treating themselves and other as mere things, just as structures. This gives rise to the experience of life being literally and figuratively too hard. Energetically potentiated touch dissolves the sense of life being too hard. The experience of energy dissolves the excessive solidity of the world. It opens us up to the essential softness and malleability of reality. So we see the enormous potential for standing by each other. Krishnamurti said that if two people could totally cooperate the world would be instantaneously transformed. This strong is our standing together face-to-face. Every time we stand together as free beings and touch, in some way our world is transformed in that very instant.

Heartful Touch - The Fifth Dimension

"The best and most beautiful things can not be seen or even touched but must be felt with the heart," said Helen Keller. However, it is true as well to say - when we touch with our hearts, it is a most beautiful thing. Emotion adds a new dimension to the realm of touch. The residence for the emotions from which we reach out is the realm of the heart. Anatomically this includes the sternum, ribs, the thoracic vertebrae, lungs, and thymus gland, a very important member of the immune system. So in this realm we encounter much movement - the breathing being, the pulses of life, the spinal cord waving in fluid within the vertebral canal. The realm of the heart is a moving one. It is no surprise that "e-motion", the intention to "move outward" from deep within is of its essence. When we feel the need, whether from real or imagined realities, to defend ourselves, one of the first manifestations of this defense is to tense up around the heart. Self-protection is a self-shielding. Chinese medicine even identifies an organ function called the "heart protector". We grow up in a culture and in families where we naturally develop habitually defended ways of being. As a culture, we just beginning to acknowledge the pervasiveness of abuse, both overt and covert. Within chronically abusive or confusing realities, we become chronically defended. Chronic tension around the heart and lungs becomes a life-limiting factor. And this in turn limits our capacity to touch and be touched. "Reach out and touch someone," - ironically, the slogan for the major American phone system (talk about virtual reality misappropriating the hallmark of the actual!) - turns out to be the primary directive for addressing this tension. First we need to reach from deep inside and touch the tense or hurting places within us. This calls for bravery, another of the characteristics of the heart realm. For to reach out and touch all of ourselves or all of someone else - this is one of the bravest things a person can do. As we touch our chronic tensions, they begin, as if by magic, to dissolve - because the healing we seek involves the touching of it fully with human presence. The heart's participation in human touch is a natural process of our growth. As we mature, we move from early childhood survival issues associated with learning life fundamentals, how to consciously move, feed ourselves, sit, stand up, to the integration of our sexuality, associated with the second chakra, to forming our own identity as a young adult. The further ascent then into the heart realm brings in the unprecedented ability and desire to give to others out of a real and growing abundance. Into the spaciousness of the heart flows our energy like springs into a lake. And this energetic level generates not only a new quality of energy flow but a new direction as well. For our arms and hands enable us to move out with feeling from deep within us horizontally into the world around us. In this evolutionary movement we become sustaining not just to ourselves through the vertical energy flow, but as well to the whole world around us. Nourished by others and our own self-development, we attain escape velocity from the mere verticality of self-support. Our impulse to reach and touch with love grows, "our great love grows and grows." It is with reference to our feeling-filled movements that Pablo Neruda said, "Hands make the world each day." In the symbol of the cross this beautiful work of world-making is empowered. At the heart we encounter the living crossroads in each of us at which we decide each day whether to touch ourselves and others fully, wholeheartedly. Even the chakras speak to us of the power of our hearts as the meeting places for the horizontal flow of love which makes the world go 'round as well as their role in the vertical flow between heaven and earth. For underlying the heart are the three lower chakras associated with the base of the spine, the sacral area and the belly. Above the heart lie the throat, brow and crown. This places the heart at the precise energetic center of human life. In a Chinese classic it is said most profoundly, "Heaven and Earth meet in the heart. It is their destiny and place of rendezvous."

Mindful Touch - the Sixth Dimension

When we meet as equals, as free inquiring human beings, we notice that we touch with our whole selves. Since we are not divided, since each of us is a unity of body, mind and spirit, when we touch we do so with our minds and spirits as well as our bodies. How exactly do we touch with our minds? For it is the presence of understanding in touch that constitutes its sixth dimension. In the Bible it says that Adam "knew" Eve. This is usually taken to be a euphemism for making love. But let us we step back and look at what this "knew" may mean? What if this means that Adam was close enough to Eve to really know how she felt? It is interesting to note here that the legal definition of sanity is the capacity to imagine how someone else feels. When I touch someone with a rational and intuitive knowledge regarding how they feel, then the touch communicates not just care, but understanding as well, fundamental sanity. To get to know someone takes time. Notice how good it feels to imagine the touch of someone who truly knows and loves us. Knowing touch is a touch that happens when people care enough to take the time to get to know one another. The rhythm in which this touch comes to be is much slower than just the everyday bumping into one another which takes hardly any time. In the nature of knowing touch is given also the time required to get to know, time literally lives in this touch quality. For knowing is always a process. Understanding touch is one that learns, is curious, is a touch open to the mystery of another's being unfolding in time. Whether we touch as a friends, lovers, parent and child, therapist and client, there is a call and response form to the touch relationship. I touch my son on the shoulder and notice his response - it may be a freeze, a leaning into, reaching out, a pulling or pushing away, a watchful, waiting response. Notice how the archetypes of relationship are naked actions in this realm of touch - how do we meet? how does our relationship develop over time? How poignantly Carole King expressed it in the archetypal words of "But will You Love Me Tomorrow". Will we love each other today? Will we take the care to get to know one another slowly but surely so that we can more and more experience the connection we all yearn so much for? In the call and response of touching each other, we actively and vulnerably seek the ever-changing answer to this question. After each day of creation, it is said that God saw that it was good. In the call and response of touch, we similarly notice what touch has wrought. Very often, thank God, we notice that it is indeed good! It is important for us to see and to acknowledge the effects of reaching out and touching. Jung said that, if we do not celebrate our successes, we become sick. The experience of being touched with love and understanding translates into an experience of feeling beautiful and worthy. It is part of the healing process to see each other truly, to celebrate, to take in and be nourished by the acceptance of our touch and by the success of our efforts to connect with each other. In this way knowing touch fills our hearts and minds with joy.

The Alchemy of Touch - the Seventh Dimension

Touch acquires, mysteriously or perhaps by God's grace, a seventh dimension. Within this dimension we experience the presence of, in addition to you and me, a third energy, one which is in some sense created by our meeting. The poet Machado said, "Between waking dreaming, there is a third thing." Just so between you and me, there is a third thing. And we are now both touched by it. Shall we say it is Love? We can not make it happen. Even in the Bible it says that on the seventh day of creation God rested. Did he just take the day off? Take a bath? Perhaps he actually created football on the sixth day and watched the game all day Sunday! I never much considered the seventh day as a very big deal. But the more I have learned about the seventh dimension of touch, the more the seventh day imagery and essence has unfolded. Let us then consider the seventh day not as the rest period after the creation, but as its very pinnacle. How sweet to feel in our hearts that the rest, the letting go, the peaceful surrendering of the universe to itself is the ultimate act of creation! When we touch, we can not make anything extraordinary happen. We can not force grace with will. But if we touch with devotion and yet with an effortless letting go, we open a window through which the extraordinary is most free to enter. The presence of the extraordinary, whether we experience it as love, spirit, God, an "altered state", or any other of its infinite forms, is recognized by its alchemical power. The presence of the seventh dimension is, by definition, transformative. And the recognition that, whether we will it or not, any touch could be transformational, makes our attitude toward touch inherently reverential. The embarrassment around touch that gives rise to so many jokes and ambivalent behaviors - this is a side effect of the inner knowledge that truly touching is always an invitation for God to touch us. As we rest in touch, we can feel the reaching out as a further opening inward to being deeply touched and healed inside. When we touch ultimately it is like awakening from a dream. In this dream we have imagined ourselves as separate, we have thought we were alone. With this touch we know we are not alone, we are an integral part of a wide world which includes us. It is our isolated self that is the illusion. Unity is our essence, not separation. In this experience of unity through touch, the seven dimensions are alive. Then we experience the true, the redemptive character of touch. We experience ourselves as part of " the secret one slowly growing a body." How extraordinary! May all the heavens rejoice! As Nietzsche wrote almost shouting in the days of his life, "My Maestro Pietro, sing me a new song! The earth is transfigured and all the heavens rejoice!" The seven dimensions of touch beget each other. Initial contact leads to movement together, movement calls for breath. From breath, human life arises and stands up on earth. As we stand face-to face, we can now begin to touch heart to heart. and the honest experience of each other leads to understanding, to knowledge of oneself and the other. Knowledge leads beyond itself, to a letting go into mystery, into the unknown and the unwilled. Through the alchemy of touch we experience the gift of being, in every bit of space and time within us, a living part of God's body.