Posted on Wed, Mar 24, 2010
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.
Posted on Fri, Mar 19, 2010
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!
Posted on Fri, Feb 12, 2010
The scalenes are actually the uppermost of the intercostals muscles, those muscles lying between your ribs that assist inhalation and exhalation. However, big surprise, there are no ribs in the neck! Actually a number of books say the scalenes attach to the vestigial ribs of the cervical vertebrae. That is, little buds appear on the cervical vertebrae that in fish, for instance, would develop into ribs, but in humans they end up being just little bumps to which the scalene muscles attach.
Who ordinarily thinks about breathing with their neck? Yet scalenes do have a very important respiratory function. They may indeed be, next to the diaphragm, the second most important muscles of respiration. The scalenes move the ribcage from above, while the thoracic diaphragm moves it from below.
The anterior scalene runs from the side of the second cervical vertebrae down to the first rib beneath the clavicle. Because it attaches to the front of that rib, the chronic contraction of the anterior scalene is one of the muscles that pulls our head forward; in chronic head-forward posture it is useful to address this muscle among others. The medial and posterior scalenes are more along the side of the neck and therefore have more to do with tilting the head to one side or the other.
It is common in whiplash that the scalenes are injured as the head is whipped forward then forcefully back, slightly tearing some of these muscle fibers through a sudden excessive stretch.
Energetically, the scalenes can be connected with all the virtues and challenges of the neck. The head forward posture can signify sadness, self-esteem issues, reactions to recent or long-held defeats. General neck tension will also manifest in the scalenes. That tension points to all the various reasons for inhibitions or tensions people may have about expressing themselves.
Try this Massage Technique
Here is a very helpful Deep Massage fulcrum which affects the scalenes as well as the superficial posterior neck muscles.
-
Therapist: seated at the head of the table
- Client: supine
- Center yourself
Working on the left side of the scalenes, place your middle finger, assisted by your other fingers, near the origin of the sternocleidomastoid, just above the sternal end of the clavicle. Take out the looseness.
THROUGHOUT THIS TECHNIQUE IT WILL BE BETTER TO USE LESS, RATHER THAN MORE PRESSURE. HONOR THE DELICACY OF THE MUSCLES AND VESSELS HERE!
This fulcrum utilizes the active movement of the client. Ask the client to lift the chin as if looking up. This will take up the slack, stretching the anterior scalenes particularly. Now let us add additional vectors, again in a movement partnership. Ask the client to slowly turn the head to their right, as if to look over the right shoulder. As they move draw your fingers horizontally through the tissues on the left side of the neck. For this whole pass you are at the level of C6 and 7.
You may continue with your tractioning of the fascia all the way back as far as the spinous processes at the center of the neck. In this case, you will have gone considerably past the scalenes, but you will more completely address the soft tissues of the neck pulling them back and with them the head comes back more of top of the body instead of being projected out in front of it.
Now ask your client to bring their head back to center. Begin a second fulcrum, now at the level of the middle of the neck, around C3-5. Repeat each of the steps above. Finally, asking your client to return to center again, begin a third fulcrum at the level of C1-2.
You should repeat these steps on the other side - with the client turning their head to the left, drawing your fingers through the right side of the neck in three passes with movement as described above.
Posted on Tue, Feb 09, 2010
There are those people who are drawn to play music, and they can not go a day or two without wanting to pick up the guitar. There are those who love writing. Finding words for their experiences gives their lives an essential, deeper meaning.
Similarly there are those who are drawn to touch. Touch is more universal than music or writing because, in some manner or other, almost everyone wants to touch and be touched. It is an essential way to know we are not alone.
Yet there are those who are drawn to touch in quite the same way as the musician or writer are drawn to their arts. We feel the need to touch in a way that has little to do with resolving our loneliness. It is not self-centered.
We want this touch to lift up the spirits of those around us. Just as the musician dreams of a people being animated to dance through their music, we dream of people’s pain and suffering being relieved.
This incredible art and science, in the most immediate way - body to body, mind to mind, and heart to heart - makes this world a better place.
Interested in learning more about a career in massage therapy? Lauterstein-Conway Massage School is enrolling people who want to make an impact with touch!
Posted on Thu, May 21, 2009
By David Lauterstein, as published the World Massage Festival, which David has been nominated as a 2011 Hall of Fame inductee.
I am David Lauterstein, Co-founder of The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School in Austin. I have been a massage therapy teacher since 1982 and therapist since 1977.
Here's my story!
I was raised in Chicago by a mother who was a pianist, a father who was a dentist, and my Godmother who was a tall, wonderful African-American woman, Millie Barry.
My earliest interest was music and the first 25 years of my life that was my passion. I played guitar, banjo, dobro, and mandolin throughout high school.
I loved playing with bluesmen particularly and was good friends with MIchael Bloomfield. I also had the honor to play with Otis Spann and others and to meet Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, Son House, Fred McDowell, Sleepy John Ester, Big Joe Williams and many other wonderful folk musicians.
In 1967 I studied Indian classical music at the Society for the Study of Eastern Arts in Berkeley, California. Then I did an about face and decided to get my degree in Western classical music, studying mostly at the University of Illinois where I got my degree in music composition and spent a year doing post-graduate studies with Wolf Rosenberg in Munich.
Beginning in 1972, my interests in yoga, martial arts, and psychotherapy started becoming more important to me and I began transitioning to what I later discovered as my life work - massage therapy.
Coming back from Munich, I got into Gestalt psychotherapy, body-centered explorations, and Rolfing. My Rolfing experiences, at the hands primarily of Allen Davidson, were especially profound. I started a study group with Allen and a number of other Rolfers, psychotherapists, and martial artists. During the time of that study group I found myself experimenting more and more with bodywork and in 1977 I graduated from the Chicago School of Massage Therapy and began a professional practice in massage therapy in Chicago.
I practiced for a number of years and learned by trading and receiving from anyone in town or passing through. Thus, I was exposed early on to Aston Patterning, Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique, Polarity, Hoshino Therapy, Zero Balancing, body-centered psychotherapy, shiatsu, and other fascinating approaches.
In 1982 I met Rolfer, Daniel Blake, who wanted to teach a training in "Structural Bodywork". This was his offshoot of Rolfing in which he tried to teach how Ida Rolf actually practiced (she rarely did the 10-session recipe unless she was teaching). In 1982-83 I did 500 hours of advanced training with Daniel and was certified by the Structural Bodywork Institute. At that time, I was also fascinated with Craniosacral Therapy and studied with Daniel Bensky and the Australian osteopath, Charles Lincoln and his wife Deborah. I also studied character structure with body-centered psychotherapist, Robert Phillips and began a long association with psychotherapist, Paul D. Brown.
In 1982 I began teaching at the Chicago School of Massage Therapy. I was, along with Jim Hackett, the primary instructor in anatomy and deep tissue massage.
I discovered how much I loved teaching. Shortly thereafter I began teaching throughout the U.S. Some of my first workshops were in Texas and I fell in love with Austin. At this time I wrote the book, Putting the Soul Back in the Body: A Manual of Imaginative Anatomy for Massage Therapists.
I moved to Austin in 1984 with the intention of just teaching advanced trainings. However, I found that good basic training was lacking. So I joined forces with the first massage school in Texas, the Texas School of Massage Studies, becoming their Dean of Faculty. As such, the first thing I did was hire an advanced student of mine, John Conway. At this time, I was also the editor of the national magazine, the Massage Therapy Journal.
After three and half years at the Texas School of Massage Studies, John and i decided we wanted to work at a school that was "run in a manner as healing as the subjects we teach". We both deeply wanted to be teaching at a school in which the compassionate and exacting principles governing high level massage were practiced also in the way that staff and students were treated. So we started The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School in January, 1989.
Although Texas at that time required only 250 hours, we began with a radical three semester curriculum encompassing 700 hours from our very start! We covered Swedish, Deep, Sports Massage, and Shiatsu. We also included advanced studies in psychologically-oriented bodywork, Craniosacral therapy, Zero Balancing, and advanced Structural Bodywork.
Paralleling these early years, I began in 1986 studying Zero Balancing with its founder, Dr. Fritz Smith, MD. I found in classes and discussions with Fritz that the Deep Massage teaching I had been doing dovetailed remarkably with Zero Balancing's philosophy and practice. In the 23 years since I have been teaching primarily Deep Massage: The Lauterstein Method and Zero Balancing. What distinguishes these approaches is a very conscious engagement of both the body's structure as well its energy. So many bodyworkers either practice medically or in a new age manner - yet I've always been interested in how to practice in a unified manner - with scientific rigor as well as heightened imagination and spirit.
I have taught throughout the U.S. since 1982 and in England also annually since 1996. I have written the Seven Dimensions of Touch, What is Zero Balancing?, the Poetics of Touch and other essays published internationally.
In 2008 I recorded my first CD for massage and bodywork, Roots and Branches. This is the first CD recorded live in the studio simultaneous to actual massages
being performed in the studio - so we would have a music that actually arose from massage itself. I also have recorded two DVD's of Deep Massage: The Lauterstein Method which accompany the workshops I teach.
The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School has just celebrated its 20th Anniversary! I am proud of our training of 1000's of wonderful therapists. We continue to strive each day for the highest standards in the field! I have been a therapist for 32 years yet I am still struck with wonder by the endless depth of what we learn and what we can accomplish with bodywork and high level education.
Posted on Thu, Feb 26, 2009
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."