DEEP MASSAGE WITH THE ENLIGHTENED BODY

What follows is a provocative handout to inform and inspire you in your work. Sometimes therapists just think we are performing helpful techniques/services. In truth, when we engage our whole self the result is vastly healthier for both the practitioner and client/patient.

I.   Get grounded.  Work with your legs.

 Virtues - Pause before you do anything. Get ready, get set. All music is framed in silence.  Gravity is the therapist/gravity. Use the energy of earth and your  connection to it to give power to your work.  Interface first with the earth, then with the client.  Then client is also connected and nourished by Mother Earth.

Challenges - losing track of the mind while keeping awareness lower in the body. Fear of falling.  Shame issues. 

Associated tissues/membranes/diaphragms/organs:  the arches of the feet, knees, hips,     and their associated myofascia, the pelvic diaphragm, the anus and coccyx

Opening actions:  walking, dancing, kicking, elimination, breathing in and out of pelvic   diaphragm.

II.  Center Yourself.  Access your basic excitement. Go. Begin moving with psychophysical clarity.

 Virtues - Excitement  - all healing is (partially) sexual healing. Generativity. Gives thrust to what's being conveyed. Doing therapy from the hara, one's birthplace/energetic origin.  Initiatory energy. Basic rhythmicity. Swing. Client finds their healing process delightfully irresistible. 

            "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing." -- Duke Ellington

            "Between the conscious and the unconscious the mind has put up a swing."  -- Kabir

Challenges:  Fear of inappropriate behavior erupting in oneself or others. How to contact boundaries and maintain interface with clarity, how to be so close and yet so clear.

Associated tissues/membranes/diaphragms/organs: the genitals, reproductive system, bladder and colon, the gluteals and deep lateral rotators, iliacus, the hara/tan tien, the sacrum.

Opening actions:  the pelvic clock, hara breathing, dancing, sex, bioenergetic movements, kundalini yoga

III.  Ride your breath. 

Virtues - Gives life, power, passion. Gives more oxygen to every cell. Gives permission to clients to be fully alive, cellularly present.  Brings softness and relaxation into the therapeutic situation.  Invokes spirit.

Challenges:  pleasure/life threshold, fear of feelings, of losing the mind.

Associated tissues/membranes/diaphragms/organs: the thoracic diaphragm, one's guts:    the pancreas, the adrenals, liver, small intestines, lumbar erectors, psoas, multifidus, quadratus lumborum, and abdominal muscles, T 10 - L5.

Opening actions:  diaphragmatic breathing exercises/explorations, lower back     mobilizations, laughing and crying, dancing, yoga/stretches for this area.

IV.  Connect with deep feeling - especially compassion.

 Virtues -  Helps clients have a bodily felt experience of love and self-acceptance, of being completely open to their feelings. Enhances atmosphere of therapy room as a loving, healing place. The hands can be the “voice” of your heart. 

“Heaven and Earth meet in the heart.  It is their destiny and place of rendezvous.”  - Yellow Emperor’s Classic.

Challenges - Making yourself vulnerable to all clients, even the ones you may find frustrating or difficult.  Caring even while feeling frustrated. 

Associated tissues/membranes/diaphragms/organs: the heart, lungs, thymus, rhomboids and pectorals, and other shoulder girdle muscles, the myofascia of the  arms and hands, the thoracic outlet, T 2-9.

Opening actions:  breathing exercises/explorations, working on one's boundary and intimacy issues, graceful and forceful mobilizations of one's arms and hands, tai chi, martial arts.

V.  Letting your voice, breath and choice of words express your feelings and understandings as articulately as your hands.

Virtues -- your breath is the source of your voice and your hands' energy.Hands   channel the breath much as does the singing voice.  Quality of touch and voice  affect the client like a beautiful, moving music.  Clarity of communication.  Furthering the circulation of the truth.  Savoring the exquisite process of breathing, of talking together and of giving and receiving of high quality touch.

 Challenges -- inhibitions to self-expression; impatience;  difficulty of being  articulate with your voice and hands.  Habit of not breathing freely.

Associated tissues/membranes/diaphragms/organs: thyroid gland,  cervical muscles,  larynx, tongue, teeth, pharynx, nose, C1 - T2

Opening actions:  breathing exercises/explorations, singing, reading aloud, writing poetry, laughing with one's whole face and throat, breathing, lion pose.

VI.  Understanding -- see the truth, yours and others.

 Virtues - Creating your own truth, not quoting it - embodying it. Doing therapy with your eyes and ears. Being curious, observing, listening - noticing working signs. For clients - opening opportunities for their own truths to emerge, to resonate and to further their evolution.

 Challenges - to rediscover your deepest understanding of therapy, and natural principles in healing; to be honest regarding what you don't know; making good eye contact and listening fully.  Becoming conscious of your unconscious wisdom.

 Associated tissues/membranes/diaphragms/organs: the brain, pituitary gland, the eyes and ears, forehead and occiput, temporalis, frontalis and facial muscles, Facial bones   and those of cranial “floor” – occiput, temporals, sphenoid, frontal; zygomatics, maxillae, mandible.

 Opening actions:  eye circles, viewing nature and great art, reading and learning, listening to beautiful music, listening to silence and the sounds of nature, searching out good teachers, lion pose

VII. Accept help from above, beyond and below yourself.

            "Accept your new good luck.  Give your weakness to one who helps."      --  Rumi

Virtues - Being open to learning as we work.  Making spiritual interface through experienced connectedness.  The sense of belonging. Being open to inspiration from  above, beyond and below our usual self.  Letting go.  Using our connection to heaven, as well as earth, to gives     inspiration to our therapy.  "Our gifts rise up to us from pools we can not fathom." Lewis Hyde.  The experience of divine grace. Grace is the therapist. God is the therapist.  And the client! 

 Challenges - Staying open to new answers emerging from beyond our usual knowing.  Negative self-image and the self-critical inner voice occasionally drowning out the higher self.  Perceiving yourself as isolated.

 Associated tissues/membranes/diaphragms/organs - the neurofascial tissues in and around the cranium, pineal gland, epicranius muscle, anterior fontanel, parietal bones.

 Opening actions:  meditation, prayer, yoga, tai chi, cranial work, Zero Balancing, exercising in "the zone"