Chasing solutions

Are you someone who has to get every new self help book that comes out?  Does the mention of a new supplement or health care discovery send you to the store to try it out?  Does the thought of a promising new diet send thrills of excitement down your body?

In a different realm:  are you always on the lookout for the next class that will teach you some new technique for your art or religion or business, thinking that this at last will be the thing that will finally pay off?  Are your thoughts plagued by things such as "if only I knew how to do that…?"  

Or do you suffer from some chronic condition, and go from practitioner to practitioner to find a solution?  Does a sense of failure, unworthiness, or frustration accompany you through life?

The common thread between all of these questions is that sometimes or often we seek external solutions to internal problems.  We go to a doctor or a therapist and say "Fix me."  We take classes in various techniques to improve what we do and expect that a three hour seminar will magically unlock a door.  We try new diets and supplements and expect a miracle every single time.

As Americans, we are acculturated to desire and expect instant solutions, and we experience great frustrations when they do not appear.  As a society, we are trained by the western medical paradigm to treat the body as a machine, with fixable or replaceable parts, with no soul, with no emotional overlays.  We are blamed by doctors for not getting well on their schedule.  We are taught to discount our feelings and emotions and intuition because they are not "rational."  We are obsessed with technology as a way to cure just about everything.  We are taught in school that if you do this and this in a particular order, that X result is to be expected, and if you don't get X then you did it wrong and you are stupid and unworthy of a passing grade.

The thing is, nearly all of our problems are things we create for ourselves.  We have to be willing to put energy into our own improvement, whether it be in the realm of art, business, personal growth, spiritual development, or physical health.  There is a life-style component to all of these areas, and that component is the willingness to work at it.  When you seek deeper truths about whatever it is you are doing, and you open the door to a new exploration, you then take on a responsibility to the work.  The work will become your teacher, but you have to be willing to listen, to observe, to pay attention, to be present not only with yourself but with everything around you.

When I teach ethics classes as well as bodywork classes, I emphasize the practice of Radical (or Ruthless) Self Awareness.  I want all my students to begin the process of recognizing and acknowledging their shadow side, because without knowing yourself intimately, you cannot begin to grow beyond that.  I truly believe that being able to love yourself, even the most uncomfortable aspects of yourself, is absolutely vital to being able to initiate processes of growth and change.  

I also ask my clients to recognize their own motivations.  Sometimes I can facilitate their recognition and acceptance of things about themselves that they do not love, and then the work can proceed.  The partnership of the therapeutic practice only works when both the client and the practitioner are putting in the effort.  In my last column in Truly Alive Magazine, I spoke about people's investment in their identity as a potential barrier to receiving bodywork or therapy.  I want to work with my clients in such a way that the barriers may be lowered and they may recognize their own power to heal themselves.

By practicing ruthless self-awareness, we can begin to learn to listen to our bodies, listen to our spirits, and tune into our own guidance.  We can stop getting in our own way, and we can live with ease instead of dis-ease.

Layers of grief

My ex-husband, the father of all my children, passed away in his sleep the other night.  I had been to visit my aging parents in another state, to check on them because their house is getting to be too much for them.  We returned home very late, and then I found out the next morning that he had passed probably that same time when I got home.  He was only 57 years old.

Most of his children hadn't spoken to him recently.  One hadn't seen him in over 5 years.  And yet, when we went through his room, he had photos of everyone, including me, nearby.  How do we reconcile the distance he fostered with his apparent lingering affections and unresolved relationships?

Everyone has so many conflicting layers of grief and emotion.  The instant sainthood conferred by his death does not change the fact that he was an angry person who kept people at bay and was slow to forgive, although it's hard to keep all that in mind when all you wanted was one more chance to say "I loved you still".

I keep returning to the teachings of traditional healing medicine to remind myself that his spirit is now finally free to go home and rest.  And I also know that he and I were beginning to approach some kind of Peace between us, although it would never be the same as it was when we met, the spark of soul mates meeting.  We had a lot to teach each other, a lot to learn from each other, and it was a relationship with many heavy burdens as well as the lovely times.

I think the only reason I am functioning through this crisis was that I have learned the value of neutrality, grounding, and balance.  The diplomacy needed to navigate through a family in shock, especially a family from whom I was divorced, took me on a journey of faith in the process.  Recognizing that everyone must mourn in their own way, and that what is meaningful for us isn't the only thing that is important.  So because he was Catholic, he will have a rosary said and a Mass held… and then later, we will go to the Temazcal and give him a sweat ceremony so we can commune with his memory in a different way.  We will be able to take his ashes and share our memories of what we loved best and release him to the earth and sky and water.

God bless you, Mark.  I hope you are at peace now, and free.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYuIc_4NXJ0

slow time

and so here it is, spring again...

 i feel like a sluggish animal coming slowly out of my hibernation, forcing myself to do the work so that summer and fall will be full of harvest.   it's a complicated dance we are doing, push and pull, the come hither and the go away.  clearing the detritus of winter's left-overs is a huge amount of labor, and yet how necessary to go on.  blame it on the season, or the weather, the fecundity of spring, the mad orgy of growth, reproduction, fruiting.  relationships are changing.  spring is in the air, and in the earth.

Asparagus, the surest sign of spring

the garden calls, the cats twine around and get underfoot.  the trees bloom.  the sun colors the day bright, sometimes harsh, the moonlight silvery and still.  the birds dart and sweep, unconcerned with the world at large.  these rhythms draw me away from clocks and offices, away from highways, and far from hurried days crammed with everything i think i must accomplish.

everything in my life and my practice tells me to go slow.  my partner tells me to "do nothing" for a while every day.  once a week i go to restorative yoga, which by its very nature slips you into stillness.  the way i like to practice bodywork is meditative --  asking the body and allowing time and sacred space to listen for the response.

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i have been working one day a week in a doctor's office, and the way that i am treated there gives me to feel that they have little understanding of what it is to do therapeutic bodywork, its value for the patient, or the energetic investment it takes to be a practitioner.  the doctors seem to think this is like car-repair work, to make the clients feel better, without recognizing skill set i have in palpation and assessment, or how by taking my time i can connect the dots in a different way than they do.  they think too that i am willing to work on someone without talking to them, to just fix what hurts.

because all of this work is run through health insurance (or workers comp or car insurance)  my focus is necessarily on measurable results, goniometers and postural analysis, cure this person from their car wreck in 6 sessions or less.  our medical culture values the quick fix, preferably painless, although for whatever reason we are more than willing to put up with detrimental side-effects in the pursuit of the fast overhaul.  despite the fact that sometimes the best medicine is to do nothing, nearly everyone wants to do something, anything... "just make me feel better fast".

 but chickens lay eggs on their own schedule, not on yours.  which is to say, nothing will happen until it is ready to do so.

what often remains, after the most pressing needs are addressed, are underlying issues that were shaken up during the injury for which the client is being seen.  people come in for back pain from a car accident and end up confiding in me about their marriage, or their children, or their job.  my gift to these people is not just the bodywork, the relaxation, or reduction of pain, but time.  i spend an hour really listening to my clients in a way that no one else does, hearing not only their words but bringing their attention to their own body and how it responds to what they are saying.  insurance does not find this valuable.

i see the value of time spent in the most tangible ways possible.  the slow time of gardening, the patience of the wait:  these are the ways that produce results for me and those around me.

i know my priorities are out of sync with most of the rest of the society that i live in, because to me it is more important to look at the moon than it is to sweep the house or respond to an email.  time spent being still lets me notice all the beauty around me.

many times my clients are not ready to see the beauty within themselves, nor how courageous they have been in living their lives.  sometimes when i bring this up for them, they may turn away from these truths.  my hope is that they will keep these words, even if they were not consciously ready to hear them, and one day, that they too will begin to be able to receive stillness and conscious awareness, and practice compassion for themselves and for the people all around them.  

"The Body Wants To Be Heard"

From praxisucc.com

The laying on of hands is an ancient technique for helping people feel better.  From the simple caress of a mother's hand on a feverish brow, to full-on faith healers, touch is one of the major ways we can communicate healing to each other.  In the Judeo-christian tradition, the purpose behind the laying on of hands was, and still is, to confer a blessing from God.  In medieval Europe, Kings supposedly had the power to cure through their touch.  In one form or another, touch has long been a remedy for human pain and suffering.  We can easily see touch used all over the animal kingdom, as a form of communication, comfort, and play.

    In traditional forms of medical practice, such as Oriental medicine, Ayurveda, Curanderismo, Shamanism, and traditional forms of folk medicine,  manual therapy, that is, touch through massage, manipulation, or energy work, is an integral piece of any treatment.  It is one of the ways that  the practitioner listens to the client.  We can listen not only with ears, but with eyes (observing movement, posture, attitude, tone), and we can strongly and quietly listen through our hands.  I have found that many times, the body will begin to respond through the mere act of being heard.

Introducing Minimal Movement Therapy
    The name comes from the aspect of the work that I have developed in my own practice, particularly as I worked with elderly and fragile clients.  I noticed that when I place my hands gently on two places of the body, generally at either side of one of the diaphragms or along a large muscle group, that the body may spontaneously unwind or relax.  This is not new news:  as I said above, the technique is ancient.  More recently, Barrett Dorko, a physical therapist from Ohio, has been teaching this as "Simple Contact" and he discovered it the same way I did -- through increasing palpatory sensitivity over the 40 years of his clinical practice.  He comes at it from a neuro-physiological standpoint, and I came to it through my understanding of the body's energies, but in the end, I believe all therapists are after the same thing:  we all want our clients to have improved feelings of health and well-being.

    This technique is excellent for re-introducing touch to people who have been hurt by vigorous massage techniques, who are medically fragile, or in a lot of pain.  It is softly reassuring to clients who have bad experiences with touch.  It is non-invasive and yet highly attentive.  It is listening to the client on the deepest, non-verbal level, and allowing their body to re-equilibrate gently and without force.  By engaging the brain and nervous system on a different level, we can facilitate a change or shift in ways that are supportive, comfortable, compassionate, and energetically neutral.

Is it different than any other therapy?
    Minimal Movement Therapy combines knowledge of physical anatomy with sensitive touch, visualization, breath work, intention, patience, and communication with the client at many levels.  It comes from a basis in polarity therapy, combined with craniosacral work, myofascial release, neuromuscular therapy, and good old massage work.  I see MMT as a technique that would be used as part of an integrative whole-body treatment.

    The paradox of healing is that although a person may consciously choose to make the appointment and come in for sessions, the unconscious mind may strongly resist the work.  Even if making a change would feel good or beneficial in other ways, the deep-rooted fears of change can sabotage progress in bodywork.  I strongly admire anyone who makes the choice to get on my table and allow themselves to open up to the vulnerability of receiving bodywork.  It can be a hugely courageous act.
          Minimal Movement Therapy seeks to address this by holding neutral and compassionate space for the client to proceed, both physically and non-physically.  By allowing the body to unwind in its own way and at its own pace, the client feels unhurried.  There is no rush to perform, no "gold standard" of measured improvement.  What arises for the client as they go through the work can be key for that person to developing their own self-awareness.  The body is an excellent barometer of how we are responding to life:  we just need to learn how to read it.