Massage and the Psyche

Massage can soothe the mind, right?

Is it just the nervous system receiving a massive stimulation of sensory nerves? Such a 'rush' of nerve endings firing produces the well documented release of endorphins and seratonin - the 'feel good' drugs of the human body.

There is another way of looking at this, though. The simplest way to explain it is through TA:

Transactional Analysis (TA) is based on the idea that there are three different parts of the psyche:

• PARENT ego state
• ADULT ego state
• CHILD ego state

These are normally represented by circles, but I don't know how to draw circles in a blog!Anyway, the point I am trying to make is this...

The stuff that creates problems for ourselves inside our heads, often comes to us in the form of Parental Injunctions like "You bad boy. I always said you would come to a bad end!" No matter what we think in our 'Adult' ego state about the unlikely truthfulness of this statement, the fact is in our 'Child' ego state we have a part of us that may still believe this. This makes for a weakend 'Adult' and an inhibited 'Child' energy - so the 'Parent' wins and we feel bad and make bad choices in life.

The purpose of almost all healing change is to form an alliance between the 'Adult' (sane and grown up) and the 'Child' (full of creative energy) in order to withstand the repeated negative historical messages that fly through our heads from the 'Parent'.

Massage has an interesting part to play in this, I think.

Receiving 50 minutes of soothing and nurturing touch is simply heaven to the 'Child'. It builds a strong bond between the 'Child' and the 'Adult' who, after all arranged for the treatment. It also lulls the 'Parent' to sleep, 'cos it is so nice and hypnotic. This is the kind of activity that, over time, can shift the power balance within the psyche so the 'Adult' and the 'Child' can get it together and repulse the weakened messages of the 'Parent'. Energy flows away from the 'Parent' and into the 'Child' and 'Adult'. So this means the more Massage we have, the more energy we have to make life work, .

Certainly this might explain why so many regular clients of NO HANDS Massage therapists seem to make as much therapeutic change in their lives as those that see psychotherapists or analysts - without any words being spoken. With the touch being about as powerful as it can get, the 'Parent' doesn't have a chance!

If you want to see Berne himself talk about the ego states, then check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxlNdOFwtV8

happy oiling!

Gerry

ABOUT GERRY:

Gerry has been a full time Massage therapist and teacher for over 25 years. He also qualified as a UKCP registered Psychotherapist (TA) in 1999.

He is the creator of The NO HANDS Massage Therapy System, which is now one of the most popular Massage approaches in the UK. He has also recently launched the PSYCHOLOGY OF CHANGE, a unique new approach to making lasting change within your life. To learn more about these courses go to www.nohandsmassage.com

THE KING'S DIAPHRAGM

(Or "Why Massage Therapists should never try and synchronise their strokes with their client's breathing!")

Apart form being one of the best films I have seen in years, 'The King's Speech' will always stick in my mind for one particular scene...

It's the bit where dear old Prince Bertie has finally succumbed to the highly progressive and very cheeky techniques of the antipodean speech therapist, Lionel. I mean fancy treating a prince of the realm like an equal - typical aussie!

So the camera pans down to Bertie lying supine on the floor, with our  current Queen's mother (recently deceased and played brilliantly by Helena Bonham-Carter) sitting on his belly. Apart from the hilarity of the thought of Elizabeth the Queen Mother sitting on Bertie's Tummy, it was also the way Bonham - Carter delivered the phrase "It's rather fun, actually!" that  had me shouting "Yes!" out loud to the whole cinema and unwittingly slapping the thighs of the person sitting next to me...

Luckily it was my adult daughter sitting next to me! Well, she thinks she is adult, anyway! Myself, I don't believe anyone is adult at 19, do you? Anyway, I did sit back rather sheepishly as she glared at me for the assault...

But it was not really the humour of the scene that had me shouting out loud but the simple fact that for the last ten years or so I have been trying to explain to Massage therapists just how POWERFUL the diaphragm muscle really is. 

Teaching Massage therapists to fall onto their clients with their whole body weight is hard enough without having to worry about whether or not the client is breathing in or out. Now don't get me wrong, there are times in a treatment when a certain synchronicity of breath and movement is really powerful, but this always works best when it happens unconscioulsy, in my opinion. I will explain this in a later blog...

The real point for now, is this: so many of us were taught (wrongly, I believe) to only put powerful force into our strokes when the client is breathing out. In fact, the more we try and synchronise our movements with the client's breathing, the more stilted and cerebral our own movements become.

We kill all FLOW in the Massage treatment when we keep pausing to listen and try and discern if the client is breathing in or out. This can have a negative impact on the Massage and it certainly makes life very hard for Massage therapists learning to FALL onto their clients - the hallmark of NO HANDS.

It seems that this erroneous teaching is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the power of the diaphragm. In truth, as a client, it doesn't matter one jot whether we are breathing in or out during this or that particular stroke. My diaphragm, as was so brilliantly demonstrated in this scene from the film, is so strong, it CAN LIFT A WHOLE BODY.

For the last ten years I have been draping my whole body over a 'client' (normally a fellow trainer) during courses  - so my feet are no longer touching the ground - and asking the therapists watching to observe the client's diaphragm literally lifting my body up and down without any discomfort whatsoever.

But seeing the Queen Mother being lifted up and down on George VI's diaphragm showed it so much better. Try it out... Get your 'significant other' to sit on your belly and breathe in and out. EASY!

Happy oiling, whether your client is breathing in or out, fellow oilers!

Gerry

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ABOUT GERRY:

Gerry has been a full time Massage therapist and teacher for over 25 years. He also qualified as a UKCP registered Psychotherapist (TA) in 1999.

He is the creator of The NO HANDS Massage Therapy System, which is now one of the most popular Massage approaches in the UK. He has also recently launched the PSYCHOLOGY OF CHANGE, a unique new approach to making lasting change within your life. To learn more about these courses go to www.nohandsmassage.com

BACK TO BASICS...

Just back from our first TRANSFORMING TOUCH course of the year. Fantastic students and amazing Massage. This course was a triumph for all concerned - the depth of transformational Massage being given by the last day was truly awesome....

So much more than simply releasing or lengthening the odd muscle!

It never ceases to amaze me how powerful SIMPLE TOUCH can be - especially when the practitioners are all moving like dancers...letting THEIR WHOLE BODY WEIGHT fall gracefully onto clients whose muscles just melt under the soft and slow pressure.

Like so much else in life we can get lost in our heads and become obsessed with 'busy techniques' far too easily...

But what the client really appreciates is the time to BREATHE....and for the Massage to go slow enough so that every single ripple can be FELT throughout the whole body. This is the real zone of DEEP RELEASE...

When we enter this zone, it really is the client who knows the 'What', 'When' and 'How' of release! All we need to do is provide THE RIGHT TOUCH and leave the real healing up to the client. After all, it is the client who must do the letting go - no matter how 'technically brilliant' the therapist is!

We saw more structural release in the space of just a few minutes on this course than the so-called 'technical experts' could produce in months of bodywork. Not only that, but the clients walked out of the session knowing who did the releasing! This is true 'client empowerment'. And we saw so much more than just structural release...

Arthritic conditions being 'turned around' literally overnight... Emotional blocks released... destructive thought patterns dissolved and abandoned.... energy blockages 'unclogged' so the 'Chi' can flow once more. This is the everyday experience of the NO HANDS practitioner because we TRUST THE BODY and we TRUST THE CLIENT.

Once you do this, everything is very easy - we just touch in the best way we know how....

RIGHTEOUS TOUCH

So much more than simply releasing or lengthening the odd muscle!

There is so much about MASTERY in this TRANSFORMING TOUCH course - the very first we teach - that I am even thinking of making attendance of this course mandatory for anyone wanting to join Mastery in 2012... What better way to begin your year of Mastery, than to get right 'Back to Basics'.

A great big, throaty "HOO HAH!" to all the brilliant Massage therapists who attended this course- you were truly an inspiration.

Happy Massaging, fellow oilers!

Gerry

If you enjoy this blog, click 'follow' on the right of this blog to receive an alert whwnever I write a new one.

ABOUT GERRY:

Gerry has been a full time Massage therapist and teacher for over 25 years. He also qualified as a UKCP registered Psychotherapist (TA) in 1999.

He is the creator of The NO HANDS Massage Therapy System, which is now one of the most popular Massage approaches in the UK. He has also recently launched the PSYCHOLOGY OF CHANGE, a unique new approach to making lasting change within your life. To learn more about these courses go to www.nohandsmassage.com

WHAT THE BLINK?

Just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's 'Blink'. 

There is much of interest in this book, especially for the NO HANDS therapist. He tells the story of how the J.Paul Getty Museum in California acquired a marble male nude statue (called a Kouros) that allegedly dated from the 6th Century BC.

What is interesting is that it was a fraud. Even more interesting is the fact the the museum spent 14 months with top scientific experts examining it and verifying it's authenticity before buying it for $10 million!

Despite this, no less than three art experts all said it was a fake 'within the blink of an eye....'

One expert said that "the fingernails were all wrong". Another said "The first word that came into my mind was 'fresh'" Another expert said "That thing has never been in the ground!" 

Gladwell's main thesis is that people who really dedicate themselves to becoming truly expert in a field develop an instinct that way surpasses anything that modern science can rationally produce. He does not call it this, but he describes a 'super intelligence' that is instinct - in other words, a 'gut feeling'.

It is at this point that all the NO HANDS afficionados start nodding wisely and will be found muttering the word "HARA".

Yes folks, Gladwell has written a very 'heady' and sometimes quite complex book about something we teach at TRANSFORMING TOUCH - how to connect with that instinctive 'gut feel' and how to develop that intuitive 'super intelligence' in our Massage work. Whilst Gladwell theorises, we do.

Every time we Massage, we have a chance to deepen our connection with an instinctive and intuitive 'body wisdom' that each of us possesses. HARA is the discipline we use in NO HANDS to learn this.

All powerful Massage begins in the belly. All powerful movements begin 'in the belly'. Learning how to source each of our Massage strokes from this 'super intelligent' instinctive centre of our being (rather than in the frontal lobes of our brains) is at the core of NO HANDS Massage.

Happy Oiling to all you Massage therapists!

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ABOUT GERRY:

Gerry has been a full time Massage therapist and teacher for over 25 years. He also qualified as a UKCP registered Psychotherapist (TA) in 1999.

He is the creator of The NO HANDS Massage Therapy System, which is now one of the most popular Massage approaches in the UK. He has also recently launched the PSYCHOLOGY OF CHANGE, a unique new approach to making lasting change within your life. To learn more about these courses go to www.nohandsmassage.com