I’m not sure how I started out deciding I needed to write, but on one of my early work trips to London I started jotting down notes. These notes eventually decided what they wanted to transmit to others and those jottings became my first two books. My publisher, Jessica Kingsley, also served as a creative editor for me. I found her questions to stimulate and challenge me to find yet another and another layer of what I wanted to communicate. The result: I now have five books published and happily I’m working on my Opus Magnus, the ‘This is What I Think I Know’ book.
This book is titled The Essential CORE: Bodywork with Hands, Head and Heart. I’m self-publishing this one, because the publisher had less interest in publishing a book when I no longer want to travel and promote it. And I’m less interested in selling many copies as I am in reaching the people who have found me in the past and want to find me in the present…the future will take care of itself. So I’m working, formatting, and waiting on the illustrations so I can publish both a hard copy and a Kindle version. I think it will be a good book!
I’ve divided this coming offering into two sections. The first I think of as ‘The CORE Philosophy’ and in this section we’ll discuss things many massage and bodywork trainings simply ignore or gloss over as they train students. We’ll think about learning to coax the tissue, read the signals a client sends, ride the breath, call for movement and learning to give that client something to think about once they’ve left and gone back into their world. The second section is devoted to giving the blueprints for my five session series…very specific directions that will help any bodyworker become more efficient and effective as they work through the book.
Now, no one can learn everything they need from a book alone, in my opinion. Obviously I believe the hands-on experience is important; thus I’ve been training instructors to take the baton when I’ve let go of it (and I haven’t let go just yet!). I’m hoping the book will stimulate students to read, practice, and seek a bit of guidance, and hopefully the advanced classes from a qualified instructor.
So…look for this book! I’ll make the announcement when it finally happens. I’m finding myself less interested in meeting deadlines and more interested in getting it right. So no promises, but I’m working on what I hope will be really good book. Art Riggs, author of Deep Tissue Massage and a rolfer, has this to say about the new book: “Many texts confine themselves to narrow single parameters of hand-on skills of body mechanics and touch; or specific “spot work” techniques for isolated areas; or philosophy and psychology. Noah combines all of these subjects in one text to integrate manual and personal skills for a deep connection between bodywork and the human beings behind the symptoms.” Fine words from Art, and I’m grateful he sees what I’m after! I hope when The Essential CORE is available you’ll have a look and see it as a chance to enhance your skills and your practice.
Last note: It’s possible there’s one more book in me, and it would be the same ‘What I Think I Know’, but trying to translate it into a way that lay people with no experience in bodywork could learn how to work with self and others in their circle to offer the healing I think is inherent in all of us. So one day….