I'd Like to Sell You a Maintenance Agreement!

Years ago, I worked for one winter in Portland, Maine, in a telephone solicitations office for Sears appliance service, trying to sell maintenance agreements on newly purchased Sears appliances. I say ‘trying’ because in the six months I think I made one sale! I was more concerned with trying to get people help when I heard their stories instead of trying to make a profit for Daddy Sears. But the term makes sense: When we choose to maintain our bodies, they’ll last a lot longer. It’s this kind of maintenance agreement I’d like to share with you.

In other words, I’m thinking of ways we can all find to help us take care of our own bodies more fully. So today I want to share with you an excerpt from my upcoming book Finding and Sharing Resilience: Coping In A Crazy World.·    I hope the book will be released in March of this year…but before then, here are ideas that I think any of us could use if we truly want to tune into our own bodies and maintain them. See what you think! Perhaps one or more will challenge you to rethink the way you maintain your own bodymindcore.

• Find your ‘line’. Imagine a pinpoint of light that starts at the top of the head and goes to your inner arches. Can you make that line longer and straighter? Can you take any ‘kinks’ that you tend to create in that line and stretch and balance them? Can you first find your ‘neutral’ line as you stand, before moving forward? Ready, aim, fire…not ready, fire, oops!

• Whenever possible think head up, waist back. As I discussed earlier, one can get even more sophisticated by adding groin downfront and heart outfront, then bringing the ‘line’ even slightly forward instead of allowing self to slouch. Remember to keep head, heart, gut and groin further apart and in a straighter line.

• Lead with your heart as you go out today. If or when you feel vulnerable, put an imaginary mirror/shield over your heart so whatever would normally bother you and cause you to shrink just goes back to its source and you can stay long and open.

• Remember too, it’s all right to set boundaries and say ‘no’. It doesn’t make you a bad person if you choose to take care of yourself. Fill your own cup first and nurture others from the overflow, not from lack.

• Notice your patterns and challenge them. Whenever possible, check your balance or lack of it. If you realize you always put more weight on the left leg, shift to the right. If you cross the right leg over the left habitually, shift to the other direction. If you prefer to live in your head, switch to your heart occasionally, or vice versa.

• Whatever exercise or stretching awareness you use, try it again, but twice as slowly. After working with the new speed, try it again, twice as slowly. Get more discerning as you make smaller distinctions; you get so much more information this way. Keep in mind that the deeper you want to go, the more slowly you want to go. This is called ‘maturity’.

• Drag and allow to wag that Pink Panther tail! You don’t need to shake your tailfeathers; on the other hand, there’s no shame in letting the tail be a bit looser. Wag, don’t bark!

• Lead with your knees when you walk and put a spring in your step. Most of us are too heavy in our heels on legs that are too tight and unmoving…by springing instead of shuffling or slogging, we’re already creating more health and circulation, and softening our own back issues as we massage everything above through the use of resilience in the legs.

• Let ‘that which you have’ be your exercise equipment. Whether you sit at a desk and shift side to side and front to back in the chair (or likewise in the car), whether you choose to simply stand and put your hands on a table, desk or counter and lift yourself so that your body hangs from your shoulders instead of the other way around, whether you use toe push-ups when you’re doing dishes, or waiting in lines, stay aware. Find ways to move when you’d normally remain static. Put two tennis balls in an old sock, tie it off and put it under your spine as you lay on it, roll around, and breathe while you use it as a personal massager. Even confined to a wheelchair, one could simply grasp the arms and try to lift out of the chair several times every now and then, or twist from side to side while holding those arms. Think of anything around you, including stairs and chair arms, as exercise equipment.

• Remember: there’s a difference in sequence between Ready, Aim, Fire and Ready, Fire, Aim. Which do you do more of the time? Stop, stand, find neutral, and find your line and think about the goal before you move into the world with purpose.

So, I hope these ideas will give you something to think about in this coming year. We are all living in a crazy world, but it’s up to us to find and maintain sanity. I hope these ‘maintenance agreements’ will help you maintain your sanity and your health!

You Don't Know Squat!

The title is a bit intriguing, and true for me as well as many of us, I suspect. What I’m suggesting with this title is most of us don’t know how to squat, or more importantly, how to maintain a squat. Since most of us don’t move enough, we shouldn’t be surprised that we can’t ‘achieve’ a squat. We also shouldn’t be surprised that our knees and hips complain much of the time.

I’m 72 1/2 now, and I’m tired. I remember hearing my 93 year old father-in-law saying “I know I need to move, but it’s hurts too much.” I get it, I truly do. He hadn’t had the experience of surviving a plane wreck and having spinal fusion with rods which were later removed…he’d done what he could to stay active, but by the end of his life he could barely move at all. In fact he crawled up the stairs to his bedroom and bathroom, and had to crawl—backwards—back down the stairs. Yet he managed to stay in his home until very near the end by his desire to keep moving.

On my last trip to the sea, I spent much time alone on a quiet beach stretching, sunning and swimming. One thing I realized was how friendly sand or small smooth pebbles are for a good squatting session. I found if I could anchor my feet happily in the sand, then squat, then make circles with my knees and/or hips so as to move my weight to each part of my feet I was moving everything above as well—especially those tricky knees that give too many of us too much trouble. I could feel the movement in my back, neck and shoulders as well, but I was most interested in feeling the movement or lack in hips and knees. I realized the simple act of squatting, then moving, was oiling hinges I’d forgotten existed!

Of course anyone can feel better when on a private beach on a warm day; but it’s not critical to find the perfect spot for squatting. If one uses a folded blanket as a base, one has a bit of the give and take the sand will offer. One may need to keep the hands and arms stretched in front of self with the squat so as to maintain balance; no problem! One may even need to have a crutch such as a chair or table to support themself when they squat. Again, no problem! Get up, try something, and explore…that word keeps coming up in my stretching and movement time.

Something that returns to me from my past relates to a question on the entrance exam for the Rolf Institute many years ago, when Dr Rolf had posed the essay question; “Describe the muscular action of standing still.” In my foolish understanding of things, I chose to respond to this ‘easy’ question, only to realize there’s no such thing as standing still! One is constantly adjusting so one doesn’t fall backwards, or forwards, or tip to one side. The same thing applies to a good squat. One is constantly unconsciously (or sometimes consciously) monitoring to make sure they don’t fall forward, backward, or off to a side. It’s therefore stretching and waking every muscle above! Why don’t we do this more often? It’s a sure way to massage the entire body; yet too often we’re afraid to squat.

So the challenge: give squatting a try! Perhaps your knees say no, or your hips. Perhaps you’ll need to hold onto a chair or table, or let your hands reach the floor for stability. If you can find a deep squat, then explore, I believe you’ll find you have a new body with more life in it.

While I don’t know squat, I’m finding it!

I'm My Own Grandpa

In a previous part of my life, I lived in the Missouri Ozarks; an area touristically famous for the term ‘hillbilly’, describing hill folks who had pretty limited social exchanges due to the isolation of their homes. In this time, I heard a song called by the above title. The concept was that due to intermarriages, etc, the fellow singing the song was actually related to himself so many ways that he was indeed his own grandpa.

Well, that’s simply an aside to explain the title; actually, what I’d like to share is my realization that as I’ve aged, I’ve become my grandfather—and I couldn’t be happier. In some ways, my Grandpa K was a rock in my childhood. A gentle farmer, he still milked 12 or 13 cows morning and night (we’d be up at 5 am to ‘help’), kept an old work horse that he hitched to a plow, harrow, and hand-built sled that he’d drive up and down highway shoulders between our houses. He continued to tend two large gardens well into his late 80s and passed away at 92.

Among my memories of Grandpa, first is the fact that two things seemed to always be present with him: he chewed a cigar all day long! If memory serves, every day he started with a fresh cigar and by the end of the day it was gone. Second, he hummed to himself all day long as he went through his tasks…and he seemed to always be on task. So I have great memories of following him through his day, with the cigar and the music. Happily, I found his humming is a habit I’ve acquired, and I’m even more pleased to report my 13 year old grandson still carries this habit in his DNA. Humming was never something my father showed interest in pursuing. Cigars never interested me, or my dad.

And the piece I’m finally really appreciating about Grandpa is his ability to pace himself. He’d work hard, but never so hard as to totally tire himself out. Often I can remember him saying, “Let’s hoe this row, little guys; then we’ll sit in the shade for a few minutes.” From Grandpa I got the realization (which is finally bearing fruit) that it’s good to go at it, but it’s better to remember to stop and breathe. So much of who I am and who I’m becoming can be traced back to Grandpa’s influence.

These days, at 72, I’m happy to feel I’ve achieved if I remember to water all the plants, or review one chapter in the latest book, or wash the car. My goals have settled into senior year goals and I hope to keep this sense of relaxing to enjoy the tasks instead of believing I must achieve more and more.

So in some ways, I’ve become my own grandpa, and I hope I’m instilling in my grandson some of the values that old fellow shared with me. It’s great to work hard; it’s also great to breathe, relax, and bask in the glow of a small job well done.

Is This My Last Book?

Most of you know I’m slowing it down! I’ve been saying this for about five years, and many people poke fun at me since I seem to not get my finger out of this pie. But at this stage, I truly do see retirement as a great option…I have a nice but small group of instructors around the world who carry the work forward; I’ve written and published what I think of as my textbook for the CORE work in my five session series, with a long philosophy of CORE work preceding my blueprints for each session.  I’m well along on what I think will be my final book, Finding and Sharing Resilience: Coping with a Crazy World. I expect this book to be released, self-published, on amazon, this winter. I’d like to share my reasons for writing and my intention for what may be my final product.

Basically, the longer I’ve worked, the more I realize I return to early influences, such as Louis Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life/You Can Heal Your Body (published Hay House). I resonate with her story and her ideas. As a successful person who had ‘outgrown’ her childhood issues, she was amazed to discover she had a serious illness. On reviewing her thoughts and feelings, she realized she still lived in “I’m not good enough” and decided to change this thought pattern by using affirmations and denials to rewire her brain, and thus, her bodymindcore. As she healed herself from her condition, she realized how many, if not most of us, are plagued with those same feelings. Her book offers the concept that the root disease is based on those feelings, and repairs can be made with a change in thinking.

I resonate totally. I’ve had an experience where I was brought personally to this deep ‘not good enough’ awareness during a bodywork session years ago. Thus it’s always made sense to me that when we feel less-than, we can’t feel more than.

In the past ten years I’ve found Stephen Porges, author of The Polyvagal Theory, which claims the vagus nerve has branches, different functions in the branches, and is (in my words) evolving into a system that requires us to choose whether to freeze, fight, flee, or decide more quickly to find, face, feel, flush, free and forget our challenges.  The quote that got me interested in Porges’ work was ‘…the pivotal point is, can we get people to feel safe?” For me, these two ideas join into one…if we can’t feel safe, we’ll never feel good enough, and if we’re not good enough, how can we feel safe?

Thus, I’ve taken the culmination of 72 years of living, 45 years of looking beyond physics into metaphysics, and 36 years of bodywork (38 with training) and decided to try to frame my work and ideas into words that can make sense for and enhance anyone’s life, existence, health and joy. I’ve already said this to my bodywork community in Essential CORE, but with this book, I want to share with anyone interested in coping with the way the world seems to be moving. I want to help them say, feel, and believe, “I’m safe, and I’m good enough. In this bodymindCORE I bounce back from any stimulus that causes shortening and tightening of my core. I can stay open in open space.”

Now, I know that sounds a bit esoteric, but here’s the deal. I truly feel the five sessions of bodywork I’ve created are valuable, but I think the principles behind each of those sessions are possibly even more valuable. I believe I can share what I often tell students to explain to their patrons: what they’re doing, why, and how that patron can help. I want to offer the same thing to you as I teach you what you can do, why you’re doing it, and how you can make it more effective, safe and joyful for you and for those around you.

So the book will spend time with my philosophy of how we need to create safety in a crazy world, but also how to feel like one is on purpose and contributing ‘enough’ to the world. Only after a good read on those thoughts do we go into the goals of individual sessions. Then, I suggest ways that the reader/patron can implement these ideas. In my work I’ve created ‘mantras’ for each session that show the way to what I want us all to find in each session. For example, first mantra is Touch CORE, Find Breath, Stretch Points. Can you see how that applies to everyday life, and to my goal of making us all feel safer and better about our own path and purpose?

Subsequent mantras: Safety in the Lower Junctions, Deep CORE to Roots, Arms and Head on Straight, and Finding a Friendly World. In other words, to truly simplify, if we can just unwind and stretch our guts, all the way to our extremities, then wake up to the fact we have ‘stuff’ ‘down there’; next we can tug and clean clear to those roots, get the head on straight and finally find a friendly world, on purpose. Doesn’t the feel worthy?

For me, this book is the culmination. If I can share that elusive ‘what I think I know’ with all, not just the bodyworkers, I believe I’m giving to the world that which I’m asked to give. I’m excited for this book, and I hope my ideas appeal to you.

The New Phase For Me

For perhaps ten years now, I’ve been telling students and clients, whichever patron of my work they happen to be, that I’m slowing down. The last two years have been a grim reality as COVID hit the world and kept most of us at home much of the time. I wasn’t able to see patrons and nobody wanted to offer continuing education courses, though some instructors offered online courses. It was a great time to decide retirement is at hand.

Thus, when I was planning to share a friend’s office at the beginning of COVID and after I’d seen one person in her space, she messaged me that she wasn’t comfortable with the share. So I moved my office into the sunroom of our home, where I saw a very few patrons for sessions on a very sporadic basis. I had definitely slowed the speed! And finally, in the past few months, my city called to ask if I was still working from the friend’s office address. When I admitted I’d left that premise and was working only a very small bit from home, I was told I was now violating the law! Thus, I’ve given up my license and given up on working! I will offer a few continuing education courses; mostly they will be either of an advanced nature or something of a short course I find really interesting and believe must be shared. But I’m doing less and less and spending more and more of my time with small at-home projects, such as gardening, reshuffling our ‘things’; be it furniture, artwork, books, or other things.

My second big pastime is travel. We’ve been spending time spring and fall in eastern Crete for the past five years, and it truly is a joy to both arrive at our new home there, but also to work on learning a new language in my senior years. But this also means it’s difficult for me to contribute totally in either of my two locations: I don’t want to become a ‘big brother’ or court appointed advocate for a child alone in the system in either location, for example, because I’m not around consistently anywhere, anymore.

A new opportunity/adventure has presented itself to me, however. Last weekend one of my instructors offering a course wanted help with a particular student. She videotaped his work session specifically for me to observe and critique. I spent an hour reviewing the video and taking copious notes; then I spent another hour sending my thoughts to the student and the teacher. I was amazed to see how much I could tell about the effectiveness of his work in the session simply from the perspective of a stationary camera. Thus, I’m ready to offer this service to students, or teachers who want feedback on their work. The price will be what I have been charging for a private session of bodywork; as that usually runs for one hour and this took two hours of my time, it seems a fair price. But the good news; I can do this review from wherever I happen to be living at the time.

I’ve not been a fan of ‘online’ courses for massage therapists and bodyworkers; my feeling is the hands and the touch itself are too important to chance to what I see on video. This experience allowed me to see how easy it was for me to note the important things: the fact that the touch is too deep or too shallow, the practitioner’s hands haven’t quite found the spot or the depth, that the client is either not breathing or moving appropriately, or that the practitioner isn’t communicating, feeling that stretch and breath, or isn’t even eliciting it with words. I like this new idea!

As far as teaching courses, they will now be extremely few and far between. I doubt that past this upcoming course for CORE III/IV, I won’t offer another course for the five session blueprint to the general bodywork community. I will offer a ‘mentorship’ in one of my two homes. This will be a six or seven day residential course for one person only. Thus, they’ll pay a bit more, but will receive the individualized training and we’ll practice the five session work on each other. If there should be two people who want to share this training at the same time, they’ll pay a 75% rate of the III or IV charges. Basically, I’m saying I’m out of the game, and if you want to bring me back in for your personal training, it can be done, but it will be a bit more expensive. As my nephew years ago suggested I should put an extra zero at the end of my fees (which I quickly dismissed as not my style or desire) I feel I’m being fair by increasing the price for this private tutorship.

So, to those who have been waiting for the right time to work with me in classes, basically, you’ve now missed that boat! I will consider these mentorships, and I do now have several instructors around the world who are offering my work as I’m letting go of the need to provide it. Stay tuned to the website on the Upcoming CORE Bodywork Classes page to find out where courses might happen around the world. To work with me personally, contact me and we’ll see if we can make it happen. I will accept up to two of the advanced class III or IV mentorships only twice a year, and it’s entirely possible no one will take advantage of this tutoring now that we have instructors in the wings, but if you want the old man, you’ll have to make the arrangements and come find me!

What Makes You Feel Safe?

I’m a fan of Stephen Porges, author of The Polyvagal Theory, a difficult scientific theoretical textbook that discusses the various functions, anatomy, and health of the vagus nerve system as it roams through the body and provides many of the autonomic or automatic functions our body relies on to keep us health and moving through life. The book is extremely dry for a non-scientist such as myself, but the ideas are sound and with study, I’ve developed a great deal more energy towards learning how important vagal health is to health in general.

One line I read from a radio interview transcript with Porges and Dr. Ruth Buzyinski from years ago caught my attention and placed me on this vagal exploration. Porges said something along the lines of “…the pivotal point is, can we get people to feel safe?” I think this is the most profound question we should be asking, more of the time. In this current world, with politicians who tout anger and fear, with climate change and environmental problems, economic challenges and current threats of an expanding world war situation—it’s harder to feel safe than it used to be! How does one feel safe in unsafe times?

As I think about these factors that make many of us feel unsafe in our world, it becomes a guideline for why many of us behave the way we do. Whether we’re still nursing ourselves from the past’s abuses, whether we worry about the future, whether we can’t seem to find happiness in the present, or whether we just never have learned to feel safe, what do we do to create safety for ourselves?

Some choose hoarding behaviors. We all hope to surround ourselves with ‘things’ that make us feel comfortable. In dealing with a friend with hoarding tendencies on one occasion, I suggested they might choose to create a small clear, clutter-free space where they could feel comfortable. Their response stopped me: “This is my comfortable space!” I realized my judgment made me assume this person would be happier in a world that looked more like mine; calm, surrounded by people and things that gave me comfort and soothed me in more moments. I had until that moment not realized how each of us chooses to create what feels like safety to us, in our own methods.

For me and my partner, art is a large factor. We do enjoy a clean and clutter-free home, but we also love to surround ourselves with ‘things’ that make us look up and trigger feelings of calm and serenity. My office/sometimes treatment room in my home has a wall of perhaps 40 mementos of my life; trips to various countries and places are represented in the art and artifacts on the walls and shelves, with photos of those I love. I truly enjoy being in the room, my personal kingdom, where I’m able to be working and glance up to focus on any particular piece and feel a bit of the joy and safety it brings me. When I’m in an environment that feels chaotic to me, I feel less safe.

I’m not totally a social animal; when tested, I find I’m slightly introverted, and that feels correct. I’m less interested in large groups, especially in covid times. My partner is more social; to her, finding connections helps her to feel belonging and thus safety. I’d much rather stay at home, working in the garden, talking to my plants, enjoying nature. There’s my safety.

Thus I get it that what feels like serenity to me—calm, nature, solitude—feels unsafe to others who crave a bit of chaos to in some way offer them the safety I find through my coping skills. Being surrounded by things that give you joy makes sense; being overwhelmed by your things still makes little sense to me, but it’s not my way of creating safety.

What makes you feel safe? Is it a healthy bank account? A healthy relationship? Knowing that your family is there for you no matter what happens in your world? Is it remembering to take care of your body, learn to breathe more deeply and fully, to move more of the time? Is it turning off the news and isolating from the rest of the world? How do you create safety for yourself in an unsafe world?

I don’t have answers for you; I think I know what works for me. I do challenge you to consider the idea that we all behave as we do in a desire to feel safety in our world, and invite you to look at the world you’ve created and ask yourself: “Does this world make me feel safe?” If the answer is ‘no’, perhaps it’s time to think about a new way of being.

Tensegrity Assisted Therapy With Leonid Blyum and Mariana Barreto

I recently sat in on an interesting webinar presented by the Fascia Hub. In the UK Jan offers one speaker per month for membership, and often there are some new and challenging ideas. A recent Thursday night was one such event.

These two presenters, Leonid and Mariana, have been working with Cerebral Palsy kids as their specialty population, and have a really new take that makes sense to me…they see the bodymindcore as collapsed and lacking tensional integrity, or tensegrity. Their work is therefore more about trying to bring tissues out into the environment instead of pushing them anywhere; they don’t want to force things to happen, but to coax and ask the blocked spaces to return to function and take up space. I found this a good concept, especially in that for the last ten or fifteen years, I’ve been suggesting we learn to ‘coax’ tissue instead of move it.

This supports the ideas of John Pierrakos who suggests to me we’re three-layered beings; the core or center of right energy, the body, and the environment, and many of us use our bodies to protect our cores from our environment. It’s the same concept in another language. We’ve collapsed or concentrated instead of moving out into the environment; how do we best ‘’fluff” that tissue back to life?

Where they differ from my work, and where I’m going to think a bit about their work, is the use of a semi-inflated ball; not the fairly hard ball that many use. In fact, they’re more likely to use extra cushions, pillows, and other tools to keep comfort foremost when they work with their CP kids. This makes great sense to me.

The call their work Tensegrity Assisted Therapy and believe that the big difference in their work from the work of others is this ability to use soft force to bring tissues out of ‘hiding places’ and into the appropriate structure. They see structure as something that needs to be load-bearing, and that those who can find a way to soften that structure will release lots of the tensions in the bodymindcore that are causing many of their problem

One of the first things out of Leonid’s mouth hooked me: “Avoid over-anatomization!.” I love that sentiment! I think if we get too focused on exactly what we’re working on and how we want to ‘change it’ we lose some of the intuitive skill that lets us follow our hands and hearts. So I was happy to hear this statement from him. He gives us permission to forget our anatomy first, then rediscover it.

If indeed as Leonid and Mariana posit, everything we’re doing is working with soft matter (including bones) we can change our attitude from the ‘fixing’ model into the ‘allow the tissue to come out and take up space’ model. I support this idea!

And if we’re a tensional network from head to toe, one truly doesn’t know which piece of the puzzle will be the piece that allows us to make changes. Another quote I liked: “Everything that maximizes distribution is good; what concentrates distribution is bad.” Can you see how this could apply to all of us who work with bodies?

So these two are giving us the gift of realizing chemistry has created wonderful balls that, if not totally inflated, are far softer than the human touch. I believe there’s something here for us all. I liked their image that we’re ‘painting’ on a crinkled canvas; wouldn’t it be much better if we could learn how to straighten the canvas before we started painting on it?

How does this fit with my work? For years I’ve been teaching students and clients about my layers one, two and three. Layer one is that place where a client says “Ahhhh! This feels so nice; glad I had that glass of wine before I came.” Layer two is the place where a client says “What’s happening here? Am I safe? I feel safe, I think I can stay with this.” Layer three is the place I feel they’re describing and exhibiting: “Let me know when you’re going to let go and I’ll come back in my body.”

Years ago my first fibromyalgia client was a puzzle to me. I suggested between our sessions she explore putting tennis balls in a sock and rolling on them while breathing. When she returned in a month and I asked how it was going, she shocked me by telling me she got best results by rolling in the stomach. I had envisioned her working her back; her success in stomach was a pleasant surprise. Now I wonder what would have happened if she’d had softer equipment to use. She put herself in layer three; it worked, but I imagine it would have worked better at layer two.

Now, after 35 years of bodywork, I rarely move to that layer three, really wanting to hover around layer two. I believe my hands and heart are attuned such that usually I feel I’m coaxing tissue instead of demanding change. But I’m considering finding a couple of semi-inflated balls, exploring with them to see how they work for me, and spend a bit more time between layer one and two. I still believe my best work is done at layer two, but I’m open to experimenting to see if indeed, less (pressure) is more.

Now, I’ll freely admit I still use force, especially on myself! I have an implement; a hard, studded plastic piece about the size and shape of an Upledger stillpoint inducer. I tend to place that under my back every morning at the quadratus lumborum area and really dig, stretch and breathe. For this old bird, a bit of force feels wonderful. But I don’t tend to use such force often—even though some clients persist in saying “You can go deeper if you want; I can take a lot of pain!” That’s not the point.

Mariana also said, “The ball amplifies what you’re feeling, and you don’t feel the muscle, you feel the interface through the skin.” Lots to think about here! If indeed we can remodel the fibroblasts so they can remodel the fascial spider web, this seems a worthy goal.

Speculation Time! For Bodyworkers and Interested Folks....

The longer I go, the less I know…or perhaps, the more I question what I think I know. Either way, it’s a rather interesting life when one allows self to visit and revisit ideas that have been held for years, then actually find a slightly new way of thinking. This happened for me yesterday.

I’ve long been a fan of what I call my ‘rubber band’ or elastic image; that like Tom Myers’ myofascial meridians, I see lines of transmission through the body. While for me Tom’s lines are sometimes a bit generic and I think in terms of the personal lines of each patron who finds me, I continue to focus on the idea that stretching that line, that rubber band, from only one place doesn’t produce nearly as much value as stretching from two directions. And I ‘stretch’ this idea even further by wondering what happens when we hold both ends of the elastic and stretch, then stretch AND twist, then stretch and twist AND put even more pressure in the middle of the band. In other words, what happens when we stretch our deep lines in as many directions as possible? Won’t that cause a shift, a loosening, of that deep line that we don’t get by simply applying pressure somewhere?

Well, yesterday’s speculation centered on the pelvic floor. I’ve long thought most of us hold on too tightly in the pelvic region; whether from early conditioning about what ‘nice girls’ do, or resulting from some inapprorpriate touch, a tight stomach because of emotional issues, etc. It seems that most of us simply don’t allow energy to move through that pelvic area easily.

But I began thinking how certain tensions in certain personal lines anchored in that pelvic floor region could perhaps create certain conditions…scoliosis jumped into my head right away. What if a personal line has tension in one adductor compartment, or adductor/hamstring septum that tugged that pelvic floor in one direction? What if, due to emotional concerns, a pulled groin muscle, improper touch, or any other causation, one has developed a scoliosis due to the need to tighten and hold onto that tension in a specific spot?

If we consider my model of head, heart, gut and groin as the four main centers of the body, it seems that far too many of us remain tightened in the groin area. If we’re tight in the groin, it’s harder to let energy enter into the gut area; if we’re tight in groin and gut, it gets harder to move energy from those centers into heart, and head. Thus, in my thinking, many of us accept this shutting-down of the groin center, ignore our guts, and either focus more specifically on the heart center or head center as the place we feel safe. We ignore what may or may not happen in the guts and groin. I still think in terms of getting my energy elevator to stop at all four levels…to be able to live happily in my head, but to move freely into my heart, into my guts, and into my groin. Sadly, I don’t think many of us can do this. Still, I explore.

Now, if indeed the pelvic floor may be the basis for tension through the entire body (it is, after all, the survival chakra, and many of us don’t survive happily and aren’t that great at surviving) how can we identify and release our personal ‘rubber band’ that holds everything through the body too tightly? This was the focus of my mental ramblings yesterday, and here are suggestions that make sense to me:

I think many of us are too tight in a line between our most distal genitals and coccyx, climbing into either the back side of our belly button or the back side of our dorsal spinal bones. One could see a line that either travels from genitals to front of spine in belly region, or from coccyx to front of spine, or from back of coccyx to back of back around L1, and for me, this could well be the true cause of much that goes wrong in a body—that tightening of the root of the deep line that most of us seem to share.

Thinking back to Emmett Hutchins, my mentor at Rolf Institute and Guild for Structural Integration many years ago, Emmett used to talk about his X, Y and Z axes. He believed we have three directions to each of our movement and our body; length, breadth and depth if you will. In my thinking we can expand on that model and realize that there aren’t just three directions, but an infinity of directions as we allow our movements to be more fluid.

If this is true, does it make sense that while the lines I describe above may be the most generic, each of us has a history in our body that causes our own deep lines to be pulled, torqued, and held in our own personal way? So for example, could that scoliosis be connected to that tightened adductor; or a sprained ankle, stubbed or broken toe, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, a back injury, a tight emotionally charged stomach, or even a damaged shoulder? Couldn’t any of those conditions/triggers cause that tension in pelvic floor?

Now, the application: can we choose to look at folks in a new way that asks which of the pathways through their deep line is most interrupted/tightened/on guard? Can we begin to work as though we’re never touching just the spot we think is ‘held’, but always remembering to look up and down the entire body while staying focused on that deep pelvis to low and middle spine, and try to determine just how they’ve created the glitch and how we can help them unwind?

If we allow ourselves to continue with this speculation, here’s a list of conditions that might be enhanced simply by thinking more fully of relaxing that deep line, pulling the various ends of the rubber band, and creating movement in more directions as we work:

• sexual and fertility issues

• stomach disorders

• back pain

• scoliosis

• feet problems, bunions, high arches

• TMJ and jaw issues

• sciatic issues

• prevention of hip and knee replacements

• shoulder problems

Can you see how any of these conditions might be remedied by attention to this deep line that’s most held at the pelvic floor? Let’s go back to the idea that the survival area of our bodies, the pelvis, which both asks us to brace and survive but also is responsible for procreation is the deepest place we must unwind in order to get the entire body to unwind. If we can do this I believe we’re going to have a new way to look at bodies and a new way to treat our patrons.

Again, speculation! But as I consider, I find in some ways this is part of what I’ve been doing in my work for years…yesterday, words came to me a bit clearer. I invite you to consider the speculation, try it on and see if perhaps this gives you a new way to think and work with clients and patrons.

You Have a Choice....

I had a really fine phone conversation in the past few days…I’ve been trying to connect with this person for several months, but as I’m in Crete and she’s in the US, sometimes my phone won’t cooperate. Thus it was great fun to talk for an hour, catch up, see where we are, and support each other.

Her husband died within the past year. He was an amazingly kind and gentle man who seemed to have no enemies, avoided conflict unless absolutely necessary, and in general, seemed to go through life as if every day was a gift. Even when he was ill for the last several years, his attitude remained positive, outgoing, interested in others, and generally a good person to have in one’s environment. We both mourn his passing. But, she’s doing a tremendous job of staying on the positive side of things…she seems to have both picked up some of his positivity by osmosis, but also has leaned over the years that old adage really works: “Don’t sweat the small stuff/it’s all small stuff.”

Anyway, during our chat, we got to giggling about the unexpected ‘gifts’ age bestows on us. She mentioned sneezing and coughing as triggers for incontinence…I laughed and suggested, “Don’t forget standing up quickly!” As we giggled about that and other bits of how our bodies are betraying us (“My new dog follows me instead of getting ahead, and it’s so good because I no longer worry about tripping.”) (Technology—I have a phone, I’ve worked with the nice young people at the company several times and I still can’t make the damned thing work.”) (I’m getting more and more able to say what I want to say without worrying whether it’s received well or not.) and other bits of poking fun at self.

As we were talking, something fairly profound came to me: A sense of humor is a thing you can choose to have and keep. We have less and less choices and controls as we age…we may lose our car and our license, our friends, our health, our vision, our hearing, our pension. We may have fewer and fewer friends alive, and we may or may not be able to find new friends easily. But one thing we can control, if we’ll apply ourselves, if that sense of humor.

As we laughed and giggled about the way age is making us feel smaller, stupider, and less competent in our shrinking universes, we both chose to laugh at the ways and times we have to simply grin and bear it. And it occurs to me, this is one of the true healing prospects we can always choose to see working for us instead of against us. To learn to laugh and enjoy life instead of allowing life to wear us down; that is a gift we must work to own.

A companion to this idea: Gratitude is the law of increase! That which we focus on expands, and if we focus on the wealth, the joy, the laughter, the gratitude, it really seems that more is added and we live a happier and fuller life. But if we focus on lack (Why does no one come to see me? How can I live on such a small income? Why does my body hurt so much?), we spend our time amplifying the problems instead of the solutions. Can we retrain ourselves to choose gratitude, laughter, happiness and joy instead of irritation, anger, sadness and plain old meanness? I believe we can; I’ve witnessed this friend seemingly transforming herself from a worrier into a peaceful and happy older adult. She’s become a model for who I want to become as I age.

I believe it was Earnest Holmes (who I’m remembering founded Science of Mind) who used to say “It’s simple, but it’s not easy.” There’s truth here. If you’ve trained yourself to be unhappy all the time, that’s a hard habit to break. But, what if? What if we could look at the glass as half full instead of half empty? What if we could choose to laugh at all the craziness in our lives instead of cursing it? What if we could remember to manufacture gratitude, even when we don’t feel like it?

Today I commit to remembering to laugh at that which irritates, to feel gratitude when I find myself being cross, and to see the world as a happy and welcoming place instead of whatever I may see too much of the time.

It's ALL about the breath!

I’m definitely getting older and slowing down in many ways, speeding up in others. One thing I realize is I spend less times on the things that don’t please me and more times on the things that do. Thus, when I bother with a seminar, a new book or project, developing or refining my ideas, they’d better feed my soul!

This past Friday I attended an online seminar on The Fascia Hub (www.thefasciahub.com) with Ana Barretxeguren and hosted by founder Jan Trewatha. Ana has been ‘blessed’ with lung problems that have caused her to search deeply for the questions surrounding breath, and had some interesting ideas, a few of which I’d like to share.

Years ago when I just came out of my bodywork training, I returned to Springfield, Missouri and helped to organize a Wellness Network. Our first presenter was the massage matriarch of Springfield who had just returned from her first craniosacral course. While her demo of cranial work was frankly boring, one comment resonated for me: “The longer I work, the more convinced I am it’s all in the breath.”

So Ana’s presentation this week enhanced some of my ideas and challenged others. She began with a simple fact: we take our first breath at birth and our last at death; it’s what’s in between that we have control over. Ana presented the idea of breath as a lemniscate; something like a figure eight, and suggested that we all explore breathing in for 5 1/2 seconds, then out for 5 1/2 seconds. As we allow ourselves to trace that eight, the central restriction is where we change from inbreath to outbreath. I was delighted that on my second or third outbreath I experieced what I think of as a ‘Rosenberg reset’ of the vagal system; I had a huge yawn that suggested to me my vagus system had just calmed measurably (Stanley Rosenberg authored “Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve” and suggests a yawn, sigh, or deep breath indicates a vagal reset).

Ana also suggests the inbreath activates the sympathetic system and is our ‘driver’; the outbreath activates the parasympathetic and is our ‘recovery mechanism’. Yes, of course! A good presentation, and I’d like to add a few of my thoughts:

• Data suggests that we enhance our Heart Rate Variability, which causes better health, by finding our optimal breath rate, which is usually between 4 1/2 and 7 breaths per minute.

• Think of fibromyalgia as an example. I’ve long maintained it’s simply the disease of an overstimulation; something that ‘took our breath away’ and we can’t remember how to get that big exhale. It follows that when we can’t follow the lemniscate of breath in and out, we’re trapping all our systems, causing the pain and fear of fibro. Ana suggested we’re ‘immobilizing our ribs by bracing against something’. Good image!

• How can our bodies be healthy if we won’t nurture them with breath? How can our systems be healthy if we won’t concentrate on bringing breath both in and out?

• I’ve long advocated for breathing out a bit longer than the inbreath; my rationale is to exchange the oxygen in the lungs. Now I’m not so sure; however, isn’t it possible we use two kinds of breath? The equal in/out would be to enhance the vagal system and the longer outbreath would be to enhance lung health.

Anyway, I’ve gotten overlong in reporting and speculations, but I like the idea from our massage queen years ago: “The longer I work, the more I’m convinced it’s all in the breath.” Thanks to Ana and Jan for a stimulating conversation!