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APRIL There are very few things in the world I enjoy more than a good half-an-hour or hour spent doing bodywork of some kind. For some reason we tend to neglect the body all together. We often treat it as something we carry around with us, take no particular interest and spend little time looking after. Exercise is enormously important. If you are not physically active on a regular basis you risk losing up to 40% of your muscle by the time you are eighty, replacing most of it with fat. This makes you weak, frail and prone to accidents. So building muscle is important, either by using weights, weight training or other resistance training. It is also important to walk at least 30 minutes a day, not only for the sake of your heart and lungs, but also to clear the mind and improve your ability to handle stress well. In some ways Bodywork is even better. It is blissful for one. Physical exercise can be very demanding. It commits you to doing something active which, in the doing of it, can sometimes feel more of a chore than a joy. Bodywork is different - sheer pleasure and pleasure is something we human beings need. There are three different body therapies I am particularly fond of. Apart from massage, which can not only be enormously blissful, but can be enormously useful in integrating your body and helping both body and mind to function better: Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Method and Trager. The Alexander Technique A body therapy which emphasizes the proper alignment of the spine, head and neck. The Alexander Technique was developed by Fredrick Matthias Alexander, a Shakespearian actor who died in 1955. It grew out Alexander’s belief that poor posture was what was interfering with a recurring loss of voice, which he experienced. The Alexander technique is simple to learn. The practitioner shows you how, through simple movement, to restore you body’s natural poise and muscle tension. Alexander Technique is particularly good for anyone with common back problems, sciatica and is also useful for tinnitus, the ringing in the ears that many people get and is often a symptom associated with long term stress. As we get older our balance becomes less good, the Alexander Technique is enormously helpful for restoring balance. It is also been used successfully to improve function in people with Parkinsons disease, as well as to help clear depression, sprain injuries, migraines, panic attacks and other stress related disorders. Alexander Technique is so good for integrating the body that it is now taught in most drama and music schools. The best way to learn it is a one-on-one session which generally lasts from half-an-hour to an hour. The practitioner asks you to lie on a padded table while he or she gently moves your legs, arms and head, enabling you to let go of tension. He then observes how you walk, sit and stand, and through a combination of gentle touch and verbal instructions helps you re-educate how you perform simple movements like getting up out of the chair, sitting down, climbing stairs, and all the other things we do day-in-day-out. One of the interesting experiences that people report after Alexander bodywork is that they feel taller and in a very real way Alexander does lengthen the spine. For more information check on the web at www.alexandertech.org Feldrenkrais Method Developed by Russian physicist and accomplished athlete Dr Moshe Feldenkrais, the Feldenkrais Method uses gentle, blissful movement to retrain the nervous system. It actually helps your body create new neural and muscular pathways around areas of blockage or damage while integrating body and psyche. I know this sound like a big agenda, but it really does work. There are two ways of working with Feldenkrais: first you can have a Feldenkrais practitioner work on your body to help breakdown habitual movements which restrict you and re educate your brain and nervous system to new patterns of movement. The second way, is to be taught the movements yourself. In my opinion it is by far the best way. Born in Russia in 1919, Moshe Feldenkrais worked for the British Admiralty during World Ware II, then emigrate to Palestine, where, plagued by a knee problem brought on by a sports injury, he found a way of helping himself heal. He was highly resistant to the idea of orthopedic surgery, which is what all of his physicians urged him to do. They said that the damage he had done to his knee was irreversible, and only surgery would help. Feldenkrais began to explore how the body moves naturally. With his training as a scientist he also studied neuro-physiology and neuro-psychology. Before long he had not only written a classic examination of mind/body he was also able to throw his crutches away. His knee had healed completely. Feldenkrais insisted that motor function and thought patterns are inseparable. Our emotions, such as sorrow, grief, joy and enthusiasm are encoded within our flesh, and expressed through our body’s intentions. He then went on to develop simple blissful ways of helping people develop an awareness of how the body moves and feels, to experience life fully. The Feldenkrais Method aims to help you to come closer and closer to what he called functional integratio - - wholeness in the largest sense. When it comes to rejuvenating body and psyche his techniques are nothing short of revolutionary. Feldenkrais’ work is much praised by some of the worlds top artists and scientists for whom it has proved nothing short of life changing – from the late Yehudi Menuhin and director Peter Brooke, to neuro-physiologist and brain expert Dr Carl Pribram. Until his death Dr Feldenkrais continued to perform what were amusingly called ‘routine miracles’ transforming the lives of the sick and the apparently well, by helping them expand their ability to move. Feldenkrais can greatly benefit people who’s movements have been restricted by damage to the body, fibromyalgia, stroke or any other disabling conditions. Feldenkrais is excellent for repetitive stain injury, muscle damage and sciatica. It is also a wonderful way to help athletes, musicians and actors enhance their performance. It helps older people expand their range of flexibility and motions, improves their body image and expand their consciousness. A session of Feldenkrais can be private, lasting from 45 to 60 minutes, in which the practitioner gives you gentle hands on guidance in performing movements related to whatever condition you have consulted him or her about. Classes in Feldenkrais movement – my favorite way of approaching this particular form of bodywork – consists of a teacher giving verbal instructions and guiding you in common movements, such as leaning, bending, and even breathing. While working on the floor the instructor helps each participant to discover the ways he or she can move most easily and blissfully. The emphasis of Feldenkrais is very much on experiences, pleasure and ease. This in one of the things that attract me most to it. In my opinion there is far too little bliss in our lives. We human beings feed on bliss just as much as we do on good food. Functional integration through Feldenkrais means the physiological and psychological counterpart of biomedical and energetic homeostasis in the body. It introduces you to a centered grounded way of living, where physical and psyche movements are open, vital and creative. You practice it the way a young baby naturally learns about the world around him. Over time the Feldenkrais technique gradually and easily melt away emotional restrictions and the mechanical psyche limitations of our thinking which we are all prone to as we grow older. Feldenkrais himself used to say; ‘In a perfectly mature body which has grown without great emotional disturbances, movement tends gradually to conform to the mechanical requirements of the surrounding world. The nervous system has evolved under the influence of these of these laws and has fitted to them. However, in our society, we do, by the promise of great reward or intense punishment, so distort the even balance of the system that many acts become excluded or restricted. The result is that we have to provide special conditions for providing adult maturations of many rested functions. The majority of people have to be taught not only the special movements of the repertoire, but also reform patterns of movements and attitudes that should never have been excluded or neglected.’ A good web reference for Feldenkrais is: www.feldenkrais.com Trager In many ways Trager is the most mysterious and the most magnificent of all the three major transformative forms of bodywork. It is the discovery of Milton Trager, M.D., who came upon the principles on which it is based by accident at the age of eighteen. An American, born in Chicago in 1908, Milton Trager had a congenital spinal deformity, which contributed to a weak and sickly childhood. As so often happens, with someone who needs to overcome adversity, it was looking for answers and solutions to his own challenges that led Trager eventually to achieve the graceful body of a dancer, gymnast and athlete. He was also a boxer. The Trager approach relies on gentle rocking and fine movements of the body, which induce deep pleasant relaxation. Trager discovered that a very light hands on touch can alleviate allsorts of ailments in people. A Trager practitioner helps you feel what it is like to move freely and effortlessly, as this happens something much deeper occurs: you begin to experience a newer higher level of balance, physically and emotionally. Homeostasis in the body becomes a much easier matter to maintain and you find deep-seated physical and mental challenges that may be causing your pain, emotional disorders or may lack of confidence, or in some other way be disrupting normal function gradually clear. This leaves you a freer more vital human being. Like Feldenkrais, there are two aspects to the Trager approach. In the first aspect the practitioner works on you while you passively receive the benefits, this is called tablework. The active aspect of the Trager approach is called Mentastics. Mentastics relies on natural, gentle movements, which you can do yourself to release deep-seated mental and physical patterns, facilitate wider mobility and mental clarity and increase energy. The Trager approach is a wonderful way of reducing stress, but it goes far further. It helps to make new connections between nervous system and muscle. As such, it is a wonderful way of rehabilitating motion for any one who has suffered from traumatic injury or stroke or who has any neuro-muscular disorder, such as muscular dystrophy, Parkinsons disease, multiple sclerosis or post-polio syndrome. Tregar also improves breathing and is good for people with lung problems or any kind of chronic pain. But is goes much deeper, the Trager approach whether through table work or Mentastics enriches your ability to feel and expands your awareness of who you really are how you can interact gracefully with the world around you. A typical session of tablework last from an hour to an hour and a half, during which you are either fully clothed or in underwear. The Tregar practitioner gently stretches and rocks various areas of your body and then is likely to instruct you how to do Mentastcs. Milton Trager describes how vast the benefits of Trager can be when he said ‘I am convinced that for every physical non-yielding condition there is a psychic counterpart in the conscious mind, corresponding exactly to the degree of physical manifestation period. These patterns often develop and respond to circumstances, such as accidents, surgery, illness, poor posture, emotional trauma, stresses of daily living or poor movement habits. The purpose of my work is to break up these sensory and mental patterns, which inhibit free movement and cause pain and disruption of normal function.’ Moshe Feldenkrais and Milton Tregar were good friends. In fact it was Trager, teaching his technique at Eslen Institute in Big Sur, California for many years, who brought the Feldenkrais to Eslen. The two masters of bodywork used to work on each others bodies. It is almost impossible to describe how deep the effect of Trager can go. I have myself experienced profound transformation on the very deepest levels in areas of my life including, my creativity, physical well-being and view of reality, having done several sessions with a Trager practitioner named Jananda Bird in the UK. For further information on Trager take a look at the website www.trager.com |
