Belief – Practical Bodywork

On The Bleeding Edge of Science

Twenty years ago, a friend of mine stopped being able to walk.

It happened intermittently. She’d be fine for a few weeks or months, then collapse. She had intense pelvic pain that doctors couldn’t find a reason for. Some thought she was faking it and sent her to the psych ward, or gave her a catheter without anesthetic “to teach her a lesson.”

No doctor, as far as I know, asked her if she had a history of childhood abuse.

Then came the CDC’s Adverse Childhood Experience study (ACE), a study of 17,000 adults which correlated long-term health outcomes with childhood trauma. It suggested that certain experiences are risk factors for leading causes of illness and death–as well as poor quality of life, including idiopathic pain. Chronic, high-intensity stress in childhood, it seems, can re-engineer your nervous system, and not for the better.

In my bodywork practice, my biggest source of fascination and frustration is “mystery pain,” often accompanied by “mystery fatigue.” I can get a little obsessed. In trying to solve the problem of why a client is in pain, exhausted, dizzy, depressed, anxious, can’t walk properly, or gets “pins and needles” for no apparent reason, I’ve researched not only musculoskeletal problems, such as injuries, arthritis, disc disease, spinal stenosis and spondylitis, but also adrenal fatigue, chronic Lyme, and any nervous system illness we have a name for, including every type of sclerosis that they thought my friend had, and then ruled out.

And I keep going back to the ACE study. All the TED talks and spin-off studies and New Health Initiatives focus on prevention, which is splendid. But what about people whose nervous systems are already kerflucked? Is there any way to help them?

Answer: I don’t know.

We know the nervous system is plastic; it can be rewired, to a certain extent. We know that PTSD is treatable. Could we develop a protocol in cases of idiopathic pain and fatigue syndrome, otherwise known as Nobody Knows Why I’m Kerflucked?

Because the danger in addressing an undiagnosable problem in a holistic way, is that you may be attacking it at the wrong level. You can’t heal a broken leg by changing your mindset. Too many holistic practitioners make claims that aren’t backed up by research. As a colleague noted when she said, “I don’t know any other massage therapists quite like you.”

So I keep asking questions. I keep reading research. And I keep up my attempts to hack into your nervous system, and tell it there’s no cause for alarm.

Touchy Topic Tuesday: How To Solve A Problem

“No problem can be solved at the same level of consciousness which created it.”–Albert Einstein

Last week we discussed the effects of scarcity on the brain’s ability to think. The more pressing and immediate our problems, the less bandwidth we have available for coping with them. This holds true for money problems, relationship problems, time problems and health problems. We get so wrapped up in a negative feedback loop that we enter a ‘stress tunnel,’ where we can only see the terror before us, and lose our capacity for long-range planning.

So, with thanks to Jeanna Gabellini, my lovely business coach, I present an all-purpose strategy for solving problems.

1. Notice that you have a problem.

The reason denial is such a common coping strategy is that it keeps things comfortably familiar. If you have no problems, there’s nothing you have to change. Moreover, if you ‘admit’ you have a problem, that’s tantamount to placing blame, which as we know is of the devil.

So if you can go so far as to say to yourself, “hmmm, there seems to be a problem here,” without attaching a value judgement to it, you have already taken a major step toward solving it.

2. Study the parameters of the problem.

If you have financial problems, sit down and look at your accounts. If you are ill and/or in pain, contemplate your own mortality. If you’re on the verge of divorce, look over the brink. If you’re operating on a permanent time deficit, borrow an hour from all your pressing commitments and do nothing.

This will be scary. It will induce panic, despair, and the desire to consume copious amounts of alcohol. Stick with those feelings. Have a good long talk with them and hear what they have to say. Let them scream and cry and rage until they’re done.

Why this works: Your negative emotions are only parasitic entities when you try to sweep them under the rug. When you stop trying to evade them, they burn themselves out, reveal themselves to be illusory, or just start boring you to tears.

3. Notice what beliefs you have around this problem.

If you are anything like me, you could write a book-length essay entitled “Why I Am So Screwed.” Boil it down to the essence. Describe, to your intellectual and emotional satisfaction, why it is impossible to solve this problem.

Why this works: Our beliefs determine our actions. Most of the time, our minds are operating under a set of assumptions which were formulated before we were seven years old. Trying to solve a problem by handing it over to a seven-year-old’s id pretty much guarantees sub-optimal results.

4. Quiet your mind.

For some people, this involves visualizations about stuffing your problems into a bloated weather balloon and watching it float away. For others, rigorous Zen meditation is the only way to go.

You might get some respite from mental chatter by going for a five-mile run, or watching George Carlin clips, or putting on the Bee Gees and imitating John Travolta until you spot the neighbors gawping and laughing their a***s off.

Do whatever works for you. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You merely aim to create a perceptible gap in your mental landscape.

Why this works: Your brain has access to amazing resources, once you clear some bandwidth.

5. Open up to a shift in perspective.

For those of you who are very smart, this will not be easy. You must consider the possibility that you–or your seven-year-old id–might be wrong. For many of us, this is scarier than Step 2.

On the other hand, there COULD be a solution to this impossible, miserable, soul-scorching problem. That would be really nice.

So just entertain the possibility.

Why this works: See the quote from Albert Einstein, above.

6. Ask your newly quiet, open mind some specific questions.

Tailor your questions in a way which allows for fabulous things to happen. For example, instead of asking “Why am I always broke?” try asking “How can we easily double our household income this year?” Or, “How can I best experience passion and romance in my life this week?”

Why this works: That clear bandwidth in your brain needs to focus itself on coming up with the most efficient solution to your problem. It can’t do this if it is grinding away upon irrelevant concerns. Therefore, ask questions that you really want to know the answers to.

7. Listen for the answer.

Your mind may present you with an image, a single sentence, or a detailed set of instructions. Write down whatever comes, without editing and without judging. If nothing comes, go about your day and check in later.

Effective solutions will not be emotionally charged. If your mind presents you with an answer that feels angry, judgmental, anxious, fearful, contemptuous, or cruel, this is your seven-year-old id talking. Pat your seven-year-old self on the head and go for another walk.

8. Act upon information received.

Lots of people skip this part, and then wonder why nothing ever changes. It’s the reason why people get addicted to psychics and Tarot cards. They’re looking for an answer that doesn’t require action on their part.

A good answer to a problem may not look like anything you recognize. It may not seem to be addressing the problem at all. It will, however, be sensible (or at least innocuous), and feel like a nice thing to do at the moment.

Why this works: Taking small, sensible actions that feel nice are the ONLY way to implement sustained changes. If a proposed action makes you feel bad, you won’t take it, at least not consistently. Thus it is not a solution to your problem, no matter how rational it appears.

9. Rinse and repeat.

If you get in the habit of using this process, you will not only get better at clearing your bandwidth, you’ll be able to continually tweak your actions according to your situation. You’ll discover new opportunities because your mind will be clear enough to notice and act upon them.

What kinds of mind-clearing and problem-solving techniques work for you? Please leave your insights in the comments!

Touchy Topic Tuesday: I Am Embarrassed To Tell You This, But…

…I’m wearing an ankle brace.

Turns out my crippled ankle wasn’t psychosomatic after all. According to my fabulous new podiatrist, I have posterior tibial tendon dysfunction, caused by the extra bone in my flat, flat foot torquing my gait and stretching the tendon until it is practically shredded. He says if I don’t wear this brace, I’m a candidate for surgical reconstruction of my entire ankle joint when the tendon gives way completely.

It took me awhile to assimilate this information.

Because it’s a lot easier to be the big, strong person who helps OTHER people with their frustrating pain and mobility problems. It is terrifying to admit that I don’t have all the answers, that I can’t fix everything, that most mornings I have a hard time negotiating my way downstairs, because my ankle won’t flex properly. It is hard to ask for help.

On the other hand, it’s great to be running up and down stairs again. A little support in the right place makes all the difference.

And knowing what I know about alignment, I am kicking myself for not recognizing the obvious. I was so focused on how the rest of my body was affecting my ankle, I failed to consider the possibility that the ankle was, in fact, the source of the problem. It’s a wonder my knee and hip and back aren’t completely wrecked; for this, I have yoga and foam rolling to thank.

The moment that mortified me the most was when my podiatrist said EXACTLY THE SAME THING to me that I say to my own clients. “You need to take care of this now, so you’ll be massaging people for longer.” Ouch. I can spend my life telling people that self-care is not a luxury, but am I walking my talk?

It seems to me that the people who give the most to others are often the least willing to give to themselves. Are you one of them? Think about how many people are depending on you, at your job, in your family, in your relationships. If something happened to you–like, say, you stopped being able to climb stairs, or walk more than 30 feet, or started getting regular migraines, or collapsed under intolerable strain–how would this affect them? How does it affect them when you’re exhausted, anxious and in pain? Are you more likely to become impatient, angry or detached?

And if a child of yours were forced to endure the same level of pain, stress and fatigue you put yourself through on a daily basis, would this be okay with you?

Well, then.

The You-ness of Rolfing

Theresa Zordan is an expert Rolfer and visionary blogger from Denver, CO who graciously offered to swap guest posts with Practical Bodywork. We are pleased as punch to have her.

It may be hard to believe, but sometimes I forget about Rolfing and how helpful it can be. It’s especially hard to believe considering I am a Rolfer. This is what I do all day, every day. But you see, I have this weird thing in my brain about Rolfing: I think it can help just about everything, for just about everyone. Except me.

Someone tells me how their knee’s been bothering them; I think to myself, “I can help with that.” Someone tells me how they feel out of whack and off kilter; I think to myself, “I can help with that.” Someone tells me how they get headaches a few times a week; I think to myself, “I can help with that.” Someone’s freaking out about work and their house and their boyfriend; I think to myself, “I can help with that.” Then, I break my toe, sprain my shoulder, get emotionally wrapped up into a giant-multi-colored-extra-knotted ball of string and I think to myself, “Whatever am I going to do?!? Who could possibly help me with this!?!”

And so, last week, I found myself with said broken toe (my first broken bone!), and sprained shoulder (thanks for nothing, yoga), and emotional ball of knots and I finally (finally!!!) remembered that Rolfing might be able to help me. So, I called up my bud, Dave Sheldon, a Rolfer in Boulder, and asked if he could fit me in. He said yes and I walked into his office with a laundry list of complaints. It was one of those sessions (do you do this?) where you go in, planning to mention just those two or three things that are really bothering you, and by the time you’re five minutes into the session you’ve listed 23 things instead. “AND my roommate’s dog is driving me crazy! AND my sister’s coming to visit next week and it’s stressing me out! AND my sacrum feels all wonky! AND I’ve been wearing flip-flops for two weeks now and I’m sick of it, but I can’t wear any other shoes without my toe hurting and I can’t exactly walk into the bank barefoot, can I?” And so on, and so forth.

Then, the funniest (and at the same time the most natural) thing happened. I got on the table and closed my eyes, and Dave started working. All of a sudden, it felt like all these layers were falling away from me. Like I’d been wearing a suit made out of 23 layers of tissue paper. So light that I hadn’t thought to take it off, but enough that it was affecting the way I looked and that rustling noise was really getting to me. And one by one, Dave gently cut each layer away, and let it fall to the ground. Some layers were wrapped tightly around my foot, keeping it stable, but I didn’t need those anymore. Some of them were wrapped all around my shoulder, all the way down to my wrist and around my ribs and spine. I didn’t need those anymore either. Most of them were wrapped around my heart, or my solar plexus, or my throat, or my head, getting me caught up in unnecessary worry and fear and distress. I didn’t need a single one of those tissue paper layers.

And I realized there, on the table, why it was that I fell in love with Rolfing in the first place. Dave wasn’t taking away anything that I needed, or anything that was inherently me. And he wasn’t adding anything to me, either. He was simply uncovering the real me, and giving me permission for that to be enough. I didn’t need any of this tissue paper to make me stable or pretty or to cover anything up. I was perfectly me, without all that other stuff. He was reminding my shoulder and my toe that they already knew how to recover from an injury quickly and with ease. He was reminding me that worry and fear were good intuitive signals to listen to, but there was no reason to walk around spinning in them all day. And the greatest part was that he did all that without saying a word. He worked with the physical tissues and the energetic patterns and gently unwound them until there I was, just the way I should be. And when I came from that centered, more-me sort of place, I realized, my sister and I had shared a house (and usually a bedroom) for 16 1/2 years. We could probably figure out 3 days just fine. Oh, and my sacrum felt better, too.

It was funny. When I walked into his office, I didn’t feel like someone other than myself. But when I walked out…the change was drastic and clear. I’d walked in like a papier-mâché doll of myself and walked out as me. And that right there is some good shit, yo.

–Theresa Zordan, Rolfer extraordinaire

So How The Hell Do We Do That???

As some of my wise friends point out, changing the face of healthcare is a quixotic proposition. It’s all very well to saythat your doctor should be prescribing more massage than painkillers, that insurance should cover it, and that everyone should be insured.

But as we all know, our broken healthcare system makes far more money by selling drugs and high-intervention treatments to sick people than by investing in low-intervention therapies that keep them well. Too many people have their livelihoods bound up in the status quo. It’s not just difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it; it may well be impossible. Upton Sinclair was an optimist.

So where do we start?

This is funny. Ha. Ha.First of all, like the global economy, our healthcare system is grossly overbalanced. Premiums are rising faster than our ability to pay for insurance, high rates of unemployment mean that more and more people are getting pushed out of employer-funded healthcare, and an aging population is using up more and more healthcare resources. Those who still have jobs and insurance are able to remain in denial, but the system as it stands is unsustainable.

Second, our society is changing in some fundamental ways. Communication is infinitely easier, faster and more varied than at any time in history. There are a lot of smart, underemployed people with time on their hands, and highly sophisticated communications devices in those hands.

As the healthcare system slowly collapses under its own weight, there’s a lot more motive and opportunity for alternative practitioners to set up shop, and for desperate and disillusioned clients to try them. Due to the lack of a cohesive, non-exploitive alternative system (Massage Envy: even the name is bad karma), alternative healthcare practitioners have to be entrepreneurs, if they want to earn a decent living. And good entrepreneurs know that you live or die by the number and quality of your relationships.

Because of these factors, there’s a lot more scope for new healthcare paradigms gaining influence and visibility through lateral connections, like network marketing, rather than the top-down corporate capitalism model, which requires huge investments up front.

Therefore, Bucky Fuller’s ‘better model’ is building itself as we speak. As people lose their insurance, or see their premiums rise, they’re forced to take responsibility for their own health. As network marketing reaches more and more people, they will be savvier about how they choose a practitioner, and what healing modalities work for them.

At the same time, Big Healthcare is trying to save costs by cutting payments to practitioners. Mainstream healthcare practitioners will have less and less incentive to hitch their wagons to a system which is giving them less and less, and more incentive to look around for another model.

And there it will be. People like Atul Gawande are out there backing up their common sense advice with research and documentation. Practitioners who collaborate, develop skills and market effectively will have a wider range of influence over cultural thinking about healthcare. And people getting screwed by an insane system will have both the motive and means (through relentless communcation) for demanding change.

Any questions?

Vision for the Future of Healthcare

‘Winter and Spring,’ stained glass by Judith Schaecter, 30″ x 38″, judithschaecter.com

Wouldn’t it be amazing if:

• You could go to your doctor with severe pain, and she would write you a prescription for a course of massage therapy and other bodywork, which not only blissed you out, but solved your problem without the nasty side effects of drugs?

• Your massage therapist could refer you to the top specialist in the area for whatever issue you had, from varicose veins to systemic nerve pain?

• Hospitals felt like wellness centers, complete with fountains, lovely smells, spa-like decor, fresh organic meals, your favorite media on tap, natural light, and a virtual dearth of harsh fluorescent lighting, scary sounds, sinister smells, andsimilarities to an Argentinian torture chamber?

• Wellness centers were jam-packed with practitioners who not only knew how to work miracles, but knew when to send you to someone else for the best possible treatment?

• You’d be hard put to tell the difference between a doctor’s office waiting room and the atrium of a high-level resort spa?

• Insurance covered all of this, and everybody?

Impossible, you say? Crazy? Hubristic to the max?

Yes, possibly.

But this is the vision for Practical Bodywork that gets me out of bed every day. In my mind, I see that atrium, with the fountain, and stained glass by Judith Schaecter set into the walls. I see my favorite clients pouring in and receiving all the love and joy they’ve come to expect. I see practitioners who like and respect one another, working together to create the best health outcomes for every client. I see everybody earning a living wage with health insurance.

During the last year I’ve been taking a crash course in business development–marketing, networking, accounting, and management–a DIY MBA, if you will. I’m surprised to note that I’m loving it. The business world has, seemingly, greater scope for idealism than the art world ever did–more leverage, more autonomy, more community engagement, and more practical influence. Also more money.

Practical Bodywork is still at the very beginning of this journey. We’re moving along at a pace that may not set the world on fire, but won’t kill us, either. We’re beginning the search for office space, which will one day hold that fountain and fabulous art, as well as many other amazing health care practitioners. We’ve got a bookkeeper and an editor, a project development advisor and a business coach, and may qualify for a loan sooner than we thought we could.

We have also, on a joyful, visionary whim, applied for a small business grant. You can help us qualify. Just go here, search for Practical Bodywork in Philadelphia, and vote. No donations required. Love!

The Perils of Positive Thinking

Now, I’m not going to name any names. Let’s just say that There are Those Out There who will tell you, with great fluidity and earnestness, that you are what you think. That “your attitude determines your altitude.” That changing your mind will change your life. They will tell you this in a spiritual context, in a relationship context, in a financial context, in a healing context.

And without naming names, or going into detail, I will allow that they are partly correct. The mind is an amazing thing. Recent research into the placebo effect indicates that the brain releases endorphins that alleviate pain even when youknow you’re taking a placebo. Your thoughts can actually program your body for health or destruction, as well as for many things in between.

However, many New Age healers take this paradigm a step too far. They will kindly, earnestly and abusively tell a sick person that they ‘created their illness,’ and, by implication, that they can cure themselves by will alone. This is the kind of thing that generates much antipathy toward New Age healers in certain circles.

“Heart,” oil on canvas, 36″x 48″, Stephanie Lee Jackson 2007.

Two things. First of all, the mind-body connection is not a one-way street. It is a feedback loop. As much as your state of mind can affect your body (psycho-somatic), the state of your body certainly affects your mind (somato-psychic). There are a few people with such naturally sunny dispositions that their minds carry their bodies on an effortless wave of health and prosperity, but those aren’t most of us. Most of us get crabby when we have a headache, let alone a major illness, and we’re not going to think our way out of it.

Second of all–and this is something I’ve only discovered after years of giving and receiving both thought-based therapy and bodywork–your body locks in thought patterns that can only be accessed somatically. The reason you can’t will your way out of an injury or illness (besides the obvious) is that most somatic memory lies beneath the level of conscious awareness. Trying to ‘change your thoughts to attract health and abundance’ when you have oodles of trauma locked in your tissues only creates guilt, frustration, rage and misery.

In my experience, undertaking a healing path is a continuous, spiraling journey. Entertaining a new way of thinking can help a lot. I have undergone surges of positive thinking which performed as advertised–they attract health, joy, abundance and fabulous new friends. However, I have just as often fought my own thoughts for decades, only to have an expert bodyworker fiddle with my arm, my solar plexus or my big toe and trigger an unforeseen breakthrough, both physically and psychologically.

Is Reiki Flaky?

300px-Reiki Image via Wikipedia

Recently I interviewed a colleague, Kathy Fleetwood, about her Reiki practice. She lit up. “It’s changed my life,” she declared.

Last year, Kathy’s mother came down with something that doctors tentatively diagnosed as Parkinson’s. She lost weight, was too exhausted to work, ached all over, and walked with a shuffle and a stoop. Kathy flew home to the UK over Christmas, and gave her two Reiki treatments a day for ten days. A month later her mother was back to normal. The doctors couldn’t say what had happened.

Kathy’s brother is a heroin addict. He has come close to losing a leg from systemic infections. Kathy has given him Reiki when he needed a fix, and the cravings ceased for a day or two. She credits the Reiki for the fact that he still has his legs.

“It’s not coming from me, it’s the energy,” Kathy says. Reiki has been popular in the UK for over a decade; it is widely accepted there as a treatment for all sorts of ills.

In the U.S., Reiki is now being used on cancer patients in respected treatment centers:

Reiki is often described as a treatment that helps life energy to flow in a patient—an explanation not generally accepted by scientists. Barrie Cassileth, chief of the Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, calls the energy theory “absurd” but says light-touch therapy can have a “great relaxing effect” on cancer patients “who are constantly poked, prodded and given needles.”

I have been using Reiki in my practice for over a decade. I cannot give any scientific opinion about its efficacy, because with the number of different techniques I use, it’s impossible to say which are getting results, or whether it’s the integration of therapies itself which is effective. So all I can offer are my observations, as distinct from my beliefs, which change from year to year. (Belief, for me, is a tool for enquiry–if I subscribe to this philosophy, what are its effects in my life? What about that one? Next year, let’s try Buddhism!)

Some phenomenae I have observed in my practice:

If I start doing Reiki while a client is talking, they usually fall silent, sometimes in the middle of a sentence.
If they aren’t talking, they often fall asleep. Suddenly, with a slight snore.
Their muscles will sometimes release along an entire fascial pathway, with an abrupt jerk or shudder.
They feel heat coming from my hands.
During or after a session, they report a cessation of pain and anxiety, profound relaxation, and the occasional vision, color display or ‘spiritual experience.’
Over time, they describe a progressive increase of energy, positive motivation, and decrease of chronic pain.

All of this is mild, anecdotal, and easily explained away by the placebo effect. Any claim that Reiki is a cure for all ills is greatly exaggerated. But the placebo effect is an effect–it is the body’s response to the mind’s reassurance. All of our minds need more reassurance than we usually get.

What I have found is that Reiki imbues my work with reverence. It causes me to stop and contemplate the fact, as Kathy says, that I’m not the one in control here. It reminds me to observe myself, observe my clients, to acknowledge how little I know, and motivates me to discover more.

In other words, it’s a ritual tool for getting my ego out of the way.

So I have no quarrel with skeptics who dismiss Reiki as so much BS. I do not know whether I am channelling healing purple light through my palms, and I have no way to prove it one way or the other. I do know that we’re all going to die sooner or later, and Reiki won’t change that. The best I can do for my clients is to help them make their finite time more pleasant, and possibly more conscious.

To book a session with Kathy, please contact the Balance Health Center in Center City. For affordable Reiki, tryKensington Yoga and Reiki, just down the street from Practical Bodywork.