Not everyone seeks bodywork for exactly the same reason. There is a range of motivations that reflect the dimensions on which people experience pain and the way in which Bodywork can meet them. Here are the most common dimensions of Bodywork on which I work. These are not different types of massage but dimensions of the therapeutic relationship that are always possible in any given session. I offer these descriptions to current and prospective clients to help them locate their needs, desires and expectations on my own spectrum so they have the language to communicate with me about the type of relationship they wish to have. 

Many people come to me because my work is effective in relieving stress. The trouble with stress is that it disconnects us from the natural ease that is inherent to the loving presence we are. Stress creates internal conflict and division that makes staying in touch with ourselves and being sensitive to our own needs difficult. When the feeling of connection to ourselves is lost we long for it, because being in touch with ourselves is an actual human need. Many people seek Bodywork to address this need. It is the most basic and the most sought out dimension of Massage Therapy in my experience. People want to feel pleasurably relaxed and open. They want to feel loving, meaningful connection that is safe and free of conflict. Why? Because it makes us feel like ourselves again. When we don’t feel the love and the sense of intimate connection that is natural to us as human beings we genuinely miss being ourselves. The mature, intimate contact that is essential to Bodywork is a very effective method anyone can use to reconnect.  

Many people come to me because my style of Bodywork is very effective in alleviating certain kinds of pain. Bodywork as a whole has a variety of disciplines that address different kinds of pain and their causes. I work mostly with the pain that results from chronic muscle tension. Chronic muscle tension has numerous causes but the achy soreness and emotional agitation that characterizes it stays pretty consistent regardless of why its there. Tensions caused by stress, habitual use, exercise, postural imbalance, systemic reactions and compensations to injury, illness or disease all respond very well to my approach. My method for addressing the pain of chronic tension is a synthesis of Deep Tissue Massage, Myofascial Release and Trigger Point Therapy. I call it a synthesis rather than a combination because, at their roots, these disciplines are all expressions of the same organic wisdom. Which to me has a spiritual Nature and a Way that is much more fundamental than manual technique. The technologies of Deep Tissue, Myofacial Release and Trigger Point Therapy provide the movements I use to express the wisdom from which they arise.

Many people come to me with pain that is caused by an imbalance in their structural system. In order to be effective in these situations, our work has to address the source of the imbalance in addition to relieving the pain that results from it.

The human body has evolved and continues to move in a field of gravitation that is continuously pulling it to the ground. It took millions of years in this field for the structure of the human body to become fully upright. During that time, the demand that survival placed on fuel efficiency produced a musculo-skeletal system that is extraordinarily flexible, adaptive and efficient, provided that it maintains the most balanced arrangement of its components. We call this “good posture” but the significance of structural integrity is much more profound than simply standing up straight.

Patterning in the structural system caused by repetitive use, injury, compensation or psychological armoring can pull parts of a persons body out of its optimal arrangement in the system and cause imbalance. Imbalance in the system causes parts of the body to overwork, creating inefficiency that we experience as pain, fatigue, weekness, limited range of motion, vulnerable joints that chronically hurt, injury sites that flair up or re-injure repeatedly and the emotional suffering that comes with them.

Bodywork that addresses the fascia, which is the system of connective tissue that structures the body, can be a very effective method for correcting structural imbalances that involve excessive tension, shortening, adhesion or scarring of the fascia. It can also identify areas of the body that need to be strengthened, stretched or re-conditioned by the client in order to restore and maintain structural integrity.

Some of the people I work with have an understanding, from their own experience, that the tension in their bodies and the pain they are feeling are not exclusively physical. Many of them are currently working with psychotherapists or a have past therapeutic experience exploring psychological patterning from their childhoods and the emotions that fuel their dynamics. It is possible, in situations like this, for Bodywork to assist them in exploring the emotional dimension of their tension and the pain it produces in the body.

I am not a licensed counselor or psychotherapist. So I am not qualified to interpret the meaning of a clients feelings or counsel them on how to address their causes or adjust their life in response to them. However, I can provide a client who already has a qualified therapist to work with an orientation to their bodily experience during our work and a supportive atmosphere in my studio that can assist them in becoming conscious of the emotional dimension of their conflict.

This type of bodywork relationship grows over time. It is rare for this type of exploration to emerge in my practice on its own right from the beginning. The exception to this is when a client is specifically referred to me by a psychotherapist or trauma counselor for this purpose. This happens periodically in my practice because a number of my clients are therapists, yoga teachers, chiropractors and acupuncturists who all have referral networks of their own.

Should this dimension of bodywork emerge naturally, as an expression of the depth in our relationship, I provide my clients with referrals to trained psychotherapists to help them process through and integrate the meaning of their experience in the most healing way possible. 

A number of my clients are spiritual practitioners who use my work as an opportunity to explore the subtle dimensions of their experience. Specifically, the dimension of Presence.

We humans are multidimensional beings. The physical, emotional and mental dimensions of our experience tend to be the most pronounced and hence the most familiar to us. But there are many more dimensions to human experience that tend to go unnoticed and unexplored. These dimensions of experience are described as subtle dimensions because they aren’t as gross, or obvious, as the ones we typically inhabit. They require a great deal of focus and meditative practice to open into and explore.

My clients who are committed to authentic spiritual practice approach their lives with the view that the ultimate meaning and fulfillment of being human lies in the realization of who and what they are on these more subtle dimensions of consciousness. Most of them have teachers in established spiritual traditions like Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity or Taoism. But many of them are still exploring which tradition reflects the wisdom of their hearts and minds the best.

I am not a teacher in an established spiritual tradition. I am a practitioner myself, with a point of view that spans more than one tradition and a way of inquiring into experience that, for the right person, can be very effective in opening into subtle experience. This view and its way of inquiring highlight the dimension of experience known as Presence. The method of inquiring into Presence as a subtle dimension, which is used in many spiritual traditions, is particularly well suited to the Bodywork relationship because of its emphasis on the feeling capacity of consciousness.

The fact that Presence is recognized and known best through the sense of inner touch makes the intimacy and sensate involvement of Bodywork an ideal bridge into this dimension of exprience. The rightness of an individual for this activity and the inclusion of this dimension of experience in the Bodywork relationship is a very personal decision that evolves over time. It is not a relationship I enter into casually or rapidly, but I want my prospective clients to know the full range of what is possible in working with me. 

The most fundamental aspiration guiding my Bodywork is for my clients to leave my studio feeling more like themselves than when they arrived.