View

People come to work with me for a number of different reasons. Some people come for meaningful connection. Others come for relaxation and stress relief. Some use my work to manage chronic pain or to support their rehab from injury. Others are working with psychotherapists and use our time to access emotional dynamics through the body. Some people explore their spiritual dimension with me.

Even with this broad range of motivating factors, there is a common quality of experience shared by all my clients. There is a conflict inside thats bothering them, either physical or emotional or both, that they have been unable to remedy on their own. This conflict has been there long enough for them to want help with it. In other words, they are suffering. The pain involved can range from a simple longing for genuine emotional connection or the tension of chronic stress to severe physical pain and intense emotional instability. In every case the suffering aspect is the same.

Suffering is different from pain. As humans, we hurt ourselves and get hurt by the world all the time. Something happens to us physically, emotionally or mentally that creates a wound. Our being usually responds with actions that take care of the wound and the pain goes away. Pain is usually temporary. It tells us that something is wrong. It tells us where the problem is likely to be and gives us the motivation to do something about it. All of this can happen without suffering . Suffering is the pain that is added to our pain when we are unable to respond in a way that resolves it. Suffering is the hurt and frustration, the powerlessness and the defensiveness or isolation that comes when we can’t make our own pain go away.

Chronic pain is a very lonely place. Even the smallest injury, longing or physical desire, when amplified by self criticism, frustration and isolation can swell into an inner force that feels consuming. When people find themselves stuck in this way its natural for them to search for something capable of soothing it. The human heart knows there is something that exists in the universe that can touch the agitation and resolve it, even if the person doesn’t know it by name. This is the nature of Compassion.

So even though skilled bodywork can provide relief from stress and physical pain and can be used effectively in rehabilitation, psychotherapy and spiritual exploration, its greatest strength lies in its ability to address the element of suffering that is common to people in all of these therapeutic situations. Skilled bodywork can actually touch suffering.

Pain and Suffering

In my work, Loving Kindness is the therapist. She is amazingly sensitive, finely attuned and naturally generous. I invite her presence and give her my hands. She takes my strength, my knowledge and my passion and turns them into skill for the benefit of all beings.       

Loving Kindness is more than just a human emotion. Loving Kindness is one of the forms or faces of Universal Compassion. It is a living, intelligent Presence that exists independent of human beings and their suffering. As a Universal aspect or dimension of consciousness its nature acts as the ground or source of specific qualities we experience as human beings. Qualities that are the heart and soul of bodywork.

Compassion, or Loving Kindness, is the dimension of consciousness that provides the pure witnessing awareness of the transcendent realms the capacity to touch, to feel and to know all that exists in awareness through direct, intimate contact. The intimacy and transparent vulnerability of Loving Kindness in its purity gives rise to the open, delicate, alive tenderness of the human heart. It is the source of our hearts sensitivity and gives us the ability to be open, considerate, gentle, warm, accepting and accurately attuned to the feelings and the needs of others.

Loving Kindness is the mode of being that functions in service to others in any therapeutic relationship. It is the specific quality of our spiritual nature that arises in consciousness to hold the hurt and suffering of sentient life. As it descends into the therapeutic relationship, its presence imbues both the therapist and the client with its qualities, providing a means for the union of therapist and client in a dynamic interchange that dissolves suffering.

Kindness is radiantly warm with a supple, empathic softness that penetrates the insensitivity and defensiveness that surrounds the pain of suffering. It makes the therapist open, attuned and gentle in a way that is selfless, generous and continually affectionate. This embodied kindness invites trust, openness and vulnerability in the client, which is Loving Kindness opening from depth of their own interior.

Compassion provides the therapist with an innate considerateness of the clients pain and vulnerability and a natural draw towards their hurt in a penetrating Way that is soft and powerful at the same time.  In the client it opens as the feeling of being held and taken care of in ways that are accurately attuned to where they are at the time.  Like a sweet appreciation for specific moments of intimate connection, feelings of confidence and bravery in the face of challenging physical or emotional pain, amazement and wonder in response to spontaneous, skillful intervention or a glowing sense of satisfaction and gratitude for the therapeutic atmosphere as a whole.  What starts as a meeting of therapist and client has the capacity to open into the Presence of Loving Kindness with two individuals relating to each other within it.

In the practice of bodywork in particular, intimate physical contact is the explicit mode of communication. This makes bodywork the most immediate, the most accessible and perhaps the most effective form of this relationship. Intimate touch, when fully integrated with the presence of its Compassionate ground, is the most direct expression of Loving Kindness I have ever experienced. In fact, bodywork as a practice belongs to Loving Kindness, in my view. It is one of the ways that Universal Compassion expresses itself in the world. Loving Kindness is the therapist, the therapy and my teacher. My aspiration is to function clearly and completely as one of her skillful hands.