Bodies.  Our bodies define us in so many ways, yet we disown them in so many more.  Our uniforms, our haircuts, our styles and the way we showcase ourselves signify everything from socio-economic class and race, to gender identity, to the community we identify with and our "tribe".  At the same time, we disown our bodies and disconnect with them in profound and sometimes abusive ways.  Our relationships and experiences with our bodies, whether it is dragging them around and making them wait while we think or learn, or taking them out for a walk, or getting frustrated when they get sick or break out in hives or whatever, define our core experience.  We struggle each day to feed them the right way, rest them enough, and exercise them enough.  We become so shameful about them that we try and force our bodies to conform to an ideal, and we get frustrated that they can't keep up with us.  


We tend to treat our bodies as something separate from our "self".  We are embarrassed by them, dress them up, hide them, sculpt them with weights and dumbbells or plastic surgery, ink them, mutilate them, starve them, or overfeed them.  At the same time, they are what make us and helps define us as "who I am".  It is exactly the way we dress them up, or hide them, or sculpt them, or ink them, mutilate, starve, or overfeed them that sends a message about "this is who I am".  


Underneath all of that, though, is another dialectic.  We insist that our bodies are different than our minds and in many ways they most definitively are.  You can't think up E=mc2 by putting your body in a pink tutu or running around a tree (although you might be able to do those simultaneously), yet our bodies also create and define how our minds function.... and vice versa.  There is a connection between our minds and bodies that is so profound that we get pits and butterflies in our stomachs or feel like our hearts are breaking.  When we get angry, we clench our fists and when we get scared we lock our knees.  There is an intricate connection between mind and body that is so obvious that we often deny it exists at all.  In fact, the concept of separating our bodies so much as to talk about taking them for a walk or making them wait around while we learn seems ludicrous.  We are fundamentally intertwined with our bodies.


What happens when things go catastrophically wrong with that connection and we are left wondering what is wrong with us?  How do you heal from a disconnection when we never acknowledged there was a connection, or even recognize that the problem is the actual connection?  What does a disconnection look like?


These are the people that don't know they have a body, change it in ways to fit into an ideal image, or abuse it in ways that poses a threat their own health.   


Stay tuned for tomorrow on "Thoughts on Bodies- Part 2: Catastrophic Disconnection".  

I follow a lot of blogs and Facebook pages and one of my favorite pages is MindBodyGreen.  This blog post inspired me to write a similar one.

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-5262/5-Ways-Yoga-Helped-Me-Beat-Anorexia.html


I’ve been pretty sick most of my life.  I had a difficult childhood that left me with PTSD and the anxiety from it overwhelmed my body so much that I developed several autoimmune disorders and severe chronic pain.  I had no idea how to deal with life until a good friend of mine, who had taken a few massage courses, introduced me to Yoga, Meditation, and Massage.  For the first time, I felt like I had control in my life.  When my friend and I drifted apart in life, I decided to go back to school and learn about Massage and Holistic Health.  Massage healed me in so many ways.  Both giving and receiving massage has changed my life in a postive way.  Here are 5 ways giving and receiving massage has made me be a better person:


1) Giving massage gave me an opportunity to focus and be centered and have a calm place to be for an hour.

Part of having severe anxiety and post-traumatic stress is that my mind is in a million places at once.  I simply can’t concentrate and focus.  For me, I couldn’t focus because I was literally scared of everything and everyone, including myself.  Having an hour (or a few!) every day to just be with the person on my table and focused on them and not my issues, in a safe and relaxing, therapeutic environment was like having mini-vacations every day.  


2) Being a Massage Therapist made me feel obligated to be the best person I can be and a leader by example for my clients.

One of two of my concentrations at massage school was in Mind-Body Body Psychology and much of what I know about the body in this regard is from applying the principles of Body Psychology to my own recovery process from PTSD.  Healing myself gave me tools to help heal others.  


3) Being a Massage Therapist reminds me constantly of the things I need to do to take care of myself whenever I recommend those same things to my clients.

I have learned a lot by healing myself and its difficult to remember them all, all of the time.  When I recommend tips and tricks to my clients, its a great reminder for myself as well!


4) I now consider myself an expert in dealing with extreme stress and the conditions that stress causes.

I always laugh to myself when someone takes a bad picture of me (at least what I think is bad) and my friends say that I look like my normal Zen self.  Looking back at myself from before I began my massage journey feels like looking back at someone that I totally don’t recognize.  I no longer have PTSD or even daily pain or anxiety anymore and my autoimmune problems no longer control me.   I consider massage to be one of the major reasons why.  I use the same principles that I learned each day with my clients and many report similar experiences, which I think is just amazing!


5) I was able to let go of the past.

Anyone who has received a considerable amount of bodywork knows that massage helps you process past emotions and events.  There is a saying- “The issues are in the tissues”.  Massage Therapy has pushed me to find myself.  No matter what happens, I will always have myself and will never loose that again.  Some terrible things happened to me, but massage opened several doors for me to help me move on and reach for a better life; a life full of helping others and being the best person I can be.

This past week has been a hard week for many Americans.  As some of you know, my primary interest as a Massage Therapist is to work with Post-Traumatic Stress and PTSD.  This is what led me to go to massage school and specialize in massage in Integrative Health settings and to study Body Psychology.   After the events in Boston last Monday, my first thought was to reach out to help. So, I have teamed up with Massage Without Boarders, a non-profit founded in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, to set up a program to provide massage therapy for those affected.  A lot of Massage Therapists across the country with training to work with PTSD are now stepping up to help out.  Its been amazing to see!  

It makes me feel so good to see people interested in how to help those who have experienced traumatic events.  Just two years ago I wrote a Continuing Education Course for Massage Therapists on how to work with PTSD with a website outlining much of the material.  Since Monday, my website page has gone viral!  If you want to read it too.... check it out here.... http://www.squidoo.com/massage-for-trauma-survivors-ptsd

I have a lot of stress in my life, like most people I run into.  I am also a creature of habit and I tend to sit and stand in the same position and walk in all the same places.  I even had lines in my carpet in my old apartment because I took the same exact path from the front door to the kitchen by going around the coffee table and then between the sofa and lazy boy.  When I sit in my desk chair, I slouch.  When I go for a long walk I always twist my torso a bit around the stitch in my side.  I know that I always get knots in the same place and so do my clients.  So, why does the knots always come back?


The definition of a Knot is (paraphrased from memory from my school notes):


An area of muscle fibers and nerves and connective tissue bound up together preventing oxygen and nutrients from reaching the muscle.  



As a massage therapist, I know I can work out a knot and sometimes it will go away and sometimes it comes back.  Usually, however, they come back when what is causing them in the first place hasn’t been addressed.  Muscles are a little like ropes.  If you pull on a rope too much, it will start to fray.  If you want to reinforce a rope, you have to knot it.  Hence, if you have a muscle that is being pulled too long, it will knot up.   All muscles in the body have an opposing muscle (or sometimes a few) that pull in the opposite direction.  A good example would be the biceps and triceps in your upper arms.  Chances are, if you have a knot in your back, there is a muscle in the front of your body that is too contracted and is pulling the ones in the back too long.  


Most people get knots in the back of their bodies.  If you come see me for a massage, I most likely will work on the front of your body first before working on your back.  Unfortunately, if you have poor posture, even if I get all your opposing muscles in a relaxed, normal position, once you return to your habits of slouching or whatever you do, you will get over-elongated muscles and knots.  Old knots that are no longer fighting to prevent an injury in your muscles (ie: getting pulled too long and start “fraying”) will release and won’t come back.  


Knots that are still fighting will keep coming back.  


So, that knot behind your shoulder that keeps coming back?  Its fighting.  And that is a good thing if you don’t want your shoulder muscles to get hurt.  You want it to go away?  Visit your local, friendly massage therapist!  He/she will massage it out, but I can’t guarantee it won’t go away without a little work on your part too.