002. the magicians tools: bodywork
Therapeutic Massage
My style is slow, steady, and often experienced as sedative, grounding, dreamy and reassuring.
In terms of massage therapy, I am a light to medium pressure therapist. Slow movements with broad-based hand to body contact tend to be less startling to the body's self defense mechanisms.
I don’t offer deep tissue work. It is not my personal cup of tea due to a combination of my own bodies physical limitations as well as my overall philosophical approach to working with the body.
I treat focus areas through a combination of direct work, and work on the surrounding/connected structures/tissues that may be holding patterns of imbalance. Through the paradigm of Traditional Chinese Medicine, I was taught that when we are dispersing pain or stagnation from one area, it needs a clear exit route. In order for one area to stabilize or return to a more “ideal” function, we have to make sure that the surrounding structures and tissues are not keeping imbalance in place as well.
During our session, I may utilize myofascial release, heat therapy, guided breathing and visualizations, Tui Na massage, and assisted stretching to affect therapeutic change.
What is Myofascial Release?
“Myofascial release is mostly a change of focus. Instead of targeting specific muscles and giving them a good squeeze, we're grabbing the broad sheets of fascia and taking them for a ride. We create traction in the fascia by engaging it at an angle, dragging it along like a rumpled bedspread that needs smoothing. Of course, the tissue itself doesn't need to be smoothed out, and that's not something that we can accomplish with our hands. Instead, we're smoothing out the nervous system. We're using the fascia as a lever, dragging it slowly along, and allowing the body and brain to get a picture of its own connectedness. We're also engendering an increase in local blood flow and a reduction in muscle tone.”
-Ian Harvey, aka the Massage Sloth
You can watch this informational video by Ian for more on the role of fascia, and for a visual example of what this work might look like.
What is Tui Na massage?
Tui Na roughly translates to “Push/Pull”. Tui Na and all of its incredible techniques are rooted in the cosmology of Traditional East Asian Medicine, and may sometimes also be referred to as Chinese Medical Massage. Chinese Medical Massage practitioners may guide their clients through physical assessments to diagnose imbalance throughout the meridian system, and treat accordingly.
Personally, I do not perform Tui Na massage at this level. Typically, I will use Tui Na massage techniques in situations where a client prefers to remain clothed, to disperse pain or stagnation around the hips, or to promote circulation and a warming of tissue in areas that feel especially sensitive to direct pressure.
I received my bodywork education at an Acupuncture school where Chinese Alchemy (Wuxing), medicine, physiology and pathology were taught as part of the curriculum. I have a deep and profound respect for this medicine and all of its tools, and have benefitted from them tremendously in my own healing journey as a patient.
I am undoubtedly influenced by Traditional East Asian Medicine in the work that I do, and am eager to learn more about the body from this deeply medicinal framework of body, mind and spirit.
Praxis
Tools are tools, and-
the way that we use them or put them into motion is something else all together.
My primary goal as your massage therapist is to create an environment where therapeutic touch feels safe & invited. For me, this includes dynamic and evolving understandings of consent, and it involves transcending and innovating past the “industry standard”. Oh, the industry standard… yikes!
It begins with the way I speak about my work. It involves my intake process, it includes being flexible regarding payment (sliding scale, mutual aid, etc), thoughtful aftercare recommendations, and remaining open for questions and conversation outside of scheduled time with my clients.
It involves protecting and honoring myself and my clients by being curious about patient/practitioner power dynamics that can become unhealthy and extractive on either end.
It includes being willing to dig deep in my understanding of the tools that I use, it lives in naming my teachers & mentors, and it looks like un-divorcing therapeutic effect from living lineages.
My secondary goal as your massage therapist is to bring healthy blood flow and increased mobility to areas that feel stuck or painful. From a dynamic understanding of consent, we can arrive at the reality that what that means or looks like is not only up to me.
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I feel that it is important to mention that when I describe myself as a practitioner, I am speaking to you from the crossroads of both believing in miracles, and bowing to limitations.
I will, respectfully, challenge you to consider possibilities that you might not have been open to previously. On the other hand, I will respect you where you show or tell me that movement or change is not possible (or desired). Through my years of studying the body, astrology, and listening to disability advocates/changemakers, I have come to understand the innate wisdom of things like compensation patterns or limitations. Sometime it might be that the thing that looks like a blockage is actually the thing keeping us safe.
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My life has taught me, that irregardless of what I do, I often end up being a catalyzing agent of change for the people that seek me out.
Picking up tools to funnel that part of myself into a career, with healthy boundaries, where I am fairly compensated for my effort, might be the thing that has saved me above all else.
It is my goal, in all things that I do, to not make un-informed assumptions about what we will be able to accomplish in our time together. This is part of what I mean when I say that the work is deeply collaborative no matter the medium.
Ultimately, where you are headed or how the work lands is not up to me. I bow to you, on my end of the power dynamic from this place of honesty.
On the other hand, the way that you can respect me from your end of the power dynamic is to assume that meaningful change will not happen unless you are willing and available for it.
I think this is where the conversation around consent in patient/practitioner dynamics becomes convoluted or falls flat- when people are looking to be “healed”, without active participation or the responsible degree of self-responsibility that is required for such change.
In order to keep us both safe, I ask that you do not seek out my support in order to be “healed” by another. That is not my wheelhouse. There are people who can do this, and as it has been modeled to me by the facilitators that I trust, I believe in the power of a referral network. If something is over my head or outside of my scope, I will tap into my network for you to pull from if you so choose.
Ultimately, I feel honored to be trusted to do this work, and equally mesmerized and in awe when things do change. And they do!
If you would like to learn more about the embodied impact of the tools I use, I would like to invite you to learn more from the words of my clients themselves. Check out the testimonials page for more insight.
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If you would like to learn more about how I have come to my own (slightly contrarian) understanding of patient/practitioner dynamics, I will have to point you towards my spiritual teachers.
My most direct understanding of spiritual hygiene, and honestly, myself as a person on this planet, has come to me through the help of my teacher-friend Bairavee. She has been my most trusted facilitator for almost a decade now. Secondarily, I would like to credit what I have learned through Lindsay Mack’s teachings on the tarot (Tarot for the Wild Soul).
