Massage Philosophy: Loving Time

I was teaching a massage business class about office design, time management, policies, procedures, etc. We had just touched upon the elegant Buddhist concept that 60 percent of healing is environment. Some spaces you just walk into and immediately feel better; some you walk into and just feel the energy sucked out – like where…

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The Deep Massage Book – It’s a Process!

Ten years ago Lippincott Publishers was interested in me doing a book on the method of Deep Massage I teach. However the further we got the more they wanted me to write case studies, tone down the poetic language, and make it more textbook-y. That’s not my spirit so I dropped that project. Then last…

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Art and Massage: Ode to Kung Fu and Massage

By David Lauterstein, 4/22/10 People make fun of massage And also of martial arts. Both do attract people in love with fantasy land. I have the fantasy I am a healer. I have the fantasy I am a warrior. Yet the desire to be a healer and warrior are two of the highest goals we…

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Lauterstein-Conway Massage School: Earth Day

The biggest puzzle seems to be – here we are alive improbably on a planet teeming with nature, surrounded in our whole solar system and way beyond it with no other life forms.  What did we do to deserve this?  Each of us knows on some level that naturally we ought to bow down each…

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Mired in the Truth: Beauty and Massage

Plato identified the three realms of virtue: goodness, truth and beauty. Massage has been, to some extent, lately mired in truth. So-called science-based or orthopedic approaches have been extremely popular. The “facts” are trotted out as the rationale for how we should approach client’s neuromuscular symptoms. But what people most respond to is quality of…

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Anatomy Review: Massage for the Scalenes

The scalenes are actually the uppermost of the intercostals muscles, those muscles lying between your ribs that assist inhalation and exhalation. However, big surprise, there are no ribs in the neck! Actually a number of books say the scalenes attach to the vestigial ribs of the cervical vertebrae. That is, little buds appear on the…

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The Calling of Massage Therapy

There are those people who are drawn to play music, and they can not go a day or two without wanting to pick up the guitar. There are those who love writing. Finding words for their experiences gives their lives an essential, deeper meaning. Similarly there are those who are drawn to touch. Touch is…

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Massage and the Nervous System: Part Three

Part three of Massage and the Nervous System. (See parts two and one.) As massage therapists we know how to get our hands on muscles and connective tissues. But now we see somehow we have to get our hands on the nervous system because otherwise it’s a bit like flipping light switches with no electricity – some action…

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Massage and The Nervous System: Part Two

Part two of Massage and the Nervous System. (See part one.) As massage therapists we know how to get our hands on muscles and connective tissues. But now we see somehow we have to get our hands on the nervous system because otherwise it’s a bit like flipping light switches with no electricity – some action…

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Massage and the Nervous System: Part One

This is the first part of a three-part series on Massage and the Nervous System. When we first learn massage therapy, we naturally visualize that we are working on muscles. Memorizing muscles and seeing their kinesiological relations to each other is a task! Then we can add to that the wonderful insights drawn from Rolfing and…

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