Massage Therapy: Growing New Arms

The other day I working on a woman who has chronic complaints in her extremities. As I worked, I had a deeper insight into the origins of her pain, tension and discomfort. A Case Study: The Servers Some people are raised to do for others. Their own independent self-expression and the meeting of their own…

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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 Continuing Education: The World Needs a WIFE

By David Lauterstein In marketing everyone just thinks “What’s In it For Me?” and accordingly that all promotion needs to assume “W.I.F.M.” is primary. WIFM is true in many ways. I am always struck how most health magazines are mostly sales tools for WIFM – filled with ads for herbal remedies, health foods, and cosmetics.…

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Beyond the Immune System: Making History with Massage Part 2

Let’s take a moment for reverie.  For a minute just imagine that you are receiving an incredible massage.  Not just a good massage – an incredible massage, anywhere in or out of this universe, from anyone or anything.  Enjoy imagining receiving your most ideal, incredible massage.  (Please breathe and pause). My guess, from having talked…

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Ezekiel on Bodywork!

Below I’ve printed a famous passage from the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. It is the one that gave rise to the gospel song, “Dem Bones”, which goes through the body, ending with “neck bone connected to the head bone; Now hear the words of the Lord!” To me it evokes the deepening experience of…

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Anatomy Review: Introduction to the Torso

The word “torso” comes from the Latin word “thysus” meaning stalk or stem. The spine within the torso forms a kind of fifth limb within us. The vertebral column runs through the center of the body, up through the neck and becomes the cranium. The muscles, the organs, the bones and other tissues of the torso surround…

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Beyond the Immune System: Making History with Massage Part 1

A Talk Presented by David Lauterstein at the first National Conference for Teachers of Massage and Bodywork,  July 1993 To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it “the way it really was”.  It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.                                                 Walter Benjamin…

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Dimensions of Touch: Part Two

by David Lauterstein In a “virtual” age, a time greatly affected by the pace of computers and their powerful yet imaginary realities, each individual’s unmet hunger and the social need for the actual becomes more and more urgent. Touch is a medium of actual reality. Touch is a medium of living reality, just as light…

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