In today’s busy society, we tend to carry stress within our bodies. We have an argument, and we can feel the tension creeping up our neck and into our head. Unnatural postures, such as sitting over a computer keyboard all day, bring even more tension to our already tense neck.
Running around trying to take care of everything we need to do, we are often too busy to take the time necessary to are for ourselves until a problem presents itself. Athletes, musicians, and other performers who know that physical well-being is integral to their careers are more likely to take the time to care for their bodies. For the rest of us, it often takes the debilitating pain from an accident or illness to make us aware of how we are using our body and the adverse effects of improper use or stress on our physical and psychological functioning. Occupational injuries take their toll as well, whether it is lower-back pain from improper lifting or carpal tunnel syndrome from typing at a keyboard that is not aligned properly with our bodies.
Bodywork therapies are frequently used for rehabilitation after injury and illness, and for relief of stress and tension. Although many of these techniques are “delivered” by a practitioner to a patient suffering from a specific illness or injury, individuals can use other bodywork techniques on their own to feel and perform better.
THE POWER OF TOUCH
We all know that touch feels good and is comforting, but in modern medicine, measurements made by machines have become the norm. The link between emotions and the body has been cast aside; touch has been replaced by laboratory tests or machines that can perform the tasks of physical therapists so they don’t have to touch and spend time with their patients. Modern clinical science sometimes writes off the positive effects of bodywork and therapies such as Therapeutic Touch to a placebo, or “sugar pill,” effect in which the patient is helped solely by the caring presence of a healer. Anyone who can remember being comforted as a child by the touch of a parent or loved one can tell you that this caring may have done more good than the cod-liver oil they were Oven, or whatever the trend of the day was. Ask any parent who has comforted a sick child. They may not be able to explain why; but they know that touch is effective. To say otherwise is to run contrary to our basic instincts as well as thousands of years of experience throughout the world.
HISTORY
Touch is one of the oldest forms of healing, probably predating even the ancient Chinese and Indian medicine texts dating back thou-sands of years. It is instinctual, like stroking to comfort a sick child, and until the advent of modern Western medicine, it was also the physician’s greatest and most important diagnostic and therapeutic tool. The importance of human contact and touch is vastly underrated in this day and -age where we are more likely to get our money from an automated teller machine than a human behind the counter. Thou-sands of years of wisdom have been replaced by a love for technology and modern techniques.
Modem Western medicine remains reluctant to acknowledge the importance of the link between body and mind. But, thanks to the reemergence of alternative and traditional therapies in recent years, their “scientific” value is being rediscovered. A growing number of researchers are demonstrating in carefully controlled scientific studies that many of these bodywork therapies are effective in treating a number of different conditions.
SELF-AWARENESS
While bodywork alone may help physical functioning, a key thing to remember is that alternative medicine is holistic. That is, these therapies are most effective when combined with overall changes in self awareness, diet, exercise, and other interventions, such as meditation or relaxation techniques. Ideally, bodywork is not just something that someone does to you. It can help you become more aware of how you use your body, how to use it more effectively, and how to function at your best. The goal of all alternative therapies is to reintegrate the body with the mind, so that the mind works with the body.
For example, increased self-awareness can allow people to observe how they use their body how they sit at the computer, or when they need a break. This self-awareness is a kind of preventive maintenance for the body. Improved self-awareness can help individuals take early corrective action when they recognize mild discomfort.
Many of the techniques described in this section help people learn how to become aware of how they use their bodies and ways to use them more efficiently. This focus on learning how to use one’s body more efficiently is important for both the prevention and treatment of postural and orthopedic problems and for general well-being.
Self-awareness is also an important principle in yoga and other mind/body therapies. It can help release emotional stress and accompanying muscle tension, and help you relax, think more clearly, and deal more effectively with stress.
A RANGE OF THERAPIES
A wide variety of bodywork techniques are in use in the United States today to help people achieve peak performance, prevent injury, and recover from illness or trauma.
Many of these interventions could also be described under mind/body therapies. The therapies described here as bodywork are those that focus primarily on the physical functioning of the body or its functioning in combination with the flow of vital energy, or qi, in the body.
Some of the best known and most popular forms of body-work are described below. There is a good chance that you will hear of a method not described here. For example, there are an estimated 80 forms of massage alone, about 60 of which have been developed within the past 20 years Instead of being a cause for despair and confusion, this really reflects the tremendous increase in interest in mas-sage and other methods of bodywork in recent years.
Some of these methods were developed recently but are based on age-old wisdom that has been literally handed down over thousands of years. As bodywork practitioners experimented and expanded their practice to include a variety of techniques from different disciplines, many found themselves unable to describe their work along a strict line and coined their own terms for what dies do.
Don’t ignore combinations of bodywork, exercise, and meditation, such as yoga and qi gong, found elsewhere in this book, either After all, your body is where you dwell. Make it a comfortable place.
