Archive for August, 2009

I was so delighted to read this next quote. It really res­onates with my inten­tions and backs-up my belief.

“A point worth remem­ber­ing here is that in this edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence it is not the body­worker who is “fix­ing” the client. The body­worker is not attack­ing a localised prob­lem with spe­cialised tool, con­fi­dent of achiev­ing cer­tain results. Instead, he or she is care­fully gen­er­at­ing a flow of sen­sory infor­ma­tion to the mind of the client, infor­ma­tion that is not being gen­er­ated by the client’s own lim­ited reper­toire of move­ments — new infor­ma­tion that the mind can use to fill in the gaps and miss­ing links in its appraisal if the body’s tis­sues and phys­i­o­log­i­cal processes. It is then the mind of he client that does the “fix­ing” — the appro­pri­ate adjust­ment of pos­ture, the more effi­cient and judi­cious dis­tri­b­u­tion of flu­ids and gases, the fuller and more flex­i­ble rela­tion­ship between neural and mus­cu­lar responses.

The body­worker is not an inter­ven­tion­ist; he is a facil­i­ta­tor, a diplo­matic inter­me­di­ary between a phys­i­o­log­i­cal processes that have lost track of one another’s proper func­tions and goals, between a mind that has for­got­ten what is needs to know in order to exert har­mo­nious con­trol and a body politic which increas­ingly utilises dis­rup­tive demon­stra­tions, ter­ror­ist tac­tics, and even the threat of all-out civil was to regain its governor’s atten­tion. Touch­ing hands are not like phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals or scalpels. They are like flash­lights in a dark­ened room. The med­i­cine they admin­is­ter is self aware­ness. And for many of our painful con­di­tions, this is the aid that is most urgently needed.”

Deane Juhan – Job’s Body (Intro­duc­tion xxix)