Tag Archives: bodywork

The secret to relaxation (aka de-stressing) is probably not what you think

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My friend Duff McDuffee is a long-time hypnotherapist and coach in Boulder. I’m on his mailing list, and he recently shared an excerpt from his upcoming book, The Joy of Doing: Redesigning Work to Work for Everyone.

I loved the email I got from him this week so much that I asked him if I could share it here, and he graciously said yes.

In my bodywork practice, TMJ clients fill out an intake online when they schedule online. I ask them how they know they are stressed, how they reduce stress, and if they have a regular stress-reduction practice.

I ask about this because stress is highly correlated to tense jaw muscles, and I want my clients to be more aware of this.

Stress causes a lot of suffering, and not everyone gets the connection.

We can be quite stressed — even chronically —yet unaware of it. After I decided years ago to find out how relaxed I could get while awake and not using substances, after meditating daily for a while, my body began to feel different. I literally felt like I had softened and even expanded beyond my skin!

I realized that I had been feeling muscle tension from being guarded after a serious childhood trauma.

It was time to let go of that and enjoy my life. Being relaxed feels happier.

It’s not what you do to relax, it’s how you feel.

The title of Duff’s email, “Doing things in a relaxed way”, says it all. Many of us don’t know the difference between resting and relaxing.

I’ll let Duff explain. (Read it here or on his website).

Doing things in a relaxed way

Edmund Jacobson was an American doctor in the early 20th century.

And he was the man who practically invented “relaxation.”

Too Tense

Jacobson noticed that many of his patients had mysterious ailments.

They complained of symptoms such as insomnia, headache, fatigue, and indigestion.

Often they had high blood pressure, appeared nervous, or had angry outbursts.

But besides these symptoms, they seemed perfectly healthy.

Using a microvoltage machine, Jacobson measured the muscle tonus of these patients.

He discovered that they had more tension in their muscles, even just sitting there.

They were literally “tense.”

As a result, he called these conditions “tension disorders.”

In his poorly titled book for the public You Must Relax, Jacobson wrote,

“In non-medical terms the cause of tension disorder is excessive effort.”

Teaching Relaxation

To treat these tension disorders, Dr. Jacobson spent an hour each week with a patient, teaching them to deliberately relax their muscles.

Before Jacobson, doctors often prescribed “rest.”

But he noticed that rest was different than muscular relaxation.

For rest people often did stimulating activities that increased tension in the muscles and nervous system.

So relaxation was quite different than rest.

To teach his patients to relax, Jacobson first had them sit in a chair.

He instructed his patient to bend their right hand upwards at the wrist, noticing the feeling of tensing the forearm extensor muscles.

Then he had them relax this muscle, causing their hand to drop.

Feeling into the top of the forearm, he guided them to continue to relax more and more, feeling that muscle becoming more and more loose and limp.

He then repeated this exercise with the left hand.

And so on, for all the muscles.

Relaxing Progressively

Over many months, Dr. Jacobson slowly guided them through progressively relaxing every muscle in their body.

Hence the name of his technique, “Progressive Relaxation.”

He also gave his patients a homework assignment:

Every day, lie down for an hour in the morning and an hour at night.

For that hour, practice deeply relaxing all your muscles, one by one.

As Jacobson’s patients learned to relax their muscular system, they also relaxed their nervous system.

Then their mysterious symptoms often went away.

This was because their affliction was not caused by a bacteria, virus, or injury.

Their suffering was created by a chronic activation of the sympathetic nervous system, the “fight-or-flight response.”

Since muscles are controlled by the neuro-muscular system, relaxing the muscles relaxed the nerves.

And relaxed nerves lead to a relaxed body and mind.

Bringing Relaxation into Action

After mastering relaxation lying down, Jacobson advised his patients to practice relaxing while sitting upright.

Once they got the hang of that, he suggested trying to do simple tasks, such as reading the newspaper, while remaining totally relaxed.

The idea was to gradually extend this deep relaxation into more and more challenging activities, until they could ultimately bring it into work.

A stressful job was typically why a patient ended up in Dr. Jacobson’s office in the first place.

So he was helping people retrain their nervous systems to no longer get stressed while working.

He was linking up a profound state of relaxation with doing things that used to activate the nervous system.

Not Just for Hypnosis

Many hypnotists today use Progressive Muscle Relaxation as a way to induce a relaxed trance state.

So it’s still a valuable technique.

That said, we’ve mostly forgotten Jacobson’s original intention for his method.

The idea was to bring relaxation into activity.

Most people who do Progressive Muscle Relaxation spend five or ten minutes relaxing their muscles as a break.

This brings some minor relief.

But few people take the time to truly master relaxation, let alone learn to do difficult things in a relaxed way.

That’s a very different intention for the practice.

And it’s a way of doing things that could change your whole life.

Jacobson himself lived to 94 years old.

So maybe there’s something to this relaxation thing.

Have a relaxed week,

~Duff

Here’s a link to Duff’s Extreme Relaxation 16-minute hypnosis audio (51,000+ views on YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIYhV7g_Q4Y

Get all the versions here (includes the 16-minute version, a 30-minute version, a sleep version that doesn’t take you out of the trance, and a delta wave binaural beats version — wear headphones) for as little as $2: https://boulderhypnosisworks.gumroad.com/l/extreme-relaxation

For more about Duff and all of his offerings, check out https://boulderhypnosisworks.com.

Resources for chronic pain

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In my years of doing bodywork, I have encountered three clients who didn’t respond well to my work.

Each one of them had chronic pain.

Keeping up with the current understanding of chronic pain, it appears that when the tissues from the original injury have healed but pain continues, or re-emerges later, the pain has become based in the brain, not in the tissues, even though that’s where people feel it. It’s called neuroplastic pain (neuro = nervous system, plastic = able to change).

Brain-based doesn’t mean “it’s all in your head,” as in “you’re imagining it.” Nope. If you feel pain, and it hurts, it’s real.

In my own understanding, when an injury is accompanied by, or occurs with or near, a trauma (stress, overwhelm, lack of resources or support), neurons in the brain can wire together and start firing together, sending pain signals long past the healing of the injured tissues.

Similar to PTSD, chronic pain can be triggered by memories and/or emotions in the present that the brain associates with the original injury and trauma.

Effective treatment of chronic pain often responds to a mind-body approach to rewire those neurons. Fortunately, the brain has plasticity. With help, people who suffer can learn to rewire those neurons and eliminate the pain.

I recommend reading The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain by Alan Gordon, LCSW. It’s available on Amazon in several formats.

Here’s a YouTube video about the book.

It’s not that bodywork can’t help. It certainly can. Over the years, I’ve helped numerous people in pain feel a lot better, and often their pain has been longstanding. Sometimes one session does wonders. Sometimes it returns, less severely than before, and we keep working until it resolves.

Sometimes a client with neuroplastic pain finally gets enough relief to resolve the residue of the trauma at the core of their pain, and it never returns.

It’s beautiful when that happens!

We know some things about chronic pain now, and there’s still a lot that’s unknown. Curiosity, inquiry, belief, and patience seem to help.

There are pain coaches who can help. I met one who gets regular craniosacral biodynamics and came in for a session when she was visiting Austin from Colorado. She works remotely. If you want a referral, please let me know. I’m sure there are many others around the country.

The end of a hero’s journey

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It’s a drizzly day here in Central Texas. I drove on wet country roads to get to a women’s silent retreat, because I needed a few hours to simply be with myself peacefully in a quiet environment and allow what wants to arise to arise.

On the last day of November, 2023, I completed a foundation training in Craniosacral Biodynamics that started in September 2021. Ten four-day seminars in Silver Spring MD near Washington DC, meeting and exceeding the requirements for giving and receiving sessions, reporting to and receiving supervision from teaching assistants, writing a research paper on the cranial nerves, taking a four-hour test…

I put a lot into it and got a lot out of it, and I’m pleased with the work that I did to embed doing this bodywork modality deeply into my system.

I’m healthier for it, I’m able to do so much more for my clients, and my practice has grown.

My desire to undertake this training arose during COVID. I didn’t work for the first six months after the initial lockdowns, and when I went back to work it was only one or two days a week until April 2021 when a lot of people had been vaxxed and felt comfortable coming in for (overdue) bodywork.

I had received unemployment benefits and stimulus checks, my expenses were low, and I had a lot of time on my hands when so many people were getting sick, some dying or getting long COVID.

It was a sobering time. I did my end-of-life paperwork and reflected on what I’d really like to do with my life, given the opportunity and capability to make a difference.

I knew my skills as a craniosacral therapist could deepen. I’d had training in both Upledger and Biodynamics styles of craniosacral therapy. I’d thought about getting more training in Biodynamics before, but it never seemed like the right time, affordable, convenient, so I kept blowing it off.

During COVID in spring 2021, I got clear: I wanted to study Craniosacral Biodynamics, doing a full foundation training with a seasoned teacher. I was pretty sure which teacher I wanted to work with, got confirmation on that from a more experienced therapist who’d met this teacher, applied for his next training (which happened to be in DC), and was accepted.

It was a good decision. The teacher was beyond excellent and had three experienced full-fledged Biodynamics teachers assisting him. I don’t know that I could have asked for anything more. Well, perhaps not having to travel.

I did as many Biodynamics sessions as I could, and my practice grew. In addition to my private practice, I began working in an integrative medical clinic.

I did as many trades with other Biodynamics grads as I could and received professional sessions as well, averaging 2 sessions a month over the course of the training. Fortunately, I had a highly experienced practitioner in the office next to mine to answer my practical questions.

I experienced several other challenges doing the training. We wore masks indoors for the first few seminars, and of course in airports and on planes.

I made the trip halfway across the country and back nine times, opting to do one of the middle seminars on video at home when my energy was depleted.

Unaccustomed to business travel and not a frequent leisure traveler by air, the crowded airports and planes were a shock at first. I got TSA Pre-Check and later took a fellow introvert’s advice about how to do business travel with the least amount of stress, and it helped a lot. I feel more ease with business travel now.

I stayed in various AirBnBs in the DC area. Most were okay, some barely tolerable, one felt haunted (or maybe I was more sensitive), one was excellent but only a one-time possibility. I stayed in a hostel midway through and in a hotel for the last two seminars. I used the Metro to get around at first and was fascinated by it, but later took ride-shares between Reagan airport and found lodging in walking distance of the training.

It was lonely, being so far away from home in a place I was unfamiliar with. I made friends with my classmates, but I was on my own after class and sometimes felt acutely lonely. I loved my time in the classroom and appreciated every bit of kindness and connection from those associated with the training, but sometimes the rest of it was really hard.

I’m definitely not an East Coast person, and I had a new appreciation for being embedded in my central Texas community — I know I’ll always have meaningful connections here.

Being adventurous, I explored the wide variety of cuisines in downtown Silver Spring: Thai, Korean, Senegalese, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Nepalese, Japanese, Spanish-influenced Mexican, something similar to Tex-Mex, diner, upscale American.

Air travel was easier and less expensive when I left and returned on Saturdays, and class was Monday through Thursday, so I had extra time to explore DC. I took the Metro to the Mall and visited art museums and admired the gardens. Another time, I saw the Phillips Collection. I went to the Lincoln Memorial during cherry blossom time.

Toward the end, I rented a car and took day trips to Annapolis and the Chesapeake Bay, and to Gettysburg and Harpers Ferry, just to see the countryside around DC.

A really difficult challenge happened in April 2022. I was in an automobile accident that totalled my car, and even though I wasn’t seriously injured, the effect on my nervous system was substantial.

I wondered why I couldn’t just get it together afterwards. Then I saw a post in an online Upledger group, wondering why people can have, say, shoulder surgery and be fine in a few months, but it can take 1-3 years to fully recover from an automobile accident.

Part of it is the shock. Surgeries are usually planned and can be life-saving. No one plans a car accident and you’re going to be worse off.

My autonomic nervous system experienced a dire threat. I could have lost control of my car and ended up seriously injured or dead. I could have seriously injured others, too — four cars were involved.

Humans are simply not meant to go from 65 mph to zero with impact in 5 seconds or less without repercussions. Every cell is affected. Not only did I feel stiff and unsettled, I felt buzzy electrical energy leaving my body for a few months after the accident.

It took my nervous system 11 months to recover energetically from the accident, and that’s with the help of physical therapy/yoga therapy exercises, giving and receiving Biodynamics sessions, and doing regular qi gong and meditation.

I know I did the best I could to protect myself and others from serious injury, but the person who failed to secure a ladder before driving at high speed in the middle lane of a freeway initiated the whole 4-car accident. They were never identified. My insurance went up, and someone is supposedly suing me, although I haven’t been served any papers yet. Thank goodness for the guard rail I slammed into.

The Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v Wade also happened when I was in DC, not long after the accident, and I read about this far-right court’s desire to overturn gay and interracial marriage and outlaw birth control…a direct threat to the happiness of my family and countless others.

I experienced outrage…and depression. No government should have the right to make these decisions for individuals.

I met a man in person last November after messaging with him. He gave me a book I was interested in. We took it slowly, getting to know each other, and our friendship evolved into boyfriend-girlfriend status a few months later. It’s been a bright spot this year.

The last major challenge was learning I was going to have to move in February 2023. I felt settled in my trailer park. I didn’t want to move. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to find a new location or sell the trailer. After going back and forth on it several times, I ended up selling it and moving in with my sweet boyfriend in Wimberley in August. It’s going well.

Even the 35 mile commutes to work in Austin, driving on two-lane scenic Hill Country roads, are pleasant and restorative.

Being in the classroom and then employing new skills in my practice after each class were bright spots. I look forward to continuing to grow my skills and understanding and hopefully to contribute something to this field.

Doing this training was a true hero’s journey. I met allies, had mentors, encountered dragons, was a dragon, was tried and tested in several ways, and I came through it, completing my mission, transformed and changed.

Now, to enjoy some spaciousness as “what’s next” begins to show up. 

Keeping the aging body hydrated

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I’ve been a yogi for a long time, and also at various times, I’ve danced, biked, swum, kayaked, walked, hiked, worked with a trainer in a fitness studio, done tai chi and/or qi gong, Pilates… I’m sure there are some activities I’ve forgotten at the moment.

I love it when my body moves well, when I have full range of motion in all my joints and can move with fluidity and enough energy and strength to do these activities and get through my days with a minimum of discomfort.

I practiced the MELT Method at home, subscribing to MELT On Demand, for a while a few years ago. It gave me online access to hundreds of videos focusing on rehydrating my body parts using soft foam rollers and balls and stretchy bands.

Hydration. Rehydration. We are squishy beings. Infants are about 70 percent water, but it declines with age, to maybe 55 percent in the senior years, which is where I am now.

In other words, we kinda dry up with age, and this shows up as stiffness.

You know what? It is not inevitable! And it takes more than just consuming enough fluid.

You want those fluids to get into your soft tissues, into your muscles and fascia, bones and joints, tendons and ligaments.

You know how good you feel after you’ve received a full body massage? Well, the secret to that good feeling is the massage therapist gliding their hands with light or firm pressure on your skin. It redistributes your fluids, which relieves stiffness, aches, and pains.

The MELT Method is hands-OFF bodywork you can do by yourself, at home, with MELT equipment and videos. Sue Hitzmann, bodyworker and self-described gym rat, developed the MELT Method and continues to add to it.

Don’t underestimate Sue because she is in great shape, attractive, perky, and wears fashionable workout wear. She’s also disciplined and brainy. She has a master’s degree in exercise science from NYU. She’s participated in dissections of cadavers to learn more about fascia and belongs to the international Fascia Research Society. She’s worked with some big names in the field of fascia research: Tom Myers, Gil Hedley, Robert Scheip, Jean-Claude Guimberteau.

She is a somatic educator, bringing information and practices you can use to enhance your experience of well-being.

I stopped doing MELT for a while but just re-upped my subscription to MELT On Demand because I was feeling too stiff.

If this interests you, @MELTmethod is a YouTube channel with free material on MELT, no subscription needed.

Here Sue describes how she developed the MELT Method.

Here Sue describes the MELT Method in 3 minutes.

Here is a link to a 10-minute foot treatment. You can do this treatment on one foot and then notice the difference between each side of your body — the side you treated and the one you didn’t.

You’ll get a clear understanding of what rehydration does for you in a way that words simply can’t convey.

In some ways, it’s like reflexology. The sole of the foot maps to the entire body.

If you want to buy the MELT hand and foot therapy balls and just do that, it’s a great start. 10 minutes every day…no more morning stiffness.

As someone who sits still for long periods in my work as a biodynamic craniosacral therapist, I can’t recommend this enough. My work is oriented to fluids and energy in the body. I help my clients experience more ease in their bodies. If I could receive a session every day, I would!

MELT is the next best thing.

Locating and healing stuck fear in my body

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I woke early, not sure when, still dark, though.

It happens.

I’ve listened to multiple Yoga Nidra/NSDR meditations on YouTube to help me get back to sleep, enough to improvise one for myself.

So I did! I included my chakras and central energy channel as well as breath and body parts, and indeed, went back to sleep until daylight.

Hmm. New idea for teaching Biodynamic Meditation in person!

So when I did my own Biodynamic Meditation, I was already primed.

By the second physiological sigh, I sensed radiance at my face. By the third, my central energy channel with Tide.

A cranial stillpoint came on. Then swirliness.

Then I felt a steady sensation of coolness in my abdomen. At first it was larger, and as I stayed with it, it became smaller.

I don’t know what’s going on, except that there is a holding pattern there that feels old that I haven’t noticed before.

Our bodies hold so much history.

It seems related to fear. Stuck fear.

It didn’t unwind or dissolve today, but the healing energy showed it to me and gave it more healing resources.

I’m wondering if this will be a new focus in future sessions, the way my cranial bones and pelvis — sites of multiple injuries — have.

This is day 87, practicing Biodynamic Meditation. The sun is shining on a lot of tree damage in the Austin area, and power is coming back on for many. My office park is without power or water… I look forward to working when it’s restored.

Photo of Florida sunrise by Eric Towler, photographer and Zen friend.

Meditation after ice storm

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This morning’s Biodynamic Meditation was about radiance at my face, and then Tide and swirliness alternating at various places in my body.

Oh, and radiance in my hands. It’s been happening in sessions with clients and I wondered if it would happen in meditation. It did.

Photo: Icy branches, taken yesterday outside my trailer. It’s melting today but a lot of branches broke all over this area, and some are still without electricity.

Experiencing gravity and levity and balance

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I dreamed I was dancing, able to leap high enough to touch the branches of trees, and to descend to the earth safely, only to do it again and again and again, higher, higher, almost floating back down, with buoyancy.

How exhilarating!

So… We were talking about the Tide, about sensing the Tide ascending and descending in your central energy channel.

How to be still and bring your awareness to that channel, the channel that is home to and connects your chakras.

The cranial pole of the channel (crown, sahasrara chakra) opens upward, to heaven, the cosmos, the universe, spirit.

That upward direction is called levity.

The sacral pole of the channel (root or muladhara chakra) opens to the earth.

That direction is called gravity.

Gravity and levity. Grounded and open to Spirit: balance.

My dream was about levity.

Who needs a dream like this?

Someone who is growing a private practice in Craniosacral Biodynamics, exploring Biodynamic Meditation with you :-), teaching, making 5 trips this year for training and personal growth, who is now also looking at a new location after 12 years in the same place.

Lots going on. Balance needed.

Today’s Biodynamic Meditation was about breathing, posture, sensing Tide. I invited a cranial stillpoint. Ajna chakra, radiance at my face, crown chakra. Swirliness in my cranium, then in my abdomen at manipura chakra, then in pelvis, ending with sacral stillpoint.

Balanced.

You are magic and can do anything!

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Tuesday is magic skeleton day! You can do anything!

Did you even know that your bones are 31 percent water?

My Biodynamic Meditation this morning had a lot of Tide moving in my central energy channel.

The swirliness settled in the lower part of my sacrum and then in my sphenoid.

The sphenoid is a mostly hidden bone that many are unaware of.

Continue reading →

Changes over time from daily Biodynamic Meditation

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Today’s Biodynamic Meditation was different.

Radiance at my face from the start, after 5 physiological sighs.

Tide moving up and down in my central energy channel.

No stillpoint unless it was brief, more of a pause.

Then…sensations in the skin, especially of my arms and legs. Pleasurable.

Continue reading →

When healing is incremental

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This morning I woke with a twinge in my sacrum. It’s the area affected by multiple old injuries.

I did some movement that helped.

After I started my Biodynamic Meditation session, I sensed a couple of sweeps of the Tide, and then it settled into a sacral stillpoint.

I’m not sure exactly when that stillpoint became swirliness, because the swirliness only made small swirls with lots of pauses in the tissues on the back of my sacrum for the rest of my 30-minute session.

Old injuries are often complex. They can affect muscles, fascia, ligaments, tendons, nerves, blood flow, bones, etc.

Continue reading →