What is the value of movement to a bodywork practitioner? Can you do your work without movement? What occurs to your body if you limit your movement to a minimum? How could you move more freely and easily? What occurs as you come into contact with the tissue of your client? A basic concept of the Trager® Approach is that your movement as practitioner deepens the ability to feel.

To become aware of your own body as the practitioner, to find and release your own tension, to feel your own freedom of movement allows you to share a possibility of something remarkable with your client. What you share with your client is a feeling experience. You may share the feeling of softness, of ease, of peace. Being conscious of your own movement allows you to be more comfortable in space, and that comfort moves through your hands into the tissue of your client.

As this awareness of your own movement deepens, you as the practitioner are better able to feel the pattern of holding in the body of the client. It is as simple as this: when the client's structure will not move easily, the practitioner's body will not move easily. As the client's body begins to move more freely, the feeling of something more free becomes instantly available to the practitioner. It is possible for practitioners to do this in an effortless way, remaining aware of the slightest responses and working effectively without any fatigue.

The skills to come to this manner of working are simple ones. Pausing is a profound skill to develop. Several things occur when you pause. You provide perspective to both yourself and your client. Here is the feeling of touch and movement, now, here is the feeling of quiet and peace. Pausing allows you to rest, and teaches through example and feeling the value of rest to the client. The moments of no sensory input from your touch gives the client an opportunity to integrate the work.

Another skill to explore is feeling weight. To feel weight requires gentle movement. Place a penny in your palm and feel its weight. Is it easier to do so with your hand static, or easier if you move your hand up and down gently? To deepen this skill, you will need to do less. The less you try, the more you will be able to feel. The less you do, the more your client will be able to feel. This relationship between doing less and feeling more seems to be boundless. Milton Trager, in discussing this after seventy years of doing his bodywork form said: "I am just scratching the surface." He would repeat to his students, over and over, class after class "Feel the weight."

Asking is a skill of value. Gentle movement can access the unconscious mind, the autonomic nervous system. When we ask simple questions, such as "What could be softer? And softer than that?" we enter unconscious mind. If you have any experience with meditation, you know the feeling of coming into this state. By entering this place of gentle quiet by asking simple questions, intuition comes forth and your work can move beyond technique and become art. It is a place from which great things can happen for both you - and your client.

Note: If any reader of this article knows the author of this fine piece, please contact me so that I can give proper attribution and appreciation.

A tool for all seasons. Do you have a winter backache shoveling snow? Are you a seasonal athletic over-doer? Did you torque your back getting the baby out of the back seat? Sometimes you can’t see your friendly bodyworker or physical therapist. How about do-it-yourself? Carefully, of course!

There are commercial massage products that have a J-hook shape for reaching the hard-to-reach back areas. But I use and prefer a field hockey stick. Track down a stick from the attic or basement; ask your sister, mother, daughter, or Indo-Pakistani cousin. The older models with a longer, more English-shaped head (see photo) make the best probe for muscles that are tight or in spasm. The more modern models with stubby or hooked heads at the end of the stick don’t have as long a reach or as pointed an end to reach the small muscles between the vertebra.

The field hockey stick can be used in a two-handed manner reaching the upper spinal muscle area over either shoulder or around to the mid and lower back reaching under either arm. Work gently and sensitively on the muscles, avoid painful contact and avoid work on any vertebral bones. You want to gently press on the soft tissue between bones or in muscle-mass. You can often locate a sore point or area with the tip of the stick, apply moderate (but not uncomfortable) pressure and gently twist the spinal area effecting a stretch or opening in the tight area. Probe further and repeat the pressure with the stick and the opening stretch. When you find affected painful areas, don’t work long or hard -- just give the feeling of relief, ease and openness to the area. Avoid over-working or bruising the soft tissue. In this self-treatment, you are in charge. You are aiming at pain relief not pain creation. You are responsible and you are the expert on how you feel.

What is it about the Trager® Approach that gives such long-lasting results?

It is an educational process, teaching a man or woman to fish.
An old proverb -- “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.”

Esoterically speaking , you could say that Trager affects change at a deep level of the mind-body -- below conscious resistance, releasing patterned body-mind tensions and problems. However, such a projected outcome seems meaningless unless you have been blessed by the actual experience of such release and good feeling. I and others could testify that our personal Trager experiences have had such deep and lasting outcomes, but personal experience is the only validator of the effects of Trager.

It might give a clearer light on Trager success to explain that this approach is different than many other modes of bodywork and massage. The Trager Approach is not so much a treatment for an illness, but rather an educational experience that introduces a felt-awareness of how the body-mind can feel and move better.

The approach is more than just receiving a session, unless your experience of Trager sessions is as an antidote for dis-ease -- a way of finding ease and comfort in your daily activities. How then does the educational process proceed?

1st There is the immediate feeling-sensation passively received on the table, an experiencing of what easier, freer movement is like -- of pleasure and peace.

2nd The continued deepening of the feeling experience in subsequent hands-on sessions and by the practice of personal daily explorations of movement-with-ease between sessions -- taking a few moments after tension-producing activities or within the activity, as a pause or break.

3rd The learning of better movement and static (postural) body patterns that create an alternative to the dis-ease, pain, and chronic limitations. This is solidifying lessons learned, but wait -- not too solid !

4th Keep the learning alive --
(a) sessions at sensible intervals to re-new the feeling of more functional movement possibilities and
(b) continued personal explorations toward better and easier movement sensations -- not falling back into routine or patterning that deadens our awareness and aliveness.

Mentastics® - Milton Trager’s descriptor for movement exploration
“Mental Gymnastics”
- It is about lightness of being in any movement,
- standing comfortably,
- lifting an empty hand,
- sensing its weight,
- noticing all the subtle sensations.
- In this moment, enquiring into the feeling.
- What is the sensation of this weight,
- Could it be lighter than that?
- ... Half of that?
- ... Nothing?

- Could the weighing movement be freer, easier, more joyful?
- ... Really?
- Don’t know.
- Discover the possibility

Since most bodyworkers are not licensed psychotherapists or medical doctors, when strong emotions arise in a bodywork session, the most important thing that we can do for our clients is to be present. Can we listen to the needs of our clients with all our sensitivities or do we need to shut down and attend to our own needs stimulated by our client’s behaviors? In new, unusual situations when a client’s emotions are unleashed, where the ground seems to slipping from beneath our feet, how do we stay present and centered where we can continue to develop the trust that is already being conferred upon us as helping professionals?

By entering into a deeper understanding of ourselves, we can forestall our unconscious complexes upstaging our conscious commitment to human service. Doing our own work with our emotional processes so that we are clear and grounded is the answer. What experiential understanding is required to remain calm and available when emotions storm? Self-understanding and fearlessness comes to us when we open ourselves to our deepest fears and master them. How can we engage in such a confrontation and emerge the victor?

Reflex-response to free and balance neuromuscular movement patterns:

In a session, when a particular muscle area seems to impede or freeze movement, using reflex-response stimulation on the opposing muscle-set awakens a nerve response that de-couples the nervous pattern in the impeded or frozen muscle area.

Both reflex signals cannot be maintained simultaneously -- because the patterned primary response is a paired-muscle action -- one muscle set is stimulated and chronically contracted and the other, is relaxed and allowed to lengthen in rest. Now the reflex-response toning of the muscle set opposite the chronically contracted muscles induces a relaxation of the chronic tension –- sometimes briefly, but perhaps long enough to give a sense of change and possibility that can be re-enforced and made available as a new pattern of freedom and balance in movement in what was chronically dysfunctional muscle tension.

Rebirthing - the Feeling of the Experience - from a June 20, 1981 journal entry

Rebirthing -- a lilttle death - a little birth. The fear of losing something, the fear of the unknown. The breathing intensifies in fear. Old pains and old fears re-surface — escape but where, the only avenue of escape is breathing — but this is not avoidance — it is breathing through the experience, the experience of no-exit, fear, pain, avoidance, escape — into a new space — a feeling space of oneness of energy and being — a new peace, a deep peace that is not separate from flows of energy and life. The breath changes from the intensity of fear and panic to barely moving — yet finely connectd to all — inner and outer experience. Breathing is feft as a refining, purifying process. The old breath and limiting habit patterns are transformed in the new life — rebirth.