Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/77400
THE BRAIN AND BODYWORK your own body sense, as well as your clients', to assess—asking questions and using your eyes and ears—when they may be ready for more. You don't know what the clients need until you observe their responses. This is not about you and what you feel is best for them. In order to avoid reactivating the threat and withdrawal response, allow yourself to engage with clients in a process of mutual communication and discovery. For instance, if feeling the pain brings up an originating trauma, you may want to refer the client to a body sense practitioner of Rosen Method, somatic psychotherapy, or Somatic Experiencing, all of whom are trained to work with the emotional and physical effects of trauma. BE PREPARED TO WAIT The practitioner may need to wait, to be in a state of non-doing, before getting a response from the client's body that indicates a renewed feeling and connection with the injured part. Some of the best massages I've experienced combine the usual strokes with periods of just this type of slow, patient, fully present contact. This gives my body a chance to feel, to settle, and to integrate the more active work that came before. EXPLORING PAIN Can you be content using your touch as a resource and support and not acting as a fixer or healer? Are you ready to address some of your own pain in this way, with patience and acceptance? Exploring pain can be highly gratifying and liberating, and a feeling of triumph comes from learning to stay with the pain and not run away from it, not try to make it better. Body sense approaches to pain allow the wisdom of the body to be the guide, while helping you move your own thoughts and intentions out of the way. This takes a lot of pressure Exploring pain can be highly gratifying and liberating, and a feeling of triumph comes from learning to stay with the pain and not run away from it, not try to make it better. off the practitioner because you don't have to figure out how to relieve the pain. The body can take care of a lot of things on its own if we give it a chance to just feel how it feels, right now, in this very moment. bodywork practitioner, a licensed massage therapist, and a professor of psychology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He has been an active contributor to research on nonverbal communication, especially between infants and parents, for the past 35 years. He is the author of The Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Body Sense (W.W. Norton & Company, 2009) and writes a blog on body sense for Psychology Today magazine (www.psychologytoday. com/blog/body-sense). Fogel is also founding editor of the Rosen Method International Journal (www.rosenjournal.org) and a Rosen Method bodywork teacher-in-training. Contact him at alan.fogel@psych.utah.edu. Alan Fogel, PhD, is a Rosen Method NOTES 1. A. Fogel, The Psychophysiology of Self- Awareness: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Body Sense (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009). 2. Ibid. 3. C. R. Chapman and Y. Nakamura, "Pain and Consciousness: A Constructivist Approach," Pain Forum 8, no. 3 (1999): 113–23. 4. Fogel, The Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness. 5. M. Rosen, Rosen Method Bodywork: Accessing the Unconscious Through Touch (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2003). 6. M. Feldenkrais, The Elusive Obvious or Basic Feldenkrais (Capitola, CA: Meta Publications, 1981). 7. D. H. Johnson & I. J. Grand, Eds., The Body in Psychotherapy: Inquiries in Somatic Psychology (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1998). 8. P. A. Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1997). 9. Fogel, The Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness. 10. T. Luchau, "Working with Whiplash, Part 1: Hot whiplash," Massage &`Bodywork, (March/April 2010): 108–15. earn CE hours at your convenience: abmp's online education center, www.abmp.com 61