In the past 24 years, I have heard many of you ask things such as: Why do you do use visualization and guided imagery with clients during your massages? Please tell me what "duh" and "ah" have to do with my back pain? How do my shoulders get into my back pockets? Why do I have to imagine my ears and hips moving apart as I inhale? These are a few examples of the questions I receive having to do with the vast array of "weird stuff" I have you think about during a massage. Many people just want to lay on the table and go away for an hour. They want an hour respite from the stress and pain of their every day lives. I intend to help them create this, but perhaps not in the way you might surmise.
When I have my hands on my client, on a piriformis muscle in the gluts for example, I am tracking 5 or 6 "tracks" through the entire body. I am listening to cerebral spinal fluid, blood flow, muscles metabolizing and moving fluid as well as themselves, joint range of motion, breathing patterns, pelvic floor fascia that is creeping slowly towards the neck as the jaw tightens, release of gasses, tissue releasing, and a host of additional things that vary day to day. As many of you know, when we get close to "the thing", the "tight apex of pressure" that many sore spots can present as during a massage, it's harder to relax, the breath quickens, the nervous system jumps 2 or 3 seconds in the future bracing and waiting for the pain to come. The thing is, this entire journey just took place in the clients head. Meanwhile, I am standing at the clients side, my fingers still at an objective "2 or 3" on the Richter scale, as the client clenches, tightens, stops breathing, and waits for the potential "pain" to come. The problem with this, is that you and I end up fighting each other. Your tissues tighten, my fingers and hands get very tired, and not a lot gets done. Add to that the fact that telling ANY stressed out person to relax, is folly at best. People look at me as though I was speaking gibberish. And to some of your sympathetic nervous systems, gibberish only makes it more mad.
I spent the first few years of my practice trying to tell people to relax. They would answer me with, 'Do you THINK I would be HERE if I COULD relax?", a very fair question I should say. Through the bodywork I received, through the craniosacral training, through the hypnotherapy training, through the physical theater I've done, I've had to develop "tools" to help me not be in chronic pain. These tools help me to visualize my own body, create real, visceral effects in my body just through using my senses (smell, touch, taste, hear, see). I began to try these tools out on my clients for the purpose of assisting me in doing the bodywork. It is why I say to all new clients, YOU are 1/2 of the equation. What you think about, say, hear, smell, touch, and know about the world contains chemistry. And your senses are the bridge from your brain to your other "tissues".
The following are not medically endorsed moves or visualizations. These are all things I've created for myself in the healing of my own system. These are not meant to be exercises such as rows, deadlifts, or pullups. These are often time merely thought exercises, in the moment, to: release, pin and stretch, mobilize, and gain purchase of your breath and nervous system. Often times I don't even care if you hear me and your frontal lobe responds. The body listens, the body can create change, and we can assist it by experiencing and learning everything we can about how it functions and what it needs moment to moment. This happens through practice and increased consciousness.
The following are a few examples of some of the visualizations I have used with clients during sessions over the last 24 years. These are tools you can use, that if they help, can be effective in addressing tension and body pain in the present moment.
Visualize or say Duh - This sound can create more release and slackness in the face and cheeks
Visualize or say Ah - This sound can create more vertical space inside your mouth
Picture your ears and hips are floating apart on inhalation - This is to relax the jaw and palette, as well as release tension in the pelvic floor and low back
Shoulder blades in the back pockets - Can assist in bringing your shoulders away from your ears
The 4 diaphragms and old fashion sail boats - This is to give the experience of how each diaphragm is intricately connected to the other
How a jelly fish moves - Picturing the diaphragms moving this way helps create softness and release both in the belly and the chest
You are growing angel wings - This is to have people breathe into their backs and release tension through the posterior lungs
The circles of your pelvic floor and roof of your mouth getting bigger - Can relax pelvic floor and jaw
Pinching a pencil between the shoulder blades - Opens up the chest and can help neck pain and breathing
There are balloons in your gluts and they get bigger and softer on inhalation - Can help release pelvic floor and glutes tension
Breathe your sitz bones apart - Can help relax the pelvic floor and create more space in your pelvis.
Look up, down, right, and left while I pin a muscle - Helps me pin and stretch muscles being targeted
Push your shoulder blades into the table - Can help to release the antagonist muscles of the chest and anterior throat
Breathing in and out of your nose and extending your exhales - Assists in getting the parasympathetic nervous system online
Imagine there are big eye balls in between every vertebrae along the front of your body, and those eyeballs get very wide when you inhale - Can help to create extension and release through the anterior spine
The ribs as small "Letter Cs" and making them "Big Cs" on inhalation - Can help the system get a more full and complete breath
If you have any questions about the above suggestions, zap me and I can clarify. If there are some that you haven't tried that you want me to use during your session, please let me know.
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