If You Are Not Feeling It, Then You Are Not Feeling It - Chronicles From The Massage Table

 

If You Are Not Feeling It, Then You Are Not Feeling It - Chronicles From The Massage Table

Garnet Santicruz RMT, CMRP, CPTS

 

To be able to listen to the body, one must be present.

It’s not just a matter of knowing where parts are in the body but being able to acknowledge what must be treated first like a hierarchy of things.  It’s been over a decade of working with bodies that needed to be soothed, relaxed, healed, and put back together and I can honestly say that it is still challenging to know what method to apply to get to the solution.

'I find myself closing my eyes when my mind is trying to take over.'

There is an art to working one on one with people through manual therapy but the real connection happens when you feel what is happening under the skin.  In the beginning, my practice of massage was very technical and clinical.  Every client was like taking my practical exam over and over again. Now a decade past, the technical and clinical overlap with intuition. Now I find myself closing my eyes when my mind is trying to take over.  This method, borrowed from a blind man massaging in a local mall in the Philippines, enables me to feel this medium called the body.  It's like putting your hands in water,  where air and water are separated through a very thin line.  A lot can be said about thin lines in the body and one example is how pain and pleasure travel down the same neuropathway. I find that my eyes shut allow my other senses to be heightened or at least less noisy.  The blind man from the Philippines was able to tell a lot about my body.  Just by touching my neck and shoulders without any formal training in Anatomy or Neurology, he was able to trace where my body was restricted. He also noticed that I was not breathing properly like I was stressed. Fast forward to now I would put myself in that exact situation by turning off a bias of judgment during treatment which is my eyes.  It can be deceiving sometimes when we are always using our eyes to judge and as simple as quieting the mind my having fewer works for me.  At this point, I can follow the rhythm of the body like listening to a song with its many changes of sound.  The body has a rhythm whether you say, ' I have two left feet but still the body says 'I have rhythm just not on the dance floor.'

'I have rhythm just not on the dance floor.'

Understanding, that the body is rhythmical, like air going in and out of your lungs or the beats of your heart, timing is everything. To plug into the hardware is what it’s like to connect with someone’s body. Feeling and intuitiveness is of importance. The analysis of a disorganized body, which pain often presents itself, comes through a collaboration of the mind and what your connections (hands, arms, etc.) is giving you.   The approach comes latter on what to do next.  A plan on how to treat the body is a good start but the actual treating happens when total immersion occur and essentially you are able to feel every part of the body from head to toe.

Your GPS Is Stopping Your Growth

Your GPS Is Stopping Your Growth

(By Garnet Santicruz)

Finding your destination on a map is becoming less and less popular.  There has been an increase of accidents of people driving into a body of water because of a GPS saying that there use to be a road there. Don't get me wrong, GPS has been great, but at the same time what will be next 'self driving cars?'....wait THANKS Elon. How about just figuring out and mapping out where you are headed.  My Mom's words rings true to me every time I use some GPS, 'it will make you dumb.' The days of focus are getting farther and farther away from us. Thinking deeply is becoming less and less. Have we reached our peak for human intelligence that we are now at a point of making things that does everything?!

(image from: www.newstatesman.com/culture/film/2016/09/list-ways-our-society-already-pixar-s-dystopia-wall-e)

Like a scene from the movie, Wall-E of an overweight space man being hovered around everywhere without using any energy, we are headed to a future such as this. A ton of problems will arise if we stop thinking and solving for ourselves. I am fan of technology and innovations but I have never forgotten about running around barefoot when I was young full speed as a reminder of what my body was able to do. Ouch!! We need to stay connected to what our bodies are designed to do. Fail, think, solve and repeat. As much as this hurts like running barefoot now would we need to continue to keep this vessel called the Human Body finely tuned. Like anything else in life that gets forgotten and collects dust, our bodies and mind will be the same. So google a map to where you are heading and plan it out. 

While you are at it put together a strategy on the thing that you have been wanting to do every New Year's Eve Resolution. Like a map, make a decision on the path and EXECUTE. Remember, that mindless movement is the same as mindless eating so don't be that person. In health and in vigor I hope that you are more this guy. 

Live longer, Live Better and Keep It Balanced.

M.O.A. Living

Stay Engaged and Leaned In (By Garnet Santicruz)

Do you wake up in the middle night? Or only getting a few hours of sleep? Now, this is normal if you have a young one. If your work is creating stress in your body that it's now even influencing your nervous system then it is time to reflect and maybe look for a new job.  

See, a job is something like a toy.  When you first started working it was new, interesting, uncomfortable even.  But then, like a toy that's been played for a few times, you get bored. You now know most of what is going to happen when you press this button or that button.  The common discomforts and dissatisfaction in a workplace are not the bonus or perks of a job but how your contribution is actually making an impact.

A friend of mine who was a very high ranking in his organization wanted to switch jobs with me. I asked, "What do you mean? You are responsible for thousands of jobs, I am just responsible for the person that I am seeing." It took me a few years to realize that what he was saying was that my job was something that was something that can be felt, touched, instantly see the reaction from the treatment. His job was being done through paper and mathematical equations.  There were no faces. No interaction. Just paper and screen. You see a job, through my observations should always bring enthusiasm.  Like your favorite toy, the job should be cherished, a place of comfort, has endless possibilities. We, humans, thrive on curiosity and creativity.  We love games and changing things up. We became adjusted to sitting and staring at a screen without really taking time to step back to see if this job, this source, this time commitment that most of us spend most of our lives in is our truest expression.  We get caught in the title, the prestige, the respect, and then one day we become like everyone else when we retire. Who we really are cannot be described by the careers that we chose.   What makes us skip, laugh, deeply think, frustrated, and still continue to move ahead is what makes us better. 

To stay engaged and 'leaned in' towards a job, this can be applied through many contexts, we need to find new things to look into. If you have children, watch him play with a toy that shifts, has many buttons, complex. We are problem solvers and that is why technology, inventions and discoveries has happened.  We want to know 'what is that under that?' or 'Why is that?' Some of the greatest were created through seeking.  A job worth keeping must have qualities of change, challenge, and growth.  We are who we are and for most of us we want a different experience.  It's like that trip that you were on at an all inclusive. First, you are grateful for the sun and heat and let's face not thinking about work for the next few days. Second day, you still have the same sun and heat but now a beer would be even better for this occasion. Then the third day, the same sun, heat, beer but now 'a cigar' would make this moment better.  So as you can see, we tend  to add more experience to 'the experience'.  The job that we tend to get are ones like this experience. It's the same place but we add more to gain different senses but it's the same thing. Without transformation, essentially an employment that invokes small and big shifts is what gives us the motivation to 'leaned in'.

Having worked on people that stress for a living the common comment is that 'It's just too much work!' or 'This is not what I signed for'. All the bonus in the world could not keep these individuals in those environments. Instead, they would rather take a smaller pay but with more satisfying work that makes sense to their lifestyle. It's not complicated.  So "How do you stay engaged and leaned in?" Do the work that has the right amount of change and lined with your values. And the next time somebody ask, 'What do you do?' I hope that you talk their ears off.