rates and times

Hello friends,

An informational post:

My new confirmed studio days are Mondays and Tuesdays.  The space is on the third floor of a chiropractic office full of healing and health in the "Pill Hill" neighborhood (named for its many hospitals) near Lake Merritt in Oakland.

I charge $70 for an hour and $90 for ninety minutes

For October, because I am so happy and grateful to be working in my new space: You can book three one-hour sessions (as far in advance as you wish) for $150 and three ninety minute sessions for $200.

For always: You get a free massage when three people come get a full price massage from me by your suggestion - a "thank you" for three referrals.

And a note: the reason that I do this work is so more people in the world will be healthier, more comfortable in their bodies, and more integrated in their lives and communities.  If you are ready to get some work and don't feel you can afford it, please talk to me.  I offer a limited number of "community rate" massages every month for a sliding scale in order to serve the artists and other public servants who contribute to our planet with less financial compensation.  Sliding scale rates are $40-$60 for an hour and $60-$80 for ninety minutes.  

Come get a massage, right?

Bless you!

into the pain

What hurts?  Is it in your body?  A certain part, or the whole thing?  Your emotions?  Your racing mind?  What is hurting in you?

Go there.  Feel it.  See what the pain is trying to teach you.  Every single time we feel pain, it is a gift from our body (or mind or emotions); pain is a lesson to help us learn how to solve the problem, because it pinpoints where the disfunction is taking place.

Please note, I say that pain itself is a gift, and not the object, action, or activity causing the pain.  If we believe that "such and such a person or situation" is causing you discomfort in our life, we can choose to focus on precisely what that discomfort feels like rather than on what the outside problem is.  Often when we do that, we find that there is some simple change that we can make ourselves that will allow the pain to stop entirely.

Sometimes it is a painful action that is required to bring about feeling good: it could be ceasing to do certain activities that store tension in the body, quitting a job, or changing a communication pattern in a relationship.  Once done, though, our bodies and hearts and minds can come to equilibrium and we can begin to heal and feel good again.

Listen to your pain.  See what it has to tell you.

accidentally gardening

On top of the bodywork, stretching and moving, breathing and praying, working and sitting in the garden is a huge part of what is working in my life.  It's crazy too, because I wasn't raised with this.  I can't tell you how to make something stay alive, let alone how to nurture a plant from a tiny seed into something that I can eat for dinner.  Regardless of how little I know, I'm doing it.  We will harvest squash from the front planter in a few days.

Plants just want to grow; all we have to do is give them space.  The reason I have squash and cucumbers and a sunflower and melons growing at my house is simply that they decided to be there.  

Here's the story:  I spent all day clearing out an invasive plant from a plot in front of my house.  Once it was gone I covered the dirt with some compost from our backyard, then covered the compost with leaves for mulch and thought to myself, "Well, I'll get around to planting that bed later.  At least it will have some good nutrition in the meantime."  I then forgot entirely about it, and two weeks later I had a vegetable garden!  The seeds left in the compost put down roots and sprang up as volunteers.  Volunteers!  Free food!  You should see it, it is lush and green and healthy and exuding life, abundance, and generosity.

Nature is growing and regenerating and providing health all the time.  Health for the soil and health for humans in the form of nutrition and cleaner, wetter, more oxygenated air.

Nurturing edible plants is part of the human condition for survival.  The fact that we feel we don't know how to do it is just a symptom of our over-specialized social hierarchy.  The plants have something to offer us,  and all we have to do is listen.  Caring for food plants connects us to the earth that nourishes the plants themselves, and somehow, too, it is connecting me to myself and my potential and my ability to be free.

You know the feeling of eating a strawberry or tomato right out of your own yard or that of someone you love? Or eating a basil leaf off a plant growing in a pot on your kitchen table?  Even such simple acts can be almost ecstatic.  What is it about growing it yourself that draws out the flavors and textures so gracefully?

What we put in to our bodies is what we get out.  You can put in commitment and attention and gratitude for the nonsensical giving energy of the soil or you can put in hurry and avoidance and savvy marketing in the place of substance. (Another "nutritious" brown bar in a bright, sealed baggy?)

There is a whole lot of in between here, obviously.  I'm not telling anyone to stop eating something that works for them.  Just try to put something homegrown in your mouth and see how it feels.  Taste the love of the person who cared for it.  See if you can imagine yourself putting your own love into a plant and then eating its fruits.  Love is good for everyone.

breath

In school we learned that when we breathe, the air goes in to our lungs, fills them up, then goes out, which is true.  What is also true is that it doesn't stop there.  Our whole bodies can fill up like a little balloon with every breath we take and then on the outbreath, we can let go of just a little tension.  Every single time.

Our bodies are about 70% water, right?  That water can flow freely around the bones in our bodies and the other minerals that make us up move freely floating in the ocean that each one of us is.  If you've ever watched waves crash around the legs of a pier or a boardwalk, or seen a river bouncing over stones, you know that water can always move and flow.  

So every time you take a breath, you have the option of thinking about your body as one little water balloon.  Just like when you blow a little air into the top of a water balloon the whole balloon stretches on all sides, when our lungs fill up with air that fullness spreads out to our head, toes, and fingertips.  Then when we breathe out we can feel release of tension all over our bodies.

We are always accumulating tension in our bodies, and that's why we are made to continuously let it go.  Since each breath fills us up completely, we can find the areas where it is difficult for the breath to move through, push gently against it, then let go when we breathe out.

Tension then release.  Our bodies love it.  You know that feeling after a sneeze or after you go to the bathroom when you really needed to go?  Even the feeling after a tight squeeze of a hug.  There are other obvious examples of tension and release in our system.  Total surrender.  Every breath is an opportunity to let go that much.  

Take a long, slow breath and feel it move past your hips, knees, and ankles down to your toes. Then let actively let it go.  Another breath fills up your rib cage, chest, and shoulders then moves down your arms.  Let go.  The third moves up and allows your whole neck, jaw, face, and skull to loosen in the subtlest way.  Release.  If we were brilliant we could do this in all three directions every time.  Since we are human we practice and trust our bodies to do it for us.

We breathe.  Nature provides the release.

relax

It takes a lot of work for us humans to get tension stuck in our bodies.  We have to hold ourselves in uncomfortable positions for hours at a time for weeks in a row in order to create a pattern of holding where our bodies feel like they can't relax or can't get rid of the pain on their own.  Same things with our lives.  We have to allow a pattern of making certain decisions or communicating in a certain way  or making certain mistakes to happen over and over until we feel like "this is just how I am" (or "...just how they are" or "...life is") and we don't see a possibility for anything to change it. 

So why don't we just stop?  Why don't we get unstuck?  What's so hard about just letting go? 

Relax.  

It sounds like it should be the easiest thing in the world.  Just don't clench your jaw when you sleep, just don't tighten your butt cheeks when you're angry, just don't hold up your shoulders when you type.  Just don't be in pain, just don't suffer anymore.

Relax.

The thing that I've found is that relaxing, and letting go, and getting unstuck all take a lot of work.  I have to really concentrate and listen to my body to even feel the muscle that I'm holding in the first place, and then I have to concentrate even more in order to consciously and actively let it go.  It's hard work, and the even harder part about it is that it's the opposite kind of work that got the tension in there in the first place.  Instead of forcing, I have to soften.  Instead of trying, I have to actively not try.  I have to trust my muscles to intuitively know where they are supposed to be in relation to my bones and organs.  I have to trust my body to put itself back together the way it's supposed to be.

Relax.

Trust.

Get unstuck.

It takes effort, and then it has to be effortless.

Maybe our lives are that way too: maybe if we listen for a pattern that causes misunderstanding and allow ourselves to avoid getting swept up in it just one time, maybe something will loosen up in our relationship or our job or our sense of self.  Maybe?

We can start with the body: make the effort, and relax.

The world is your jungle gym

Having a practice that does not require any equipment - dance, yoga, martial arts, running barefoot, and meditation all come to mind - means that no matter where you go, you can get in your body.  You can always stretch, always move, always rest.  The fact that feeling good is always available to us doesn't mean that we always do, or that we always try.  

I've been thinking about this lately.  Riding my bike is yoga, practicing massage is yoga,gardening is yoga.  Riding my bike I can stretch up from my tailbone through my back, neck, and the top of my head to feel more comfortable and ride longer.  Practicing massage I can work from postures that make my body feel stronger and more relaxed.  Gardening I can squat and stretch my muscles as I strengthen others.  Here's the kicker though: sitting here typing on my computer is also yoga: I can make adjustments in how I'm sitting and how I position the computer to use my muscles more effectively and put no pressure on my joints.  As I write this I am sitting up straighter to take the tension out of my lower back.  I just dropped my shoulders about half an inch, realizing that I was holding them up by my ears.  There's more though.  I have the option to tinker with where and how I sit, mouse, and type until I am adding no tension to my body and I can write forever.  As it is I can't stay on a computer for too long: I stop and walk or stretch or make some food to let my body align itself back up the way it wants to be.

Our bodies want to be strong and healthy.  Think about what you are doing for the most amount of waking hours every day.  Where is your body when you do that thing?  Can you do anything to make yourself more comfortable while you sit at your computer? Drive in your car? Eat? Watch television?  Which activities that you do are making your body uncomfortable?  Can you change them or spend less time doing them?  Is there anything you do at a computer or in a car that you could avoid entirely?  Could you meet with a person face to face or walk down the street to run an errand?

Here is the truth: you never have to make yourself uncomfortable; It's always your body and it is always your choice what you do with it.  Take long breaks from the things that seem to put discomfort into your body.  Find a more comfortable way to accomplish your desired goal.  Listen to your body... have fun in there!  It's your one little container you've got to carry around your soul and your emotions and all those thoughts in your head, it might as well feel good, right?

If you are uncomfortable at work and then you go to the gym to work out or practice yoga or get a massage, good for you; that's a great start.  I encourage you to think about your body all day, though; we're in our bodies always, not just during "this is when I care for my body" time.  How can we make our whole lives a workout? One that makes us strong, flexible, healthier, and full of more life, beauty and potential.  

I'm working on it.  Often it means that I make decisions that feel strange at first to myself or my family or peers, ("What do you mean you just can't work in front of a computer for forty hours a week?") but I am investing in something that will be paying dividends for the rest of my life.  Dividends in the form of a healthy body, and also, surprisingly to me, in the form of a healthier feeling and better functioning mind, and spiritual and emotional life.  The more I learn to listen to my body the more I become sensitive to the other things going on inside of me and in the world around me.

Just take care of your body and your body will take care of you.  You have to be in your body all the time, and at any time you have the option to stop and say, "Am I comfortable? What can I adjust? How can I feel better?" then make the adjustment.  Find a place where you can learn athletics without equipment: a yoga or martial arts class is a great start, and be picky until you find an instructor that makes you feel that you can do it ANYWHERE at ANY TIME.  You don't need a mat or a foam prop or a fancy belt to help you stretch or get stronger.  All you need is your body, gravity, and the ground. 

Wow, perfect.  Nina Simone is singing "Got Life" on my little stereo.  No matter where life takes us, we've always got the body.  What a blessing!

Descriptions

Here is a readers' digest version of my interpretation of the three forms of bodywork I borrow from most heavily as I create a massage session for a client:

-Shiatsu massage is a Japanese form of bodywork using pressure with the therapist's hands.  It is practiced on a mat on the floor or on a massage table.  Shiatsu can be done over clothes, over a sheet, or directly on the skin and can range from comforting and soothing to deep and athletic.

-Craniosacral therapy is a still, holding form of bodywork that allows for deep release from the inside out.  The client lies clothed, face up on a table and the therapist places their hands gently along the spine and at different points on the head.  From these positions the bones and structural parts of the clients body begin to unwind and find proper alignment and core-level relaxation.

-Deep Swedish blends the best of Deep Tissue and Swedish massage.  Swedish, also known as Esalen massage, is the most well known Western form of massage and is practiced with lotion on the skin to calm and sooth the body and central nervous system.  Deep Tissue focuses on the many anatomical layers of the body and uses specific pressure to break up adhesions and allow for recovery from tension.

In the end, it's all about receiving exactly what you need at the moment, and just as in life what we need or how we feel varies from moment to moment, a client's needs are going to change from session to session and even from moment to moment in a session.  It is a wonder-full journey to have and to learn so many technical tools to pull from to improvise a wonderful massage.

I begin

I just confirmed it with my business partner: I am opening a studio in Oakland!  Now all the classes and working at the spas and the meditation and study and healing I've done in my own body will be put to the test, and Oh, how I've been longing for a test.

I have loved, absolutely adored, these last two years of prayer and contemplation.  I feel I have been given a gift: I learned how to live as simply as I could and work as little as I could and spend all the rest of my time simply Listening.  Well, getting still took the longest part, and then listening.  I could stretch all afternoon in my room, or garden all day in my backyard, start a job and quit it, or leave town for as long as I wanted.  Take any class, make any friends, and eat all the best food thanks to my amazing farmer friends (bless you!).  As long as I was working enough to pay my bills, or enough to pay off the credit card debt that would often creep and then subside, I have been doing fine.

Now through all that joyful resting, I learned that there is something organically occurring in ME that desires to work, with passion and with a purpose.  I had to sift past all the societal expectations (they sounded something like, "Go wear a button-down shirt and push buttons on a computer and get some points on your scoreboard called money!") and sit and sometimes mope, but always keep resting until I finally found the voice that sounds like authentically me and is ready to move forward.  I understand that to move forward I will have to work hard and maybe wake up really early or even try harder than is comfortable for a while.  I can do this for two reasons: I have learned that I want it, and I have learned how to rest and replenish myself.

So WHAT do I want?  I want to sustain my life financially by working with clients to help them achieve the most health they can in their body.  I am a massage therapist, now I want to earn my living doing it.  And I will still pursue all of the rest of it: gardening and prayer and meditation and proper eating and sustainable relationships and yoga and movement; all these things join together to create life and wholeness in me, and maybe the more I learn the more I can pass on to someone else some day.  Today, though, I will learn and study and practice massage, and maybe help a few people live in to more fullness.  Maybe one of those people will be me.