convicted

Why is it that we so often do the very thing that frustrates us most in others? One thing that I admire most is that people practice what they preach. My confession is that I have not been doing that, in fact I've actually been doing the opposite. In short, I have not been getting regular bodywork. Let me explain:

Here's what I preach: I encourage my clients to get massage regularly. The structure of my massage practice is to work on fewer clients more often. After four years as a massage therapist I see how regular bodywork can allow for lasting, sustainable benefits for Western people, so I offer steep discounts for folks when they come in for four bodywork sessions over two months. This is working great: people are coming in regularly and integrating the work deeply in to their systems, letting their bodies trust that they are supported.

In the meantime, in practice I am not getting work regularly! I more than anyone should know that regular massage helps our whole system work by watching it affect the lives of my clients. I also know from experience that getting massage consistently helps everything in my life work better: less tension, more mental clarity, more vitality!

This confessional post is to hold me accountable: I will spend the next few months exploring different practitioners and modalities, and then settle in with one therapist and go on my own journey from the receiving side, which will only make me a better practitioner, and a better liver of life!

integrating

I am aware of many blessings: I am practicing a blend of shiatsu and Thai massage in my beautiful home studio in Santa Cruz, I am studying the human body from a Western perspective in Biology and Health Science classes, and I am preparing for graduate school in Public Health.

It feels like the wildly divergent aspects of my life are coming together. Things that always made sense to me as part of a balance life manifested themselves in disjointed workweeks: a couple of days each in massage therapy, low-income public education, and farmers' markets. Now I get to research and write about how large-scale cultural trends in diet, behavior, and the spread of ideas manifest themselves along a spectrum of health and dis-ease among populations. In that time I will keep practicing bodywork, and then have the privilege of sharing the information that my education has given me: living it with a lifelong self-care practice, and spreading it via education and written works about how to live our best possible life. It's all coming together!

I will move from speaking from what has worked in my own life and experience to a position of what has worked to promote health in bigger groups. I am aware of what a shift like that might mean: that for a minute there I may begin to say, "now EVERYONE needs to do this or that." I am also trusting that the amount of time I spend checking in with my intuition and my body to make the right choices in my life (see what do you want?, make a joyful noise, and pretty much anything else I wrote in 2008) is going to pay off in being able to move through that phase into one that says, "statistically, a community should be doing X, and how can you see if that is a good choice for you personally?" I will constantly approach new bridges and find new options for synergy in my own life and philosophy, as well as opportunities to try on divergent mindsets for different occasions until I see how and when to employ one or the other.

Integration. Education, purpose, renewal. These are the words that are coming in to my mind as I sink in to Fall, and continue on my path.