The Gut Wellness Guide by Allison Post & Stephen Cavaliere

Author:Allison Post & Stephen Cavaliere
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781623172572
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2018-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

I receive massage therapy regularly; do I still need to unwind?

Because my husband and I are trained in many different modalities of massage, we massage each other on a regular basis. We both love receiving massage, and we understand that our experience is enhanced because we both love giving, too. I say this because I want my readers to know that I appreciate what skillful massage can do, and to point out that it can be an incredible resource for couples.

However, we don’t want to let a good thing backfire on us. Massage, no matter the type, has its positives, but because it can feel so good and comforting, it might lure us into the mistaken belief that we can passively let healing be done for us, or that healing can magically break out of its own accord. Massage therapy is wonderful for many reasons, but we also want to engage, with sufficient attention and willingness, in self-directed practices that bring us to internal awareness. I think it’s best if we do that by means of something simple and direct, so that we can match the practice to what we need at the time.

Unwinding is a specific skill set that opens up what can be an entirely new realm of relaxation and inner body awareness. When a person takes a bit of time out for herself and reconnects with her body and her emotional state, without the distraction of another person or trying to conform to a complicated modality, amazing things happen. This is why I always encourage, and yes, sometimes require, clients that I am seeing on a long-term basis to practice on their own between sessions. Otherwise, the development of self-awareness and the feel of what it is like to travel inside and embody may never arise.

Yes, we need instruction, and perhaps for a time a compassionate and nonjudgmental partner to be there with us. But as with any high-level skill, there comes a time when home practice becomes the heart of the matter. This is the reason why I focus on self-help instruction. To my way of looking at things, without the development of a self-help practice, we are left with depending on an expert or discussing yet another theory. Talking about health is all well and good, but ultimately, health is something that you do; it is an experience. You live it, day in and day out.

Unwinding—and relaxation and embodiment—can at first seem to be mysterious. But much of it is about your nervous system, which is to say it’s about learning and understanding yourself in a very tangible way. We touch our skin to sense from the outside what is going on internally, and we breathe to connect from the inside. As we go along, week after week, we are able to feel deeper into our body and to notice the many changes that it goes through in day-to-day life, and year after year.

If we relax and tap into ourselves on a consistent basis we will, over time, fine-tune our awareness.

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