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In part 4 of Live Pain Free, Dr. Peter Borten will discuss the roles of sleep and stress in relation to pain.
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[post_content] => ***
CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT OUR NEW 'LEARN HOW TO MASSAGE' COURSE ***
From the beginning, Briana and I agreed that if The Dragontree could be well known for anything, we wanted it to be that our therapists are absolutely top notch. We’ve felt especially qualified in guiding The Dragontree’s massage program, since we have both worked professionally at performing and teaching massage.
Our friends often tease us when one of us has a massage interview planned. “Oh, it must be so hard,” they chide, “having to get massages all the time.” But I assure them, when I’m receiving a massage as a means of evaluating whether to hire someone to represent my business, it’s not usually a relaxing experience. I am constantly evaluating their technique, and I am pretty picky.
We try to check out other spas and get treatments whenever we travel, and, for better or worse, it can be hard to turn off my inner critic (especially when they only give me 50 minutes for my “one hour” massage). When you know how good a massage can be, you’re always hoping that every massage will be that. One year, on my birthday, I was receiving the worst massage of my life, and I actually ended it after fifteen minutes – something I had never done before. The therapist was clearly taken aback when I sat up and said it wasn’t working for me. When he defensively responded that he had plenty of clients who love his work, I realized, most people don’t know what to look for in a good massage. And that’s what I’m going to teach you.
It’s always worth remembering when you have an unsatisfying massage – or any other kind of service – that not every two people are compatible. It could be that the professional – whether a graphic designer, massage therapist, or hair stylist – is skilled at what they do but they just don’t do it to your liking. So, I hope to provide you with some criteria that will make the evaluation process a bit more objective.
I realize that by writing this, I am setting up The Dragontree to meet some very high standards, but I believe I’m also setting up our practitioners for some very big tips. And, I hope that I’m arming you with ways to be constructive about a massage that falls short of your expectations.
Ideally, you can communicate to your therapist during the massage if it isn’t to your liking, and it can be improved on the spot.
If you just like receiving massage, these criteria may help you identify if a particular therapist is right for you or not. If you are an amateur or professional massage therapist, you might find something here to improve your skills. These are, in my opinion, the six most important factors in a good massage.
1. Confident Touch - The first moment a massage therapist lays their hands on a client’s body, something is communicated. When the touch is not confident, the communication is something like, “Hmmm... let’s see... err... maybe this way... no, wait. Oh, I have an idea... uh, maybe not.” As the client, it is difficult to relax and trust the therapist’s skills. When touch is confident (and I don’t mean firm , but something less tangible), the communication is, “I know what I am doing, and I’m here for you.” Confident touch makes us feel like the therapist has a plan. Every touch feels purposeful. This encourages us to relax and open ourselves to the therapist’s therapeutic intention.
2. Continuity of Touch - Every time the therapist removes their hands from the body, there is a disruption in the continuity of sensation and connection. Occasional disengagement from the body is sometimes necessary. But when it happens very frequently, and especially if the therapist’s hands are more off the body than on the body, there is a choppy or jumpy, discontinuous feeling to the massage. It impedes our ability to relax. Conversely, therapists who maintain nearly continuous contact with the body help us stay in a relaxed state.
3. Complete Strokes - When a therapist is working along a natural line on the body, it generally feels best to a client if this line is followed to its completion. There are some techniques that are exceptions to this rule, but when doing long strokes, if a therapist stops short of the natural end point of a stroke, it feels incomplete to the recipient. For instance, if a therapist is performing a stroke down the spine, and they stop a few inches above the base of the spine, or if they working along a limb and they stop before reaching the joint or the end of the limb, it usually doesn’t feel as satisfying as when a therapist continues the stroke to its natural end.
4. Entering the Tissue at the Right Speed and Depth - Some therapists are enthusiastic about getting hard and deep into people’s muscles, but they fail to perceive the body’s unwillingness to let them in. When a therapist tries to go too deep too fast, we tense up and the whole thing becomes counterproductive. When a therapist “listens” well to the body, they enter the tissue at a rate whereby it is able to accept increasing amounts of pressure and depth without tightening up and pushing back. If the body does tighten up, the therapist feels this, backs off, and re-enters more slowly or in another way. If the area continues to be excessively reactive, the good therapist may leave it alone entirely, and work complementary areas instead. This doesn’t mean that good massage must be painless, but at no point should it feel like the therapist is fighting with the client’s body.
5. Sensitivity and Responsiveness – As I alluded to in the previous section, a sensitive therapist is able to perceive how their touch is being received by the client. They also check in verbally from time to time to be sure the client is getting what they want out of the massage. Then, a responsive therapist adjusts their technique to suit the client’s needs. Some therapists with good sensitivity do minimal verbal checking in and still succeed at making appropriate adjustments throughout the massage, but even a seasoned therapist should know that they can fail to read a client’s feelings, so they should always be humble enough to ask.
6. Devoted Presence - A devoted therapist conveys throughout the treatment that the client has their undivided attention. The client never feels that the therapist’s needs are “in the room.” Thus, a devoted therapist rarely starts conversation during a treatment. Some clients like to talk a lot. While there is nothing wrong with this, the therapist who is really devoted to their art recognizes that this may diminish the benefit of the treatment, and they will often gently guide the client back to relaxing and feeling what is going on in their body. Another mark of a devoted therapist is that they are open to receiving criticism, because they want the client to have the best possible experience. That said, when we’re clients, if we really want the best outcome, we’re likely to get it by offering any criticism in a kind way.
In the end, everyone likes something a little different, and there is no single massage therapist who is perfect for everyone. If you ever have a massage experience here at the Dragontree that doesn’t quite meet your expectations, please feel free to talk to us about it. We’d love to hear your input and are eager to find ways for you to have the blissful experience you deserve.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
All rights reserved © 2015 Peter Borten
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I saw a woman being interviewed about her opinion of Trump and Obama. She felt quite strongly that one was the devil and the other a saint. The interviewer asked why and she gave some simple reasons. Then the interviewer proposed, “What if I showed you evidence that would disprove your reasons?”
She responded, “Nothing you can say will change my mind. I don’t need any evidence to know what’s true.” Have you ever felt this way about a person or issue?
It’s very enticing to think in black and white terms. We like the unambiguousness of it. It’s comfortable and easy to be able to say with conviction, “This man is good, that man is bad,” or “Chemical pesticides are wrong, natural ones are right,” or “Pain is bad, pleasure is good.”
When we choose a fixed stance, it seems our work is over. There’s no need to sort through the facts. There’s no need to navigate the discomfort of possibly being wrong, or the discomfort of allowing for multiple points of view. There’s no need to stretch. The only work left to do is convince others who don’t share our point of view that they’re wrong.
Every fixed point of view bolsters the ego. Each time we marry our identity to a position, we form a more rigid sense of who we are (and aren’t). Even though there’s a certain kind of peace in choosing a fixed stance, there’s also an innate conflict. We feel compelled to block out or reject any experience or information that doesn’t fit with our position. This fragments us, restricts our freedom, and prevents an authentic, unmanipulated experience of life.
I’m as attracted to polarized positions as the next guy, but I’ve seen too many times that they’re not good for me – or my relationships. Besides the various forms of personal suffering that black-and-white thinking causes, it’s a major impediment to creating community, solving big problems, and fixing the social divisions that make our country so disunited.
For those interested in recovering from this habit, a willingness to be wrong is a good start – yet, it’s often a difficult concession for us because there’s some truth to our position. It’s usually less painful – and closer to the truth – to recognize that we’re not wrong, we’re just not entirely right. That is, we’re focused on a thin sliver of reality and mistake that to be the whole.
It’s like the old parable about the blind men feeling the different parts of an elephant and describing what kind of animal it is. One feels the elephant’s trunk and says, “This animal is like a thick snake.” Another, who is touching the elephant’s ear, disagrees: “No, it’s more like a fan.” One touches its leg and says an elephant must be like the trunk of a tree. Another touches the tail and says elephants are like a piece of rope.
When we practice openness and humility, we discover a greater need for the word and. Is the truth this way or that way? The answer is almost always YES. This way and that way. Both.
This practice asks us to stretch in order to make room for a reality that’s broader than we thought – and stretching can be uncomfortable – but it also brings peace through the recognition that we don’t know everything, we can’t know everything, and therefore we can let ourselves off the hook of needing to know everything.
I’d like to explore polarized positions on two subjects that are near and dear to my heart – managing the wayward mind and managing pain.
When it comes to managing the mind, the most common polarized positions I encounter are: (1) We should exert discipline over the mind, learn to control it, more intentionally choose the contents of our thoughts, perhaps even stop its meanderings entirely. (2) The mind is an incessant stream of chattering that doesn’t need to be controlled or judged; freedom comes from witnessing it impartially, noticing how it works, learning not to automatically give our attention to its content (thoughts), and ultimately transcending it.
Which is right? In my opinion this is a perfect time for the word and . It doesn’t need to be one or the other. Both are valid and true. It is possible to stop thinking. We can make the mind more peaceful, we can think more optimistic thoughts. AND without attempting to modify the way we think, we can learn to witness the mind, to be unmoved by violent or fearful thoughts, and to let awareness itself begin to displace the ego as the driver of this life.
When it comes to managing pain, two opposing positions I encounter are: (1) Get rid of it. Pain sucks and rarely has a useful purpose. (2) Pain is an opportunity – to expand, to be empowered, to know ourselves, to heal old wounds, etc. If we get rid of it without exploring it, we may miss an important chance to grow and heal.
Which is right? What should we do? AND to the rescue! When I began constructing my online course, Live Pain Free , I started by making a long list of all the strategies I could think of for eliminating pain. Then I thought of the people I’ve known who weren’t able to get rid of their pain – because, for instance, it was due to an inoperable tumor pressing on a nerve – but were able to achieve freedom despite the constant presence of pain. I thought of patients who have used their pain as an impetus for unraveling trauma and years of unhealthy patterning. And I also thought of patients in pain who were angry, depressed, or fearful, who became lighthearted and joyful as soon as we stopped the pain. In the end, I chose to dedicate a significant portion of the course to viewpoint #2 above – that is, helping people to heal and feel free regardless of whether or not pain is present.
The same goes for managing painful thoughts and emotions. When Briana and I were writing Freedom , a workbook to help people move through these thoughts and feelings more smoothly, we asked ourselves do we want people to simply release them and get on with their day or do we want to help them understand the deeper roots of these thoughts and feelings so they can know themselves and heal more deeply? I’ve heard cognitive behavioral therapists make a strong case for the former, saying, “You simply need to learn to modify your thoughts – and your relationship to them – as they come up. We don’t need to talk about your childhood.” A Freudian psychoanalyst would probably say the opposite.
For us, the answer again was both. Sometimes – especially if we’re currently scheduled to be doing something other than self-maintenance – there isn’t time or space to do the deeper processing, and we just need a quick and efficient way to release infringing thoughts and emotions. But it’s also worth making the time to delve into the bigger, more fundamental work, because if we can heal our deepest wounds we’re likely to have a great reduction in disturbing thoughts and the need to manage them.
In what ways do you tend to think in black-and-white terms?
Where has your thinking been polarized?
How has your identity been shaped by your positions?
How do you feel when you have a fixed position about something or someone? Can you perceive both the appealing feeling of “rightness” (or even self-righteousness) and the edgy feeling that comes from an inability to allow for opposing viewpoints?
What comes up when you consider opening yourself to opposing points of view? Can you feel the stretch of it? Can you also feel the relief that would come from relinquishing the need to have the answers or to be right?
Wishing you peace, perspective, and lots of ANDs,
Peter
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In part 4 of Live Pain Free, Dr. Peter Borten will discuss the roles of sleep and stress in relation to pain.
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Thank you that was very helpful. It seems like everything comes back to the breath!! Not resisting what is and breathing into where stagnation seems to be present. ☀️ Your examples of stagnation and the simple way you spoke are the perfect start to my day today.
Thank you, Dr. Borden, for this message. It rings so very true. I will endeavor to pass this on to others.
I enjoyed being a student in your Dragontree “Live Pain Free Course”. This video is a timely reminder. I also appreciate that I can go back and review your video lessons at will. I have retold some of the stories from your Course many times. The snake bite comes to mind. Teaching via parables makes depths of lessons stick. (Snake/stick…* smile)