Harmony Of Mother-Earth Patrick Bernhard

Get MORE out of your MASSAGE!

Listen to your body during your massage.  With your mind put your awareness, but don't concentrate, beneath the hands of your therapist.  "Follow" your massage and how your body "talks" to you.  Doing this also leads you into a deeper state.  The muscles hold memories.  For instance:  A ballplayer throws the ball and stretches his arm too far.  The next time he tries this the muscle has shortened and goes into pain, so it won't happen again.  If the muscle doesn't stop hurting within a period of say six weeks or so, then it might be holding the memory of the incident still.  Our bodies are dumb/smart and don't always know the truth.

So when you feel tension or pain while getting a massage, take a breath in, release it slowly while telling the muscles,  "Let go, you are not being hurt at this time, you are just being stretched."  Muscles don't always respect time,  while you hold your breath, this muscle goes back to the time it was first in pain.  While you breathe out and say let go, you bring it back to present time and the muscle lets go. 

You may also re-experience fear or other feelings when touched.

This is an opportunity to listen to your feelings and let them go, also, with your breath.  You may not think you still have these feelings, but your body does and you can reteach it.

You are in the past while holding your breath, and in the present when you release your breath.

Now, while receiving massage you may notice that the therapist is playing a soft music CD.  It may not have words to the music, or it may have a melody that isn't familiar.  The reason for this is to take you out of the thinking brain, so you can relax better.                       Close your eyes, place your vision at your forehead, listen to the music and put your awareness beneath the hands.  You may see colors (like a lava lamp) during your massage as you begin to relax.  You think that you have fallen asleep, yet you hear everything and aren't snoring.

This is called, "leaving" your body.  It is like meditation. 

Sometimes a touch makes you want to cry.  Ask inside your mind, "What is this?" And listen.  You may see a vision.  Memories come up.  This may be you healing old memories and letting them go.

Notice how it feels when the therapists picks up a leg, or arm.  Take a breath in and tell it to let go.  Your muscles have made a promise to take care of you and signal with pain and tension that you are being hurt again.  But, that was along time ago and you know how to take care of yourself now.  Bring the muscles to present time by inhaling and then exhaling while saying "Let go, we are not being hurt at this time." 

You are also reprogramming the brain path to the muscles and usually when the therapist pushes on this muscle again or lifts your arm, the tension is gone and pain released. 

Notice this also in your daily life.  When you feel a part of your body tense up, look around you and be aware of what's happening,  teach yourself a new way to look at things.  Breath and come into the present. Listen to your body with compassion. There is a reason that you lay still on the massage table and don't move or talk.

You may move your leg easily, going beyond the brain's signals.  But when the massage therapist moves it, it only goes so far as the body memory allows it.  Massage can help you reprogram your brain to your muscles and heal old memories.

If you are going to a massage therapist who talks to you during your whole session, he or she may not be in touch themselves and may want to stay in their brain.  You may feel good for a day or two, your muscles relax, eventually, after many sessions.  There is a better way!  A healing way!

Women liked to go to church on Sundays because, for one reason: no one can ask them for anything, or call them on the phone, or get them dinner. They don't have to do anything for anyone else during this hour.  Now a days, it's massage!  Your phone is turned off, Soft lighting, nice music.  Its' you being alone with you!