How to use your body...

Comment

Comment by Karina Braun on August 10, 2009 at 9:42am

Massage is a diverse field that leaves an open door to a variety of teaching styles. Since this field is expanding, we need teachers from different perspectives to teach students so they can be equiped with the best knowledge possible. Let's work together to creat this goal!

Comment by Lauriann Greene, CEAS on August 10, 2009 at 7:28am

Kimberly, you are welcome to ask me questions (even "nit-picky" questions) anytime, and that won't keep anyone from enjoying my healing approach.

Books speak to people in different ways, and I'm glad that Karina's book spoke to you in a way that you found helpful. I just heard of Karina's book, and I look forward to reading it soon. I think most people benefit from a combination of points of views, so I encourage you and everyone to read as much on the subject of injury prevention and self-care as possible. Wishing you a long, healthy career - Lauriann.

Comment by Kimberly Fitzgerald LMT, MTI on August 9, 2009 at 8:42pm

Wow! All of this from one little helpful tip of the day! Sorry about that, Karina....and please keep them coming!

Comment by Kimberly Fitzgerald LMT, MTI on August 9, 2009 at 3:51pm

necessary.......oops :)

Comment by Kimberly Fitzgerald LMT, MTI on August 9, 2009 at 3:35pm

Laurianne, First...let me start by apologizing if my post sounded like an attack and disrespectful. That was not my intention....but I was frustrated and merely debating what you started in your original post. I feel like your original post was an attack of some really nice, helpful advice for therapists. I have thoroughly enjoyed Karina Braun's book, Creating Peace With Your Hands, and I have found the info. in her book and her posts on this site to be both enlightening and helpful. When I read your post, which sounded like an attack, I became very angry that someone would take such a great, helpful peice of advice and twist it and "nit-pick" it apart. I then became even more frustrated when I relalized that you've not been a practicing therapist.... forgive me here, but you don't know how it feels to be on your 6, 7th or even 8th (or some cases more) massage of the day, and have to muster up every bit of strength and energy, AND be incredibly creative with your body to just to get through it!. I'm not saying that the information in your book isn't very necassary or helpful, and I'm sure that it HAS helped many people in this field...for that I am grateful. But taking Karina's helpful tip of the day and attacking it for the sake of promoting your own book just isn't right, Laurianne. And don't fool yourself, because that is exactly what is going on here!

I am very appreciative of Karina Braun's book, Creating Peace With Your Hands, because it is one of the first books out there on the subject of Injury Prevention that is based both on experience and research, I love how well rounded her book is. It has really helped me to create better strategies for staying healthy and pro-longing my career. Her chapter on the healing process is spot on, the strength building chapter...very helpful, nutrition for the therapist, TCM, Yoga, and her spiritual connection to her book and experience is quite refeshing. I have read your book too, Laurianne, and it just didn't help me the way that Creating Peace With Your Hands did...and I have to admit, that when I read your post, it seemed to me an attack on a very beautiful approach to healing. So I retaliated a bit and I am sorry that I didn't do so with more respect. Like I said...I'm not saying that your book hasn't helped many people, I'm sure that it has....just in a differant way that Karina's does. So please just keep the nit-picking to yourself and allow the rest of us to enjoy this very healing approach to wellness for both our clients and ourselves.

I don't feel that it is neccasary to continue this debat offline or on-line. It is just merely a difference of opinion at this point. respectfully, Kimberly Fitzgerald.

Comment by Lauriann Greene, CEAS on August 9, 2009 at 11:42am

Hi Kimberly - I believe that I've been speaking in a respectful tone in my posts. I'm sorry you felt my posts were "nit-picking for the sake of being right" - my intent was to be very precise about a subject where precision is important. You can disagree with me without being so disparaging of me and my work. The ABMP, AMTA, all the massage magazines, and massage school education directors across the U.S. and Canada that make Save Your Hands their preferred textbook do not have an issue with my level of understanding of massage or my ability to advise massage therapists on these issues. They do not seem to feel I'm only good at "compiling facts" (ouch!). If you actually read Save Your Hands! 2nd Edition, I think you'll find that there is a huge amount of information that is not purely "technical", as you say (although I'm not sure why "technical" is a bad word for you), and that the book comes from a place of understanding and compassion, since, like Karina, I was injured from doing massage work and that gave me a desire to help others).

Having 15 years experience as a massage therapist is a wonderful accomplishment that is deserving of respect (as is doing research, writing and teaching on injury prevention for 15 years). But there seems to be a misconception that only an experienced massage therapist can really know anything about body mechanics or injury prevention. It's important to dispel this idea, because MTs may reject help from anyone but other experienced therapists, greatly limiting their options to get much-needed advice and help.

Workplace injury prevention is an actual science, with proven principles and methods - experience can teach us many things, but it is not the only way to acquire knowledge. Observation, empathy, having extensively studied the industry and its demands, compassion and, yes, training and research also teach a great deal. I did have over 1200 hours of massage training, but even someone who has never done a massage but has in-depth knowledge of ergonomics and injury prevention techniques can also help a massage therapist prevent injury, perhaps even better than a very experienced massage therapist who lacks the necessary knowledge. In fact, often people outside the profession can be more objective. Ergonomists spend years studying body mechanics and how people use their bodies as they work, as well as all the research on the most effective techniques. They teach injury prevention techniques to workers in many different industries. This work is extremely effective, and lowers injury rates considerably. So a welder who is helped by an ergonomist to prevent injury doesn't tell the ergonomist that he can't possibly offer any useful advice because he doesn't know what it "feels like" to be a welder for many years. So while I have great respect for those who have lots of massage experience, and sometimes that means they also have great injury prevention habits or knowledge, they also have lots of respect for my extensive training and experience in injury prevention and ergonomics and tell me quite frequently that I was able to save their careers and provide lots of great tips and techniques they had either forgotten or had never thought of. The fact that I was a massage therapist, and that my collaborator is a working LMP as well as a working ergonomist, informs our work even more.

I hope that all the discussions we have on this new web site can be respectful of each others' competencies,
and that we can take for granted that we all have good intentions and something valuable to say. If you'd like to continue this discussion, let's take it offline, because I think readers here probably prefer that the discussion remains centered around their concerns about self-care and injury prevention. Thanks for reading.

Comment by Kimberly Fitzgerald LMT, MTI on August 7, 2009 at 4:02pm

Hi Lauriann, Whether or not you're questioning the idea of using the entire body to create force is irrelevant at this point. The fact that you are questioning whether the smaller movements should be a full body experience, or not, tells me that you are not a practicing therapist at all... before you even admited to it. Forgive me here, but working with practicing therapist for 15 years and actually being one for 15 years (or even for one year, for that matter) are two totally different circumstance. I completely agree with Mrs. Braun that "Every stroke should be a whole body experience", as general of a statement that you believe it to be. I love that, finally, Mrs. Braun is writting from experience, and that her book is such a whole, well-rounded approach to injury prevention....instead of only from a technical stand point. And there are so few books out on this subject to choose from.

While performing seated massage, you are still making it a full body experience (if you are a good therapist). Your feet are firmly planted into the ground, you engage your core muscles, and you ground yourself. For (slightly) deeper strokes or compressive force, you can still position your feet in an archer-like stance (or slight lunge with your bottom on the chair), stabalize your scapulaes, and still have the force come from your legs and hips. Now, for the very slightest of movements .... you STILL should make it a full body experience, because that is EXACTLY what makes you a sensitvie therapist. A therapist that can pick up on the subtle cues of their client's body, using their whole body, is a sensitve therapist. Ask any CranioSacal Therapist and they will tell you the same thing.

And as far as the table height and awkward postions go....the therapist shouldn't be working in those circumstance in the first place...if they are, then they should just do the best they can as far as their body mechanics go. They may have to be a little more creative...but that is a given, right?

Now don't get me wrong...I'm sure that you are great at compiling facts and the research is wonderful, and I really appreciate it....but don't pretend that you know how it feels to be a therapist. I love the research and these wonderful foundations like the Massage Therapy Research Foundation, Ben Benjamin, Whitney Lowe and the beautiful work of Dr. Tiffany Field, that provide essential information and education for everyone. The research also validates and supports what we (as therapist) know to be true. Debating these topics in this group is great, and you're right....injury prevention is a serious topic...I think that being accurate is very important. But taking Mrs. Braun's statements and 'nit-picking" them apart for the sake of being right....well....it just isn't right!

Comment by Lauriann Greene, CEAS on August 7, 2009 at 10:43am

Hi Kimberley - I don't believe that I questioned the idea of using the entire body to create force. If you read my last post, I think you'll see that I mentioned that it is not always possible to do this - if you're seated and doing very small movements with the hands only, how can you use your legs to create force? No one is questioning the concept of using the body as a whole to create force - my co-author and I write extensively about this in Save Your Hands! 2nd Edition. I was pointing out that it's hard to make generalizations like "Every stroke should be a whole body stroke" when that really isn't the reality of what happens in the situation of a practicing massage therapist. So in fact, I was coming at this more from the standpoint of a practicing therapist (which I'm not, but I have worked extensively with practicing therapists for over 15 years, so I do have considerable experience in this domain), than from the "school of research" as you put it.

Research and practice go hand in hand. They are not mutually exclusive - look at all of the wonderful practitioners who do research-based work in massage therapy (Ben Benjamin, Whitney Lowe, etc.). There is even a terrific Massage Therapy Research Foundation that provides incredibly valuable information that helps all of us who work in the manual therapy fields. Injury prevention is a serious topic, so the information we provide to others on it must be based on a combination of experience and documented fact. It's worth getting "technical" to be sure we're providing the most accurate information possible. I'm sure that's Karina's goal as well, and why it's interesting and useful to debate these points in this group.

Comment by Kimberly Fitzgerald LMT, MTI on August 6, 2009 at 9:44pm

Excuse me for saying so, Mrs. Greene, but I think that you're being way too technical here...perhaps coming from the school of reserch rather than that of a practicing therapist? I have been a practicing therapist for 14 years now (and teacher for 8 years), and I have to agree with Mrs. Braun here. Massage should be a full body approach on the part of the therapist because if it is not, through basic principals of leaverage and leaning, then the therapist is relying on muscle strength to deliver the compressive force which will be perceived as a threat by the client's body (not to mention injury of these muscles for the therapist). If a client feels attacked by the therapist then their body will go into a fight or flight response and that is the last thing we want! A sensitive therapist will use their whole body to delivery these strokes so that they may be sensitive to their client's every (subtle) cue and need. As far as breaking the muscles down in what particular ones the therapist uses depending on the style of massage is irrelevant to me as I read all of this technical lingo. As a therapist ... I just want to know how to pro-long my career while helping others in this beautiful process of healing and I am so happy to see that this is being taught in many schools around the country now. I competely understand where Mrs. Braun is going with this whole body approach and only wish it had been taught to me in school. It is only through injuring myself in my first year of practice that made me realize that it has to be a full body approach...it has to come from the legs and hips... or the smaller muscles of the arms, back and shoulders will sufer greatly. And on a side note...I remember all too well a question on the National Exam for Therapeutic Massage and Bodyworkers that asks: which muscles of the therapist's body should be used to deliver compressive force at the point of contact?...and the answer....the legs and hips.

Comment by Lauriann Greene, CEAS on August 6, 2009 at 10:57am

Thanks for the clarification, Karina. You say "My point was that the whole body has to be used to work correctly, especially when delivering a stroke or technique with deeper pressure." and "Every stroke should be a whole body stroke." When seated, or when performing small, fine work, it's not possible to use the entire body to create the stroke. I think you're really talking about deep work, not all massage work. It's also not possible to use the whole body to create a stroke if you're in an awkward posture, or if your workspace is not set up in a way to enable you to use your whole body (for example, if the massage table is too high, or there isn't enough room around the table for you to put a foot back). There are a great number of factors that play a role in the therapist's ability to use body weight and larger muscles to create force.

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