• Hands On Therapy

Getting in Tune with Yourself

  • Do you have chronic tension or pain in one or more areas of the body?

  • Do you have swelling or water retention in your legs, abdomen or arms?

  • Do you suffer from anxiety, depression, or other emotional stress?

  • Do you feel insecure and closed in your body?

  • Do you have trouble truly sensing your body – both on and under the skin?

How do hands-on approaches help?

Therapeutic touch has innumerable benefits to your overall well-being.  You can experience effects on all layers of your soft tissues as well as improvement in your respiratory, circulatory and lymphatic systems.

Hands on techniques are extremely useful in terms of lowering your stress levels and connecting with your body.  If you receive regular therapeutic touch, you will feel the effects on your whole sense of well-being.

In a session I’ll use a variety of techniques, depending on what I perceive as the need in the moment.  I’m not a focused or strategic being, so if you’re someone with a hyper-focused idea of the way you want me to work, we may not be a match.

To be most effective I’m designed to work receptively and intuitively.  For my sensitivity to the energy and skills to emerge in the most useful way, I need to feel invited into the therapeutic relationship just as I am, and then free to work in the way that feels most helpful in the here and now, with your regular feedback and a sense of  how your energetic body responds to the stimuli.

For me, this is a partner dance.

Anyone wishing to study medicine must master the art of massage.

Techniques and Explorations

This is normally my first stop when there’s a problem in the body.  Your lymphatic system is your drainage system – it gets all the toxins and waste products out of the body so that you can regenerate cells each day.  There’s no health without a working lymphatic system and these days we all need a bit more love for our lymphatics since we are bombarded with toxins in our current environment (biochemical, electromagnetic, mental, emotional and spiritual).

I use a gentle, non-invasive manual technique that has a powerful effect on the body to help lymph flow and drain tissues of the toxic and metabolic waste as well as excess fluid build up.  In the Vodder technique the skin is stretched and torqued to encourage the movement of your superficial lymphatic system into the deeper system where it gets cleaned up and sent either for elimination or back to the blood.

Lymphatic Drainage is NOT just for aesthetics as many believe, but is necessary for improving help for any type of chronic ailment.  It can be used for pre- and post-surgery, scar treatment, constipation, stress, fibrosis, arthritis and various other applications.

Both an art and a science, Chi Nei Tsang is a massage of the internal organs in order to energize, strengthen and detoxify the internal system.  The techniques come from the Taoists who realized that everything is energetic.

Chi, the life-force energy, moves through internal channels, the nervous system, the blood vessels and lymphatic system.  All of these systems pass through the abdomen, meaning that blockages in the abdominal area due to tensions, worries and stresses and toxins, create tangles and knots and obstruction of energy circulation.

Each organ is associated with different emotions, which are simply energy.  Negative emotions that are left unprocessed can create blockages.  Due to energetic channels in the body, these blockages can create problems in distant parts of the body, not just locally at the organ location.

Chi Nei Tsang seeks to release these energies and balance the internal system for whole body well-being.

In addition to hands-on techniques in Chi Nei Tsang, meditations such as the Inner Smile and the Six Healing Sounds are also used.

You can watch Taoist master Mantak Chia here performing some Chi Nei Tsang techniques.

I learned with Jutta Kellenberger, senior instructor of Taoist teachings.

CranioSacral Therapy (CST) is a gentle, hands-on approach that targets the membranes around the central nervous system – brain and spinal cord – as well as the bones of the skull and spine, the rhythm of the cerebrospinal fluid and the soft tissues connected to the whole craniosacral system.  It’s used to release deep body tension and relieve pain and dysfunction, improving  whole-body and emotional health.  Enhancing the body’s self-correcting capacity, it can alleviate a wide variety issues and can bolster resistance to disease.

The fascial system, our liquid crystalline matrix, envolves all muscles, bones and organs in the body, truly making us an undivided whole.  To be healthy, fascia needs to be flexible, hydrated, and gliding properly.

Traumas, inflammatory processes, bad postures, surgery, stress, etc are all possible causes of restrictions and adherences in the fascia and neighbouring tissues, leading to pain and restrictive movement.  The fascia ends up becoming more solid, with shorter fibers.  This can lead to improper functioning of organs, muscles and the body as a whole.

Fascial problems can also present as irritation, mental agitation, tiredness, and insomnia.

Additionally, emotional stress or negative emotions can be stored and accumulated in the fascial system for years.  It’s important to release in order to heal fully.

The goal is to liberate the tensions and emotions that have accumulated in the fascia, uncoupling the physical and emotional memories from the tissues.  In doing this, the fascia regains its flexibility and elasticity and therefore its function and the whole body finds balance.

The tuning forks are a tool I’m playing with at the moment, using my natural passive receptivity to re-awaken my capacity to inner-see and feel energy.

Our bodies are first and foremost energetic.  Often the term biofield is used in science to describe the electrical system of the body – both the electric current running through it and the magnetic field that surrounds it.  You may be familiar with the term “aura”, a term we use in Human Design to describe this electromagnetic field which emanates from each body.

I have begun experimenting with tuning forks as sound therapy to work on this field, to detect blockages and dissonances which are often linked to unprocessed emotions and memories that get stuck in the electrical system.

The idea is that the body’s innate intelligence uses the tuning fork’s coherent vibrational frequency as we would use a mirror.  The body hears and tunes itself to that clear and steady frequency.

This can help release tensions within the body and promote relaxation and flow, necessary states for healing on the physical, mental and emotional levels.

Shall we play with sound?

A good reference for information on the biofield is the work of Eileen McKusick.

Massage can be a key component of overall well-being, best practiced as a preventative measure, to keep soft tissues healthy and flexible.  It can also be used effectively as treatment for a variety of muscular skeletal issues such as hypertonic or contracted muscles, tendinitis, pre-surgery preparation, post-surgery rehab, etc.  If you have an active life in terms of work or play, regular massage is recommended to avoid problematic issues that can come up from repeated movement patterns or poor posture.

Various techniques are used such as Neuromuscular, Trigger Points, Myofascial Release, Cyriax (Transverse Friction).

Lomi Lomi means “massage” in various Polynesian languages.  It is a massage method which came from Hawaii around 5000 years ago, as a shamanic healing ritual, associated with the movement of the sea.

Lomi Lomi is a full body massage with the objective of aligning body, mind and spirit.  The massage is executed intuitively, with a variety of movements and rhythms, in different parts of the body at the same time, using hands, thumbs, forearms and elbows.

The technique is based on the belief that everything is interrelated and connected – mental, physical and emotional functions.  So the goal is unblocking energy, moving it to less used parts of the body, relaxing the muscles, reinvigorating the whole body and bringing a sense of peace and well-being.