Aquapoetics

Deepening core awareness: Maya healing

As I was preparing to finalize the previous three-part series on psoas trauma, I remembered a friend's recent experience with a prolapsed uterus.  Her doctors had suggested hysterectomy but she successfully and quickly treated her condition with Maya abdominal massage, a method that offers ongoing self-care.

I felt compelled to experience this during a visit to Chicago where I discovered Moira Scullion, a licenced massage therapist of over 10 years' experience who specializes in the Arvigo Techniques of Maya Abdominal MassageTM  (MAM) and in Maya Spiritual Healing. 

For more: Arvigo healing practices and Maya healing tradition.

My 2 h introductory session with Moira, has inspired this addendum to the psoas series.  Appropriately, the appointment was on a wild and wet Thursday which, along with Friday, is considered the best for spiritual bathing rituals (see book reference below).  As you will read I did have a sprinkling bath!

Moira's website indicated that she works with 'the core of the body to release old patterns of emotional and physical holding' which sounded very relevant to the exploratory healing journey I was writing about.  The experience turned out to be profound on all levels - physical, emotional and spiritual - for me.

The background of Moira's teacher added another point of interest since Dr. Rosita Arvigo is the co-author of a book I have long had in my aquatic library called Spiritual Bathing: Healing rituals and traditions from around the world.  The water connection felt auspicious.

Deepening core awareness and the implications for aquatic bodywork: Part 3

This post is the third and last in a series on working with psoas trauma.  Reading Part 1 and Part 2 first is essential.

Part 1: Personal experience of psoas trauma

Part 2:  How aquatic bodywork can help with psoas trauma recovery

Part 3: Some ways of working with the psoas on land and in water

Deepening our core awareness we enter the influence of water.  It is imprinted in all form and it is by exploring ourselves as fluid beings that we enter into a deeper level of movement awareness and life. Liz Koch, Core Awareness:  Enhancing Yoga, Pilates, Exercise and Dance, 2003, p. 74.

PART 3: Some ways of working with the psoas on land and in water

The ideas I have shared in Parts 1 and 2 of this series on psoas-related trauma, including those gleaned from the work of others, are presented in a context of inquiry based on my personal experience as someone troubled by psoas issues and likely underlying trauma, and also on my professional observations as a massage and movement therapist with a special interest in aquatic bodywork.  They are not  intended to suggest definitive methods for working with someone who has psoas-related trauma.  Please be very careful with such work. 

If you believe you have psoas-related problems, please check this out with your preferred health professional.  Treat yourself with as much care as I hope the previous posts (Parts 1 and 2) have indicated may be warranted.  Below I have summarized some of the practices that have been helpful to me in my ongoing explorations of this.  Though I cannot take responsibility for your use of these suggestions and their possible outcome, I sincerely hope that if you do try them you will find them beneficial.  Please comment or share your experience below or by email.

Deepening core awareness and the implications for aquatic bodywork: Part 2

This post is the second in a series of three on working with psoas trauma in the water.  Reading Part 1 first is essential (see link below).  You'll also find an ongoing link to Part 3 at the end of this post.

Part 1: Personal experience of psoas trauma

Part 2:  How aquatic bodywork can help with psoas trauma recovery

Part 3: Some ways of working with the psoas on land and in water

Deepening our core awareness we enter the influence of water.  It is imprinted in all form and it is by exploring ourselves as fluid beings that we enter into a deeper level of movement awareness and life. Liz Koch, Core Awareness:  Enhancing Yoga, Pilates, Exercise and Dance, 2003, p. 74.

PART 2:  How aquatic bodywork can help with psoas trauma recovery

The safety and sensitivity of water

In this Part, I describe some of the insights others have had into working with body-based trauma responses, and relate this to my personal and professional experience in the water.

Here is what Liz Koch has to say about safety when releasing psoas-affecting trauma, and the issue of repetitive behavior  (Psoas Health: Trauma Recovery Protocol, Massage and Bodywork Magazine):

Once instinctively safe, the body naturally begins to shake and discharge stored energy.  With deeper levels of safety, the body spontaneously releases deeper levels of holding.  Without the resolution, repetitive behavior is the only means for the encoding to attempt to release the trauma.

Palpating the psoas muscle of traumatized clients can immediately reevoke the trauma defense mechanism because the psoas muscle is still activated.  Instead of evoking relaxation, palpating the psoas due to its instinctive functioning results in a conflict of psychosomatic interests.  The client wants to relax into the healing massage of the psoas while simultaneously contracting against the invasive procedure.  This conflict causes a repetition of the somatic elements of the trauma experience.

Palpating this deep muscle is hard enough to do on land and perhaps impossible to achieve in aquatic bodywork since the body cannot be pinned against any surface or push against resistance itself (as in PNF - see Parts 1 and 3) and may easily escape from such an 'invasion'.  This suggests that working in water could be safer.  What can be done in water, is to enable follow-through (sometimes called unwinding) of the psoas's  influence on the body's structural integrity, and also to use energy-based touch to initiate and facilitate its releases.  I have found both approaches to be highly effective with psoas issues.

Deepening core awareness and the implications for aquatic bodywork: Part 1

 

This post is the first in a series about working with psoas-related trauma in the water and also on land.  Reading Parts 1, 2 and 3 in order is important. You'll find a link to Part 2 at the end of this one.

Part 1: Personal experience of psoas trauma

Part 2:  How aquatic bodywork can help with psoas trauma recovery

Part 3: Some ways of working with the psoas on land and in water

Deepening our core awareness we enter the influence of water.  It is imprinted in all form and it is by exploring ourselves as fluid beings that we enter into a deeper level of movement awareness and life. Liz Koch, Core Awareness:  Enhancing Yoga, Pilates, Exercise and Dance, 2003, p. 74.

PART 1: Personal experience of psoas trauma

Losing my ground

Core awareness is not only influenced by water, it is also a sense of self connected to the earth, writes psoas expert Liz Koch.  In late July, I fell down twice.  I lost my ground in a manner that I can no longer afford to explain away.  I could say it was because a few weeks back I lifted a very large log for stacking and strained my right-side quadratus lumborum muscle which in turn put stress on my right psoas muscle, strongly torqued my pelvis, and trapped a nerve.  But it reminded me of something that I've been slowly inching towards for at least a decade now.  In this series of posts, I will share parts of that exploration.

The 'core' of the body spans from the solar plexus to the upper thigh bone. Core muscles run along the spinal vertebrae and traverse this 'belly brain'. These are the psoas [pronounced so-as] muscles and they are key to the body's stuctural integrity and movement, as well as protecting its inner strength and  energy.  It is a place of power and wisdom according to many Eastern body systems, where it is referred to as hara, dantien, solar plexus chakra, and so on.

The psoas also functions like an hydraulic pump, enhancing circulation throughout the body.  As an internal shelf, it lends important diagonal muscular support to abdominal organs and nerve ganglia.  The kidneys lie on top of the psoas and the reproductive nerves are embedded within it.  I've demanded a lot of the psoas muscle complex in my life habits and perhaps also because I have an exceptionally long back relative to my limbs.  My lifestyle combines the sedentary (long hours of writing) with the very active (including yoga and dance), making me further vulnerable to psoas misuse.

Illustration: The psoas muscle attaches to the 12th thoracic vertebrae (approximately at the level of your solar plexus) and to each of the lumbar vertebrae. The muscle moves through the pelvis and inserts into the inner thighbone at the lesser trocanter.

This hidden muscle group appears to play a major role in trauma and trauma recovery. Its significance in good times and bad is often overlooked, perhaps because it lies so deep within us. Serving as a bridge, it connects the physical to the emotional and the spiritual to the ordinary according to those who, like Liz Koch, take an holistic view of the human being.  Working with it can bring a deluge of unresolved fear to the forefront of your consciousness.  In the long run it could provide an opening to instinctive wisdom too.  In my personal and professional experience, both are true.

Inspired by Liz Koch (though I have yet to study with her directly), I've been sharing my understanding of this keystone muscle in my movement classes for some years now.  Yet, its personal impact once again unnerves me.  Not only because my body structure is similar to that of my mother who had a hip replacement five years after experiencing falls like mine.   But also because I sense there is more to this recurring discomfort, and that more serious outcomes (see Box) could be preventable.  My core is calling me to give it greater attention and take far more care.

Alternative aquatics research

The intent of my recent post on documenting alternative aquatics practices was to bring to attention aspects of aquatic therapeutic bodywork that are based on principles that don't easily fit the current medical model, including what is widely known as evidence-based research.

Western-style medical care predominates in our culture and many bodyworkers realize that finding a place within this system is most likely to be effective in gaining credibility and promoting their therapeutic work, including opportunities to participate in serious research programs.

Those who do not ally themselves with the prevailing medical model often find that, owing to legal implications aimed at protecting the public, they have to be very careful about how they report their success in healing work even if their clients have chosen that path. 

The growing willingness to adopt and adapt such alternative methods into clinical practice (rendering them complementary rather than alternative in current terminology) is an important step forward but this is not the same as truly acknowledging the different philosophies underlying alternative methods.