Hi, Everyone! This blog is about helping you make space in the pelvis for your organs, joints, muscles, nerves and blood vessels. It’s about a happy, healthy, mobile pelvis. I want to spend a few moments introducing you to caring for and use of your hands, the tools you’ll be using.
I want you to PLAY with this material – because it’s fun. You can share with partners and friends! It feels good and the more you do it, the healthier you’ll feel, PLUS the more sensitive your PLAYING hands will become at finding things you never imagined your body is filled with. I encourage you to do it daily, even if you don’t initially feel much. Practice encourages your body to quickly release a whole host of body issues, apart from our goal: the PELVIS. A lot of what we cover you can be done to oneself, depending on your level of flexibility.
CARE OF THE HANDS
Most of us perform repetitive motions, often with the hands and fingers. Before PLAYING, please be sure that you’ve used a nail file, emery board, pumice stone or other tools to remove callouses and raggedy edges of skin on the areas around the sides and tips of the fingernails and be sure your nails are extremely short and the tips filed. This prevents the sensations of needles digging into delicate tissues on YOU (or a partner) and/or TEARING delicate membranes, because you will be using different levels of pressure to PLAY. If your nails extend beyond your fingertips, they can cause pinching of the tissue. If you MUST keep some of your nails, spread your finger tips apart a little so you don’t catch tissue between the nails. Also, don’t press straight into the tissue (at a 90 degree angle) or the edges can cut.
Always wash your hands BEFORE and AFTER playing. It’s GOOD HYGIENE and you don’t want to transfer energy or bacteria from a partner to yourself, or another person you might touch. Massage the soap over both sides of the hands, between the fingers and pay attention to the nails for at least 30 seconds. I highly recommend using latex or Nitrile gloves, IF you have a cut, burn or any break in the skin of your hands, fingers, wrists or forearms. Nitrile is a more expensive choice, but better because many people are sensitive to latex. Each body’s skin has its own ecosystem and, while your body can usually handle YOUR ecosystem, someone else’s getting through your skin will set you up for infection or worse.
Extremely soft skin on your hands is a blessing. It provides you better sensory input as to what you’re feeling when looking for problem areas and it feels better to be touched by someone whose hands are soft. Nourish your skin. It’s the LARGEST organ in the body and it is the ONLY barrier between YOU and everything that can HARM you. I suggest products that contain Shea Butter (from the African Karite nut tree) because the skin sucks it in – it CRAVES Shea Butter. It’s expensive, but well worth it. You may wish to get products that contain it, because at room temperature, Shea Butter is SOLID, even moreso than coconut oil. I also use coconut oil, olive oil, castor oil, peanut oil and after hand-washing, I always apply a moisturizing hand cream/lotion that contains Shea.
USE OF HANDS
Now let’s talk about how to use the hands for PLAYING. We’ll introduce new positions and ways of using hands, thumbs, fingers, wrists, knuckles, forearms and even elbows, and how to get more pressure from your hands without hurting yourself as we PLAY.
Let’s start with a soft, relaxed hand. It’s the position your hand assumes when you’re stress-free, relaxed or asleep. The palms remain fairly flat, with a hollow in the center, the fingers extended from the palm with a slight curl of the tips back toward the palm, the thumb slightly curled away from the palm. This is your main tool. Lack of tension in the hand allows the nerves in your hands to feel more of what you’re trying to remove from the body.
For our PLAY, we are performing medical massage, so we won’t be performing “breast exam” spirals or circles. We’re not doing Swedish, so no rubbing, stroking, kneading, pressure points, slapping skin, not even using oils (unless the skin we’re working on is ashy dry). This is a specialized type of body work. The pressure is very light (using pressure about the weight of a nickel). We will be PLAYING between structures deeper inside the body, NOT at the level of the skin. So we might say that PLAYING is also going to require you to have a SHIFT OF CONSCIOUSNESS: There is NOTHING in the body that you can not develop the ability to find, regardless of whether it’s covered in skin, muscle, organs or even bones.
Let’s teach our hands new PLAY skills to benefit your personal health. If you give your hands a task, they eagerly comply. Place your relaxed hand on a bare spot of skin, palm facing the skin. Using no pressure, tell the hand, “Find skin”. You will feel a diffuse sensation that connects the relaxed hand to the skin, kind of like a magnetic pull or placing your hand over a very weak vacuum cleaner wand. Your hand feels a bit stuck. If you gently move the skin (less than 1/4 inch), the skin now moves with the hand, but nothing below the skin moves.
Give your hand the command, “Find fat” (nothing personal – most of the skin has a layer of fat beneath it). You will feel the energy of your hand move deeper into the underlying tissue, where it spreads laterally (side-to-side) and note that the texture is different. The magnetic pull no longer has contact with just the skin – it’s gone in to the depth of the fat layer. If you move your hand now, the fat and skin move with your hand.
Now give your hand the command, “Find muscle”. The magnetic pull (or weak vacuum) goes deeper still and you now have three layers to feel: skin, fat and muscle. And, just like before, the layers down to the muscles are moved when you move your hand.
You can do the same PLAY with the bones, but don’t play with bones too much – the body encapsulates infectious matter in the long bones and you don’t want to stir that stuff up. You may give it commands to find anything in the body and the hand will do its utmost to deliver – if you know the names of muscles, bones, organs, etc., you can also request them. I also recommend that you avoid working over the spleen and pancreas – they don’t like to PLAY – even when dysfunctional, they want to be left alone.
EVERYTHING in the body must be able to move to perform its job well. You have a LOT of STUCK tissues in the body. The body protects two things more than all others: FIRST is the VASCULATURE (blood vessels). If you have a slow leak in the body, you have a life-threatening condition. The SECOND is the NERVES. Every nerve has blood vessels; every blood vessel has nerves, so it becomes something of a holograph. The wisdom of the body locks down around vasculature and nerves when there’s an issue, often preventing the body’s activities from putting more pressure on both. When you have pain, its because your body no longer has an effective way to compensate for the STUCKNESS. You either suffer the pain, or find a way or someone to remove it.
I don’t want to teach you anatomy (though there will be SOME) – I want you to understand the philosophy so you know how to help yourself and/or a partner. If you tell your hand to find specific things in the body (a landmark, muscle or organ), the hand will do its best to comply. If you tell it to find HEALTH, it doesn’t respond because it doesn’t understand what you’re seeking. So I often use the command to the hand, “Find STUCK”. You’ll ALWAYS find something. Usually, you’ll be attracted to an area that needs the most help or you can start with a place that feels tight or has pain right now. Just allow your relaxed hand to slide slowly over the skin until it hits a STUCK place after giving the command. Note how close to the skin what it shows you is located, or how deep into the body. Feel the differences as you sink between layers, noting how the hand seems to spread, the differences between how the layers feel, densities in tissues and especially anything that feels hard, hot or cold – those are ALWAYS good places to PLAY.
So it’s homework time – I’m gonna give you a few days to PLAY and get accustomed to using your hands this way. If you are a fast learner and find this boring, use your other hand and place it over your heart to see if you now feel pulled into it, sort of like having both hands at the end of a t-shaped vacuum wand that’s weak. If so, hang with it, see what you feel, is there a pulse, a rhythmic movement, does one hand want to press deeper and move up, down or to one side or the other? If so, do it – you will then be PLAYING in the way we want to learn it. Try placing the second hand on the brain or the spine and see what kind of reactions you get and follow what you feel.
I’ve NEVER tried teaching something in writing. If you could see what my hands are doing while I’m typing it would be more clear. PLEASE let me know if you’re lost, if the instructions are ambiguous or too nebulous for you to follow. If you’re having difficulty, that means many more are, too. I invite you to be the squeaky wheel and I won’t take it personally. Please ask questions about what you’re feeling (or not), clarifications, anything that prevents you from “getting it”. I accept full responsibility if you can’t get it, but I won’t know that unless you communicate with me. I WANT you to get it! I need your input so others can get it easier. I also invite you to share this information with others. It’s gonna be a week or two before we actually get into the pelvis, but next installment will be treating yourself for issues where the neck connects to the chest, between the shoulder blades and the spine, opening up an area just beneath the ribs but going through the front of the body to change the back. And we should start working parts of the pelvis on the exterior of the body afterwards. Anyone who isn’t interested in learning about the Pelvis, but who would like help with their other body issues is welcome to join. LOVE you ALL and sending gratitude for each of you! Deb
creatingsacredspaceblog 