Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

bodywork

“How to Learn the Alexander Technique” by Barbara Conable

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Subtitle: A Manual for Students

Recommended to me by: reading Conable’s previous book, What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body

This book is less playful and more dense than What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body, but it is not at all the dry instruction manual I thought it would be. It is full of lucid explanations about how the body really works, along with common errors in how we map our bodies. I think the subtitle should be, “A Manual for Humans.” I long for the freedom of movement and buoyant support she claims is possible for everyone.

There is a section titled “If You Have Suffered Abuse or Violence” which is sensitive, compassionate, and accurate (like the rest of the book).

“Persons who are healing learn to become very skillful inhibitors [an important Alexander Technique concept], not in the sense that they do nothing, but in the sense that they say no to habituated self destruction and wait for the more constructive response that was blocked by the habitual.”

I keep saying that the Alexander teachers I’ve tried don’t acknowledge the work I’ve already done, and I think this is why. Years of practice in stopping and waiting.

Some insights:

  • The weight-bearing part of the spine is inside the body, deep to the knobs we feel along our backs.
  • The pelvis is the lower part of the upper body, part of the torso. There is no internal anatomical structure at the waist.
  • The top of the sacrum transfers the weight of the upper body to the pelvis. The rest of the triangular sacrum and tailbone float free of weight.
  • Flexibility can be increased by putting all the joints gently through their range of motion once a day. The whole routine takes 5 minutes.
  • Give yourself permission to be a “flapdoodle” at night – to move freely in your sleep like a child.

Here is a brief interview with Barbara Conable with a pointed comment about “inhibiting” at the end.

Here’s her page at bodymap.org.

Highly, highly recommended for all humans with an interest in how to move comfortably and well.

Available at biblio.com.

“What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body” by Barbara Conable

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Subtitle: The Practical Application of Body Mapping and the Alexander Technique to Making Music

Recommended to me by: Rosi Goldsmith

This book is filled with detailed illustrations of the body’s structure and how the parts work together, presented in a playful, declarative way. “If you already have a very free neck, Celebrate!”

I was frustrated by admonitions like, “Freeing your neck is the key to freeing the whole of you!” without accompanying instructions on how to accomplish that. I’ve been working on freeing my neck for years.

Then I got to the page that begins, “Imagine your legs feeling as free and mobile as your arms.” In a paragraph about the similarities about arms and legs, I read, “Arms and legs are out at our sides.” Oh! Suddenly I could feel the joint between my femurs and pelvis from the inside. I’ve been looking for it for years, but I didn’t have the right mental image to find it.

That epiphany alone more than repays my investment in the book. I imagine that someday an accumulation of epiphanies will free my neck as well.

Recommended for anyone, musician or not, who wants to learn more about how the human body works and doesn’t mind some whimsy along the way.

Available at biblio.com.

“8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back” by Esther Gokhale, L.Ac. with Susan Adams

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Subtitle: Remember When It Didn’t Hurt

Recommended to me by: Rosalind Bell

This book is a beautifully photographed and illustrated step-by-step guide to moving well as a human. It is also a carefully crafted sales brochure for the author’s clinic and method, with testimonials sprinkled liberally through the text.

Esther Gokhale (“Go-clay”) grew up in India, studied biochemistry and acupuncture in the US, and, inspired by her own back pain, conducted research on body mechanics in Burkina Faso, India, Portugal, and elsewhere.

She suggests that we integrate stretchsitting, stretchlying, tallstanding, and glidewalking into our lives to regain our birthright of healthy pain-free movement. The foundation of these movements is to allow the pelvis to tip forward so the top is lower in front and the sacrum protrudes slightly in back. The rest of the back remains relatively straight, with the shoulders settled down and back.

In contrast, many of us learned to tuck the pelvis so that if we had a tail, we’d be sitting on it.

The photographs of babies and adults from around the world are gorgeous and convincing. The book is carefully respectful of traditional cultures and full-figured people. I would have liked to see photos of people of color from the USA, and white people from traditional cultures, rather than the strict divide with only white people from the USA and people of color from traditional cultures.

While there is a lot of discussion about cultural influences on posture, there is no reference to the long-term effects of physical and emotional trauma. For some people there is more to healing than learning to move with a stretched back.

I highly recommend this book for the photos, for new ways of observing movement and posture, and for useful exercises to improve the use of your body.

More information about the Gokhale Method.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Trigger Point Self-Care Manual” by Donna Finando

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Subtitle: For Pain-Free Movement

Trigger points are small knots of tension within muscles. They cause local taut bands of muscle fibers and dispersed pain in predictable patterns. Steady, firm but not aggressive pressure helps resolve trigger points and the seemingly intractable pain they cause.

Clear, detailed, and encouraging, this book helps you find and treat your own trigger points. Donna Finando covers each major section of the body, including diagrams of trigger point pain patterns for the relevant muscles. The pain patterns, actions, and stretches are discussed for each muscle.

The full discussion for muscles that affect more than one section of the body is repeated in each section. For example, the scalenes appear three times, since they can cause pain in the neck, shoulder, and down into the arm and hand. Some of the introductory material is also repeated.

The repetition is annoying when reading through the book, but could be useful when using the book as a reference, eliminating the need to flip between sections.

Highly recommended if you have ongoing pain of mysterious origin. Even if the pain has some other underlying source, there may be trigger points involved. You’ll become more familiar with your body as well as reduce pain when you seek out and treat your own trigger points.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Stillness” by Charles Ridley

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Subtitle: Biodynamic Cranial Practice and the Evolution of Consciousness

Recommended to me by: Keelin Anderson, LMT

After 35 discouraging pages of philosophical pseudo-science, Ridley subsides into surprisingly practical advice about providing non-judgmental bodywork. Stay present. Check your perceptions with your client to make sure you’re not straying into fantasy. Do your own work first. Don’t interfere with the client’s process.

This book differentiates biodynamic cranial work from biomechanical work, taught by John Upledger as CranioSacral Therapy, and functional work, taught by Hugh Milne as Visionary Craniosacral Work. I like what I’ve heard about biodynamic cranial work’s emphasis on being present and accepting what is, rather than forcing the practitioner’s ideas of health on the client.

I part ways with this book’s spiritual pseudo-science. I don’t know if this is typical of all biodynamic practitioners. I wish people would leave quantum physics and (in this case) embryology out of their energy work. Tell me what you experience – don’t try to “prove” it or justify it by misusing scientific terms.

Available at bookshop.org.

“In an Unspoken Voice” by Peter A. Levine, PhD

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Subtitle: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness

This book is billed as a “culmination of his life’s work” on the back cover. It recapitulates material from Peter Levine’s earlier book “Waking the Tiger” about trauma and the nervous system, and uses many of the same case studies covered in the Somatic Experiencing curriculum. Somatic Experiencing is Levine’s protocol for healing trauma, taught through the Foundation for Human Enrichment.

I liked his emphasis on the need for therapists to be present, flexible, and cooperative, rather than distant, rigid, and controlling. I liked his quote from an (unidentified) soldier returned from Iraq: “I have a Post-Traumatic Stress Injury, not Disorder.”

I liked his distinction between awareness and introspection: awareness is experiencing the inner glow of an ember, while introspection is examining it with an external flashlight. Awareness allows; introspection dissects. He also distinguishes between feelings (bodily sensations), and emotions (fear, anger, etc.) which arise when impulses are interrupted.

There are some annoying aspects to the book, starting with overuse of italics for emphasis. When discussing the history of scientific discoveries about trauma, emotions, and the nervous system, he repeatedly uses the words “prescience” or “prescient” regarding earlier researchers, even though they clearly did actual science. When talking about the calming effect of being near a peaceful person, he names three specific famous men and the generic “loving mother peacefully nursing her infant.”

This book would make a good textbook for Somatic Experiencing classes (aside from the annoying bits). It is too dense for a layperson to enjoy, and yet doesn’t cover the healing process in enough detail to be a technical reference on its own.

Available at bookshop.org.