#david lauterstein

From the great John Berger - "Silence, you know, is something that can’t be censored. And there are circumstances in which silence becomes subversive. That’s why they fill it with noise all the while."

from “Will It Be a Likeness?”, in "The Shape of a Pocket" (Vintage, 2003)

Pablo Picasso — Three Dancers The Museum of Modern Art

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All neurosis begins as a restriction of breath. – attributed to Wilhelm Reich

This phrase has stuck with me as a fundamental truth for years.

Think about it!  When we are infants and in a troubled environment, unlike adults, we can not yet think consciously about our emotions.  We react, not mentally, but organismically. We react to early challenges by restricting breath, and freezing rather than fighting or fleeing (as infants we don’t yet have voluntary movement).  There’s nowhere and no way to run, nowhere to hide.

If crying doesn’t work, as it may not in a sustained troubled environment, then that freezing is more often what we do.  And the initiation of the freeze is to restrict breath. In addition, the freeze response is manifest in reduced body motion, reduced heart rate, and increased muscle tonus.

The good news is this natural freeze response is something we now, as adults, have some understanding and some control over.

I wish it were so easy just to say – since all neurosis begins as a restriction of breath, all we have to do is free up breath and we will be less neurotic, more psychologically and physiologically healthy. Unfortunately, it is not necessarily so easy.  When we free our breath, often we become conscious of feeling emotions that we froze over. So instead of just being unconscious now we feel like crap! Because when we were very young, if there was no productive response by our caregivers, we just felt bad. We then had a “set point” for the excursion of our breath.

Now we can re-set that.

The hope of course is that when we free our breath:

1.      We find that underneath depressed breath, there are other feelings living that – while not necessarily pleasant, are ones that we did not fully mobilize early on – anger, forceful love, active flight or fight.

2.     These feelings now have a way out – if recognized you can see, feel and reason with them as needed.  They can now be understood, expressed in some ways and fulfilled perhaps in some ways.

3.     Free the breath, your heart will follow!

4.     Be encouraged through whatever practices may work best for you – everyday awareness, yoga, breathwork, chi gung, body-centered psychotherapy, etc. – to create a new set point and use breath as way to enhance your whole life.

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p.s. In looking on-line for the origin of the Reich quote, I happened upon a reference to an intriguing chapter in a big scholarly book – that you can download the pdf of.  It was Chapter 18 “The Forgotten Obvious: Breathing in Psychoanalysis” in this book – “The Life of Breath in Literature, Culture and Medicine”.  Check it out…extensive, intimidating and amazing treasure trove of scholarly writings on breath. 

Massage – A Blessing for Everyone March 14, 2012

In Deuteronomy it says, “Blessed be the work of thy hands.”

When I was a child, I was entranced by the beautiful book, The Family of Man. This had incredible photographs from all over the world. People in families, giving birth, dying, at war, at work, playing, kissing, making music, leaping up in the air. It gave me a clear feeling of being akin to all the peoples of the earth.

Particularly heartwarming to me was a photo of an old woman’s hands. I carefully sketched them because they moved me so.

To this day, the work of our hands moves me deeper than words. All the things we do for each other!

And in massage we find this common human facility to touch each other with care. Whether we are black or white, gay or straight, woman or man, young or old, in Africa, South America, Russia, Europe, or Asia – every person deserves the highest quality of touch.

It is a dream – one all therapists share – to want the feeling that comes from caring touch to be a universal experience.

Blessed be the work of thy hands.

[Thanks David Lauterstein]

Last date- Miss Ann.

Listen and at the end of his wild beautiful piece we are treated to contact with the voice, mind and heart of Eric Dolphy (quoted below)."Miss Ann" from the album, "Last Date"

"The more musicians you play with, certain things will help you, I feel. That develops you, because music, regardless of what it is, what label we put on, it's basically music, and basically it's creative, because when you think about it, when you hear music, after it's over, after it's over, it's gone, in the air, you can never capture it again, so it's pure creation. 

When you listen to Beethoven, Brahms, or you listen to Mingus or Coltrane or Stravinsky, Ravel or Duke Ellington or Sonny Rollins, Roland Kirk, any. Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, this all has to be and I had some wonderful experience, I'll tell you, I played, and Gunther Schuller arranged it, a piece for Orchestra U.S.A. and Leonard Bernstein liked us. He wanted to do it, with the Philharmonic. So we did it with the Philharmonic and I had the chance to play as a soloist in this piece and that was a wonderful experience. Those great musicians, it's great to play with them. 

Every musician that has his contribution is a great musician whether he has a name or not. Because some man that have a stronger personality that come over stronger than we hear more often, but it takes the musician that you never hear about to make them great, to make the music come to us."

-Eric Dolphy

(collage by Julie Lauterstein)

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"Art is viable when it finds elements in the surrounding environment. Our ancestors drew their subject matter from the religious attitudes which weighed on their souls. We must now learn to draw inspiration from the tangible miracles around us." (Umberto Boccioni, 1882-1916) We find these miracles in our clients and students every day. They are the tangible miracles from which we gain inspiration. The study of anatomy, physiology, and psychology, the wonder of really "meeting" the other person (or oneself!) in the massage/therapeutic relationship - puts us in the position of being artists working in the most profound medium there is - human being.

FOREVERLAND Outside the Christian church, after the service for Asian Americans A man in his 70’s in brown pants and white short-sleeved shirt And a woman in her 60’s with a floral blouse and a linen skirt Hugged each other. They hugged and hugged and hugged. Long after some attendees had hurried off home to early Sunday dinner or to McDonald’s, We stood and watched them, Their arms wrapped around each other’s backs Their humeri pressing each into the other. They had just exited from the church’s eaves, As if from the ribs of a large boat from heaven That had perhaps also bore them upon an ocean, A voyage from China to the new continent. Hearts can reach that far through arms. Neither was young. And with their heads bent down, Nestled into their shoulders and necks, We couldn’t see their faces, nor the fronts of their bodies, Only their backs and those encircling arms. Those humeri arising from the shoulder blades, The ball and socket speaking in a language of completeness And freedom - movement through the union of opposites. Their shoulders were free to move – but now he and she were wrapped in stillness, A stillness we all could feel like wings of embracing herons, Each disappearing into the oneness of four still wings. Or in China they would be seen as one large flame, An illustration of the fire element coursing through the arms: The heart meridian, the inner sea of fire, Pericardium, the “heart protector”, now opened wide, Triple warmer, three depths of love through pelvis, belly and chest, The small intestine meridian leading to a point called “Heavenly Ancestor.” She and he shared ancestors in the fires of stars. They leaned back, faces shining, still hugging, Yet now each reflecting the light of the other in their faces. In their hug we could feel the vast generations of upper arms, Humeri assuring the embrace until new life became possible for all On a new continent formed by a love that we lived in then, Joints connected the countries of history. They had come full circle and stopped: we were all their children. They invented a new kind of time. There we were, all the begats of the Bible, Living in the world we wanted, Through a hug in the promised land. (illustration by Christy Krames) 

[Deep Massage Society]

WHY ZERO? WHY ZERO BALANCING?

“Zero is where the real fun starts.  There’s too much counting everywhere else!” - Hafiz

Like all of Hafiz poetry, this is more than  witty.

Well it would be funny too, like in a Seinfeld show, in which it is said nothing happens, to have a bodywork which is essentially about nothing and makes no claims and in which in some ways nothing happens.

Well…How about these considerations?

The positive effects of Zero Balancing take place while you, the therapist, do nothing – you go to “zero”.  Once you the therapist create the “fulcrum” – usually by pressing in with gently curved fingers until finding tension held in or on bone – you then pause and do nothing. It is important that you do nothing, so that the client’s awareness is free to go deep inside and to let go from inside out. So, when you do nothing, you provide the best opportunity for the client to take the lead in their own letting-go process.

Many of the bones we work with have a cavity inside, the medullary cavity, which is like an extended O within the cylindrical long bone or an open space like in the pelvic “bowl.”  This is like the space inside the flute, the emptiness inside a bowl, this big extended zero in the bone. The openness inside is what allows the flute to make music, the bowl’s empty space to contain fluid or other nourishing substance.  So we touch, with stillness, areas in the person that allow for vibration, flow, and for the person to feel filled with nourishing energy.

Since the client’s inner work happens while the therapist does nothing, the therapist themselves gets to experience sustained moments of doing nothing – the definition often given to Zen – “wu wei” – non-action.  Doing nothing it turns out is of great benefit to the therapist as well as the client because 1) the therapist then repeatedly enters a state of meditation, which is inherently healthy; 2) the client learns how much value there is in doing nothing, just in being. We are, as they say, human beings, not just human doings.

All this can be seen as relating to the state known in Indian philosophy as “Shunyata” – most often translated as emptiness. “The Pāli Canon uses the term śūnyatā ("emptiness") in three ways: "(1) as a meditative dwelling, (2) as an attribute of objects, and (3) as a type of awareness-release." I am naturally intrigued by the term “meditative dwelling” in the light of my upcoming book which uses a similar term, “Memory Palace,” in its title. 

Every Zero Balancing gives the therapist and the client a context for “meditative dwelling.” When we let go of effort, we are letting go of identification with the doing self, with ego, and we get to savor the healing moments of dwelling in a meditative state. I’ve heard that Thich Nhat Hanh said, “the body is not only a temple; it is also the sage in the temple.” 

In ZB we can see every bone in our body is a “meditative dwelling,” every bone an energetic and structural member of the memory palace, the sacred temple that is the evolved human body and mind. The structure and energy of the evolved skeletal system is something you have inherited that embodies the wisdom, the solutions of countless ancestors in the biological and existential world. When we experience what a sacred gift our life is – that’s when healing is most possible.  

Then we see we are just a container, a big zero that is filled with the ancestral chi flowing through us. That conveys some of the excitement and inspiration in what we call and do in Zero Balancing.

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We have four Zero Balancing courses now enrolling at our school – combined in our path-breaking Intensive Certification Process beginning May 4.  

(painting by Pavel Tchelitchew)

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WHAT IS A FULCRUM? *“Fulcrum” in Zero Balancing and Deep Massage: Lauterstein Method means a high quality of touch which simultaneously, consciously, and clearly contacts the client’s energy as well as physical structure. It helps give rise to an experience in which the person can come into a new balance, a new experience of health. Moshe Feldenkrais said, “a person cannot change unless they have a new experience.” In massage and bodywork, understand that what we are doing is creating fulcrums through touch which facilitate new transformative experiences. "The experience newly born through a fulcrum – perhaps a “simple” touch – thus becomes an origin of consciousness. And conscious wonder blossoms forth in all innocence before this world co-created by therapist and client." (Bachelard/Lauterstein) That we can consciously change, self-evolve, is such an incredible human quality. Zero Balancing honors, evokes and amplifies this capacity. See this through eyes of wonder, that appreciate the miracle of conscious life.